Palbee Webcording Contest has Begun!

I’m happy to announce the official beginning of the Palbee Webcording Contest!  I hope that this brings us interesting and valuable content, and I am eager to give away these cool gadgets.  Here’s the text of the official press release:

Win MP3 Players in Palbee’s Monthly Webcording Contest

Seoul, South Korea, June 27 – Palbee.com, a free online video meeting service, has announced a Webcording Contest with monthly and quarterly prizes on its web site. Winners can receive the latest in South Korean mp3 players. Entries are accepted from any Palbee user around the world.

To participate in the contest, visitors must register at the Palbee.com web site and record a presentation in the English language using Palbee’s online presentation recording service. Then, using the same email address that they used to register, users must submit the URL of the recorded presentation to the contest email. Notable entries will be posted on the Palbee blog throughout each contest month. First, second, and third place winner will be chosen at the end of each month from all of the entries received during the contest period. For more information about the contest, check out the Palbee web site and the Palbee blog.

“Creative, interesting content is at least as important as high quality service,” said Matthew Weigand, Project Manager at Palbee.com. “In today’s Internet, interesting and original content is the one and only true resource.” He hopes that Palbee.com will become a treasure trove of presentations on a large number of topics; a kind of audiovisual Wikipedia. This contest is designed to stimulate the development of a large body of audiovisual knowledge and entertainment.

Palbee.com is a kind of cross between a conference room and YouTube. It allows its users to record multimedia presentations with audio, video, graphics and PowerPoint slides. Its video area can record audio and video directly from a webcam or other video feed. The whiteboard area allows users to import and display pictures and PowerPoint slides, write text notes, draw, highlight, and resize them as well. It is an ideal way to present formalized information.

Moving Hosting

Some of you may have noticed that palbee.com is currently not working.  We are moving our servers to a faster, more stable connection, and so they are unavoidably offline for a few days.  We should be back up and running by the 26th of June, so don’t worry.

If you have any questions about the move, I’ll be paying special attention to this post, and I’ll answer any questions in the comments section as soon as I can.

Free Online Conferencing Just got Easier

[This is the test of the press release that I have been spreading all over the Internet today.]

Seoul, Korea, June 12 – Palbee today announced the release of a new version of its online video conference service, Palbee.com. The new service includes several significant improvements, including support for up to ten conference participants and the ability to resize the white board or video display window. The design of the window and the layout of the interface and control buttons have been streamlined to be more intuitive as well. The new features and service remain freely offered to anyone who registers, making virtual meetings with Palbee a tempting alternative to business travel.

The new version of the Palbee service includes support for up to ten conference participants to speak together in real time. The previous version of Palbee supported only five participants by default, with the option for expanding the conference to nine. The latest version of Palbee includes support for ten participants natively. All ten participants can use the collaboration tools to draw, write, color, and type in the white board area and display photos, graphics, or PowerPoint presentations.

The newest Palbee also includes the ability to customize the conference window to suit the needs of the conference. If the host would rather focus on the video chat capabilities of the conference, it is now possible to maximize the video display area and minimize other areas of the conference interface. Or, if it is more convenient to focus on the whiteboard area, the whiteboard can be maximized to take up most of the conference window.

Finally, the new layout of the conference interface groups the various tools and slide controls in a more intuitive arrangement. Similar buttons have been layered together and arranged along the bottom of the interface to be less intrusive. The tools should be familiar to users of popular photo editing and presentation programs.

The changes are the first stage in a more comprehensive overhaul of Palbee.com. Additional changes are scheduled for later on in June. As always, the service is free to those who sign up at Palbee.com.

Palbee retains its recording and embedding features, which allow registered users to record presentations and embed them like YouTube videos. And live Palbee conference windows can also still be embedded into web pages as well, for those who want real-time video collaboration in the comfort of their own web site.

In today’s environment of rising fuel prices, business trips are cutting deeper into the bottom line. More and more businesses are considering alternatives to face-to-face meetings. Existing paid virtual conferencing services are almost as expensive as a two day business trip. Palbee offers a free alternative to Business Class tickets and hotel accommodations, and saves time too.

About Palbee.com

Palbee combines several features of mobile phones, email, and online messengers into one online application that requires only a copy and paste to use. You can use Palbee for work – in marketing, sales meetings and conferences. You can use it at school to present or view lectures, school projects, and online tutoring. You can use Palbee in your personal life for contacting your friends and family and sharing photos. The applications of Palbee are endless.

The Palbee team is committed to developing the application to support our users in their communication and knowledge sharing. They hope you enjoy the Palbee online service.

About Zenitum Inc

Zenitum Inc. is an entertainment solution developer based on computer vision technologies headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. For three years, Zenitum has been developing unique services for both the mobile and web platforms including Facial Beauty Surgery and Facial Fortune Reading based on facial feature recognition technology. Recently, Zenitum has launched several web services harnessing its proprietary technologies.

For more information, please contact:

Matthew Weigand
Marketing Manager
Zenitum Inc.
+82-10-5877-3561
matthew@zenitum.com

Palbee Content Contest

One of Palbee’s unique features that set it apart from the competition is the ability to record presentations. We hope that our users will develop a growing library of quality presentations that will become popular resources in and of themselves. This way we can attract web site visitors who not only want free, live video conferencing, but also who are looking for quality information on a variety of topics, like an audiovisual Wikipedia.

In order to encourage the development of quality presentations, we are going to create a contest here at Palbee.com. Anyone can enter the contest by recording a Palbee presentation on any topic and emailing the link to the Palbee team. At the end of each month first, second, and third place winners will be selected to receive the latest in Korean electronic gadgetry, such as the Samsung Yepp personal media player, and an iRiver Mickey. We are excited to see the presentations that will be made, and hope our users will be too!

In case you aren’t familiar with the latest in Korean personal electronics, here are some photos:

Model not included.

The famous likeness is licensed from Disney.

New Palbee look and feel preview 1

We’ve been working hard here on the Palbee team, and June is the month we are slated to release some very significant changes to palbee.com. One of the upcoming things we are going to do is update the Palbee application. We are planning to include more people in one conference, and to add more features such as whiteboard window resizing. Check out the screenshots below to see what its going to look like.

Stay tuned in the next coming weeks for more information here about other changes to palbee.com, coming up in June.

Getting the word out the old-fashioned way

One of the most important aspects of starting a new web service is telling people about it.  Despite the wonders of Google, it is still difficult to get people to notice your new web site.  That’s why it’s still so important to tell people face to face what you are doing.  But where?

I’ve found seven great places to let people know about new Web 2.0 services this year.  Here they are, in chronological order:

 

1.       Software 2008

April 29-30, 2008

Las Vegas, USA

The comfortable equilibrium between software supplier and IT buyer has been shattered. Open Source is now an accepted – and often favored – option to traditional commercial software. Monolithic applications are threatened by SOA. SaaS liberates businesses from software itself. And Enterprise 2.0 tools, such as wikis and social networks, pose a growing challenge for IT.

 

2.       Enterprise 2.0

June 9-12, 2008

Boston, USA

The largest and most important gathering for companies making the shift to Enterprise 2.0. It’s the only event that brings together the latest trends and practical information about Enterprise 2.0 to help you drive the transformation of your business.

 

3.       NXT Comm

June 16-19, 2008

Las Vegas, USA

The one event delivering the ecosystem of network-enabled voice, video and data

NXT Comm is the leading conference and tradeshow venue for the converged communications industry. This is seeking the next generation of thought leaders to speak at its 2008 event in Las Vegas.

 

4.       Business and Technology Solutions Show

Aug 19-20, 2008

Rosemont, Il, USA

The Information Technology sector in USA represents a growing market for IT equipment manufacturers and software suppliers. Business users, corporate decision-makers and government policy planners are highly confident in the telecom/IT technology flowing all over the world.

 

5.       TechCrunch50

September 8-10, 2008

San Francisco, CA, USA

Find the best start-ups and launch them in front of our industry’s most influential VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press.

 

6.       CTIA-Wireless IT & Entertainment

Sept 10-12, 2008

San Francisco, CA, USA

CTIA-Wireless IT & Entertainment focuses on integrating wireless technologies into the enterprise and vertical business markets such as healthcare, government, automotive, retail etc. Additionally, the show reflects the explosive growth in wireless entertainment – encompassing everything from music downloads to digital cameras to interactive games.

 

7.       Web 2.0 Expo New York

September 16-19, 2008

New York, NY, USA

Web 2.0, co-produced by TechWeb and O’Reilly Media, is a conference and tradeshow for the rapidly growing ranks of designers and developers, product manager, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketers, and business strategists who are embracing the opportunities created by Web 2.0 technologies.

Finding the Perfect Online Project Management Tool Day 105

$400/month can’t buy you project management happiness.

I think I’m beginning to sound like a broken record. My efforts in this project management search are entirely fruitless so far. Even after giving up the idea of a free and open source solution, paid services also do not provide what I’m looking for. Take the case of projectinsight.net. Its an online, subscription-based service that offers you all the flexibility and power of, well, Microsoft Project Server. At least thats what it appears to be. For a small company such as ours, having 20 people using ProjectInsight would cost approximately $400/month. With this strong monetary seed we could still not track bugs or personal schedules, although recreating complex projects from Microsoft Project would be very easy. Then we could get the resources assigned to each project (people) to fill in time sheets at the end of every day, in up to .01 hour increments, and by calculating their hourly rate we could easily determine, at a click, the fastest way to piss off talented engineers and give myself additional headaches.

That is not the direction I want to go. I was initially interested in projectinsight.net because it had the feature of tracking Issues for each project, which would have served as an acceptable bug tracker tool. However, that feature is not activated on the evaluation copy of the service which I am testing now, so I can’t even see if it would serve.

I am now thinking that my torrid love affair with Gantt charts might need to come to an end. They are pretty but they just aren’t included in enough project management programs.

How to save $25,000

In today’s world every executive tries to find new ways to cut costs and maximize ROI. Every executive also knows how costly business trips are. However, not everyone seems to notice that with emerging technologies things are not necessarily that pricey.

Recently, I have found an interesting website http://www.webconferencing-test.com which is run by Publicare. It is an online marketing company with global customers. Instead of travelling to the customer’s site they decided to use an online video conferencing tool. Since 2003, on a daily basis, they have communicated face-to-face with their customers via a web browser. When they were searching for the perfect solution they “realized that there is no vendor-independent website that gives a quick overview of the leading solutions.”  So they came up with their own website that filled in the void.

The website compares several solutions using different criteria. What strikes me the most is the cost comparison.  They have assumed that:

 They have compared a few solutions and here are the results:

 

If one would add PalBee to the above comparison, the total annual savings would equal the cost of meetings at customer locations. This means that the enterprise could cut their costs by almost $25k!

Finding the Perfect Online Project Management Tool Day 97

My coworker Monika linked me to an exhaustive list of project management tools on Tuesday at the Everything 2.0 Blog. There are 128 items here, and I simply don’t have the kind of time it takes to write up a comprehensive review of each of them. So, instead, I’ll check them over and just write down my first objection to the service, and move on. I might have to cobble together two or three applications to get a compromised solution, so if necessary I will tag some as partial solutions. If I don’t have any objections to a service, well, I’ll stop and recommend it to everyone.

Name & Link	Short Summary	First Objection
1time	Organize & manage projects	No Gantt chart
88miles	Track & manage time	Track Time to the second? Too timeclockish
8apps	Collaboration tools	Closed down
Actionize	Project, task, contact, network & file management solution	No Gantt chart
Actionthis	Organize & manage projects	No Gantt chart
Athyrium	Personal organizer	No Gantt chart
Basecamp	Manage your projects	No Gantt chart, too timeclockish
Bluetie	Collaborative Office-like toolkit	We already have Microsoft Outlook
Bubblus	Brainstorm together online	Bubble maker! Really fun, but totally not what I’m looking for. Better as addon to another application.
Businessitonline	Collaboration tools	No project management, too much cashflow management
Celoxis*	Manage workflow, time & expenses, and collaborate	No Schedule Tracking
Centraldesktop	Collaboration tools	No Gantt chart
Cogmap	Create, edit & share org charts	Made obsolete by Microsoft Word 2007 SmartArt
Collanos	Share & collaborate on files in groups	Can be emulated by shared network folders
Colligo	Collaboration tools	Offline sharepoint, not what I’m looking for
Copernic	Search app	desktop search software, not relevant to this search
Copperproject	Manage & collaborate in projects	client-centered, we are software development centered
Cozi	Organize your family	I’m not yet married
Creativeprooffice	Organize & manage projects	invoices, billable hours, clients… I need not such things
Cvent	Organize & manage events	We’re not planning events, we’re developing software
Devshop	Software project management software, Microsoft Project for software developers	no schedule or expense tracking. Potential partial solution
Dotproject	Open source project management tools	clunky, no schedule tracking
Dreamteam	Organize & manage projects	Don’t need billable hours. Nice Gantt chart though. Potential partial solution.
E-days	holidays and absence management system	perfectly fulfills one of my seven requirements – schedule tracking. Potential partial solution
Eloops	Project management solutions	free trial link gives 404 error. Forget it! also, don’t need social networking features at startup company
Eproject	Manage your projects (integrated with Outlook)	offline software
Evernote	Create, organize & find notes (client)	it just does notes
Famundo	Schedule your family & organization	I’m not yet married
Firestoker	Enterprise communications & democratization platform	social networking as management tool? Nice concept, not what I’m looking for
Flowchart	Create & share flowcharts	Flowcharts! I need this for another project. complete distraction right now though
Freshbooks	Online invoicing and time tracking service	don’t need to keep track of billable hours, and that’s all this does
Functionfox	Manage your time and (creative) projects	don’t need timesheets, clients, need gantt chart, bug tracking
Gaboogie	Organize & manage web conferences	PalBee is better!
Glide	Organize meetings & review projects	not what I’m looking for
Goplan	Organize your work & publications	no Gantt chart
Gradefix	Organize your homework	We’re not doing homework
Grouploop	Organize & collaborate in your own group	Nice calendar, needs other features
Harvest	Timesheets & reports	Timesheets are beyond the scope of my project
Hitask	Organize & manage groups	tasks only. needs more features
Huddle	Collaborate on PR, advertising, marketing, design	No Gantt chart, my #1 favorite rejection criteria
Icalshare	Create, share & manage your schedule	Google Calendar does it better
Intervals	Organize & manage projects	do not need hour tracking
Inventiondb	Create & share online project space	public blogging of projects. Not for us
Itensil	Create a process workflow for any recurring group activity	dynamic meeting management
Joesgoals	Manage & share your tasks	better for creating an exercise routine
Letsprove	Organize & manage projects	no info provided
Lightspoke	Automate your business processes in a whim	no business processes to automate
Listpool	Create, manage & share to-do lists	need more than just to-do lists
Loosestitch	Create & collaborate on task lists	creating outlines is nice but not what i’m looking for
Myquire	Project management tool	No Gantt chart
Myticklerfile	Manage your and others’ tasks	no response from server
Neptune	Manage tasks	just a task list
Nexo	Collaboration tools	I’d rather use Google Sites if it came to that
Odesk	Work as or hire remote workforce	Good solution for one of seven criteria. Possible partial solution
Officezilla	Free collaboration solutions	No Gantt chart. But, it does include bible search
Ohdontforget	Send yourself sms reminders	I get too many SMS already
Orgpluslive	Create & share org charts	Org charts are for big companies
Parlano	Group dialogue & document sharing	Parlano redirects to microsoft unified communications. Not what we’re looking for
Paystage	Manage your projects	don’t need to involve paypal in anything yet
Persony	Organize & manage web conferences	PalBee does it better!
Phprojekt	Organize group activities & document sharing	weird, crazy, too much clicking
Pipeline	Track your deals & organize your team	404 error
Planix	Organize & manage projects	strange, not what I’m looking for
Planplusonline	Planning solutions	sales? clients?  I need software development
Plone	Content management system for groups, communities, extranets and intranets	its a CMS
Project360	Organize your projects on the web or on your pda	No Gantt chart
Project4hire	Pitch for a freelance job	its classified ads
Projectinsight	Manage your projects	No objections, quite impressed, but demo requires a credit card so I can’t be sure
Projectpipe	Organize & manage projects	strangely useless
Projectplace	Run & co-ordinate projects	No Gantt chart, and useless preview video
Projectspace	Organize, manage & collaborate on your projects	I have no patience for web pages with their own soundtrack and no content
Projectspaces	Work together	No Gantt chart
Projity	Organize & manage projects	online java-based microsoft project replacement.  Wow!  Perfect solution to one of seven criteria.  Potential partial solution
Proworkflow	Manage your projects & time	too timeclockish, no schedule tracking
Putplace	Organize & share all your offline & online content	nice solution to one of seven criteria.  Potential partial solution.
Quickbase	Project management solution	flashy, lacking in functionality
Quickcamp	Organize your projects	basecamp keyboard shortcut extension
Recipething	Organize & share your recipes	we’re not cooking here
Regonline	Organize & manage events	Not organizing events
Relationals	CRM solution for media	we’re not customer-focused right now
Roughunderbelly	Score points on completion of your tasks	do not need an MMORPG to do work
Santexq	Time, task & billing management solution	do not need billable hours support
Schoopy	Classroom organizer & site hosting	we are not a school
Setdot	Organize & manage events	not organizing events
Sharea	Manage what you share with whom	web site is blank
Sharecare~	Organize yourselves in groups to share care	sharing and caring are not our business
Sharpcast	Synchronize all photos online & mobile	photos are not our business
Skemma	Define, use & improve your business processes collectively	i’m looking for project management, not business process monitoring
Skylook	Record & store all Skype communications	don’t use skype
Slimtimer	Organize your projects	don’t need timesheets
Smartsheet	Organize, share & manage tasks	need more than just task management
Snapbits	Store, sort & retrieve bits of information	i can do this with my mind
Snipitron	Create & share group research scrapbooks	scrapbooking is nice but beyond my scope
Snoozester	Manage your wake-up calls and get sms reminders	I don’t need more SMS reminders
Socializr	Organize meetings	We need more than meeting management
Sparkhive	Store & share thoughts, research, bookmarks	I can do this with paper
Springloops	Code management tool for groups	only correlates multiple programming projects
Structuredblogging	Create, edit & maintain all posts	we have a blog already
Tangentworks	Organize & manage projects	none of the features i’m looking for
Taskfreak	Task manager online	need more than just a task list
Taskspro	Group task manager	No Gantt chart
Teamwork	Organize & manage projects	clunky, awkward to use in video
Thinkature	Collaborative workspace	collaborative drawing.  Its nice but not what I need
Timebridge	Schedule group meetings	I can do this with MSN Messenger
Timexchange	Track your staff’s time	too timeclockish
Timexchangenet	Organize & manage projects	same thing two times
Todoz	Organize & manage groups	No Gantt chart
Toggl	Track time & meetings for teams	too timeclockish
Toodledo	Manage your to-dos	need oh so much more than this
Tracks	Personal organizer	need company organizer
Unfuddle	Ticket, source control & project management	only bug tracking.  need more!
Visualthesaurus	Create, manage & share events	its a thesaurus
Vitalist	Organize & share your tasks & projects	No Gantt Chart
Voo2do	Organize your tasks	tracks seconds of time spent doing tasks
Wamily	Share & collaborate everything with your group	still in alpha testing, and I’m not yet married
Webasyst	Project, knowledge, file, photo, email marketing & newsletters management solution	its got everything except a calendar.  Potential partial solution
Whatstheplan	Organize & manage events	web site no longer exists
Whodoes	Organize & manage projects	No Gantt chart
Workspace	Organize & manage web-based projects	online website for editing websites online.  Palindromic!
Worktimer	Track & manage time	too timeclockish
Writely	Store, edit & share documents	Google likes this a lot
Zohomeeting	Organize & manage web conferences	PalBee does it better!
Zohoplanner	Create & share memos & notes online	pseudogantt
Zohoproject	Organize & manage projects	pseudogantt
Zvents	Organize & manage events	Not managing events

Wow.  This is exhaustive.  And I find it hard to believe that after following so many links I was only able to find one potentially total solution, projectinsight.net, and only a few partial solutions.  It might have to be down to paper and Microsoft Project for us, still.  That decision will come later on in the week.

Finding the Perfect Online Project Management Tool day 95

Thanks to those of you who have left comments in previous entries, you have recommended some really good options to me. I checked out ProjectOffice today, and initially I was impressed. It seems to have all the features that I’m looking for – calendaring, a Gantt chart, work and vacation scheduling, and even a wiki and bug tracking. It also has the ability to track expenses, something that I did not list but would be useful. It is built with a slick Ajax interface and so of course it looks very sexy.

However, its slow to load up each tab. The page is divided into different sections by tabs at the bottom, and clicking on each tab the first time results in 5-10 seconds of waiting for the page to load up. The top banner does say that it is a beta, so you can expect a lot of improvements, but right now it’s slow. Also, the Gantt chart is only a pseudo-Gantt chart as well, because there are no dependencies. Also, currently, all tasks are arranged in alphabetical order, which results in a more confusing and disordered display. It would be good to keep tabs on this application, as it does seem to have great potential, but it’s missing too many features to use right exactly now.

Monika has introduced me to a post on the Everything 2.0 blog, which lists 128 project management tools that I could check out. I think I’ll be very busy tomorrow.