The Web Conferencing Blog

RescueTime for Effortless Time Management

RescueTime is an great web-based application that helps you manage your time by providing real-time stats on where you are spending most of your time and which applications are you using the most. This information helps you optimize your day so you can have the most productive and efficient day possible.

To RescueTime's credit, they have been mentioned in The New York Times, Newsweek, US News, TechCrunch, PC World...and now The Web Conferencing Blog!

I have been using RescueTime for about a 1/2 year now and have found it very, very easy to use. It's typical of a web 2.0 application: easy, simple, no training needed, intuitive. I can modify and set my alerts and scoring parameters just the way I like them. For example, if I think email communication is a highly productive activity, I can assign a higher weighting to this category compared to another person who does very little email, in which case a lower weighting will be assigned. I can do this for every application that I want RescueTime to track. (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Email, Google Searches, internal applications.)

Imagine, if you are in a sales role, how great would it be to know if your day was filled with revenue-generating activities or it was a day of Facebooking and reading articles from ESPN or CNN News. If you are in a sales role, RescueTime can tell you how much time is spent in revenue generating activites/applications: a CRM application, order entry system, email, Excel, etc. Same holds true if you are a financial analyst or in Operations...you are most likely going to be in Excel running numbers vs. a CRM, inventory tracking system, case ticket system, etc.

If you are truly looking to understand your day to day business activities, you need to try RescueTime!

There is a free personal version, as well as, a small business and enterprise version. For a team of 10 people, it's only $8.50 per person.

RescueTime Highlights:

• RescueTime scores group and individual "Efficiency" (a ratio of productive stuff vs. distracting time) and "Productivity" (a measure of the sheer volume of productive time)
• RescueTime shows total active computer time spent
• RescueTime breaks down application and site usage by category
• RescueTime gives flexibility to look at your data with tags
• Total time broken down
• Top applications and website tracking
• Unique individual scoring compared to the RescueTime community

At the end of the day, RescueTime provides me with real-time visibility on how my day is going. Simply saying, "I think I had a good day," doesn't cut it in today's competitive economy where companies are constantly looking for ways to increase employee productivity and corporate performance. If you want to be more productive, more efficient, and take your business to the next level, try RescueTime.

* There is no financial compensation for this blog.

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

Telepresence for Consumers

We all know that there is a huge market opportunity for telepresence at the enterprise level. From what I have heard, telepresence is the fastest growing product line at Cisco and John Chambers: CEO will continue to push telepresence as it's one of the top 5 corporate initiatives. In fact, John Chambers has said that his own company hosts 4,000 telepresence meetings per week!

What about the consumer market?

Is there a place for telepresence in every consumers home?

I've mentioned in past blogs that it will only be a matter of time before telepresence goes downstream and is available at the consumer level. What about those that already have an HDTV and don't want to spend extra money for telepresence? What I want to see is some sort of internet connectivity device that I can easily add on to my existing HDTV...essentially telepresence-enabling my HDTV but also providing some basic computing capabilities like a hard drive and applications.

Imagine if you were booking a vacation with a travel agent and you used your telepresence-enabled HDTV so you could see the travel agent as if you were there. Have trouble with your cable TV, well you could call a tech rep and explain the situation as if the tech rep was at your house. What if you are feeling sick? You could call your doctor with your telepresence-enabled HDTV. The doctor could even ask you to stick your tongue out and do a quick diagnosis as to if you should come into the hospital now or later.

This is all going to happen!

Surfing the internet, chatting with friends, watching internet videos from YouTube or Hulu.com, leveraging VoIP and a webcam, all from my couch and on my HDTV that's telepresence-enabled. A wireless keyboard and I'm set!

It's only a matter of time before this happens!!!

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

Act On Software for e-Marketing Programs

Act-On Software is a spectacular e-marketing application that enables marketers to create and manage programs for demand generation and lead qualification while working in conjunction with WebEx Event Center, a webinar-based delivery platform solution.

With any demand generation and lead qualification system, the goal is to generate demand/leads, qualify prospects, and close deals. The challenge for marketers is that one needs to manage multiple data systems and manually transport information from one system to another system. There is zero integration across systems and there is no real-time dashboard to track and measure results easily.

Running insightful, real-time analytics is next to impossible. Seeing if the sales team has followed up on the leads never happens because there is no accountability measure in place. Spending too much time on the wrong leads is common place for sales since there is no prioritization or lead scoring in place.

Shawn Naggiar, Director of Sales and Business Development, echoed similar marketing challenges, "Prior to Act-On, advanced marketing capabilities like lead scoring and behavior tracking were only available to large corporations with huge marketing budgets. Furthermore, the systems themselves were very difficult to use and took months to implement. Act-On is demystifying these advanced marketing concepts by offering a complete solution for as little as a few hundred dollars a month, which can be up and running within minutes and requires no technical expertise. If you can surf the web, you can use Act-On."

In short, Act-On Software solves these common and tough business challenges for marketers with a turnkey and fully integrated e-marketing solution.

"When prospects see our online demo, they get very excited.  The interface is so user friendly that people feel very comfortable and quickly realize how easy it is to be a better marketer using Act-On. Customers often tell us they don’t know how they ever managed their prospects and lead flow without it," stated Shawn.

Act-On Software Highlights:

• Email campaigns and email marketing
• Demand generation
• Lead nurturing
• Qualification and scoring
• Web forms
• Landing pages
• Prospect tracking
• Activity history tracking
• Website analytics
• Drill-down reporting
• Salesforce.com and WebEx Event Center integration
• Microsoft email connector

Shawn summed up the Act-On Software highlights by saying, "Internet marketing practices have created a new breed of prospect that will travel further along the sales process on their own before they are willing to engage with a salesperson. Prospects essentially self qualify themselves by responding to ad campaigns, attending webinars, visiting your website, downloading documents, opening emails and filling out forms. The key to successful lead management is being able to track and report on all of these marketing channels collectively to determine which leads are ready for sales and which require further nurturing. This is one of the key values behind the Act-On Marketing Service."

When I communicated with Act-On Software Founder and CEO, Raghu Raghavan, this is what he had to say about his company's value proposition and its position in the e-marketing space:

"We built the Act-On Marketing Service around the premise that every business with a web presence needs a lead management service. We have created an affordable service that is unusually easy to learn and to use. Our service is the only one to truly recognize that webinars are a staple of marketing departments everywhere. We have taken special care to build in tight integration with the best of breed webinar service – WebEx.

Our Cisco/WebEx Connect partnership holds huge potential for our company. With Connect, customers will get the convenience of a bundle of integrated communication and collaboration services for a single monthly fee from a trusted vendor, Cisco/WebEx. We know that every business needs marketing and sales. Connect gets our marketing and sales services in front of Cisco/WebEx’s prospects and customers with Cisco/WebEx’s implicit stamp of approval."

If your MBO's are tied to lead generation, cost per lead, market awareness or market share, the quickest way to achieve your marketing MBO's is to use Act-On Software. There is not another more powerful and complete e-marketing application that I can think of in the market today. All other solutions only offer pieces of what Act-On Software delivers.

Easy to use, tight integration, real-time analytics to measure your marketing program success.

* There is no financial compensation for this blog.

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

Citrix OEMs IP Technology from Global IP Solutions

About a month ago, Citrix and Global IP Solutions, a provider of IP technology, entered into a OEM license and distribution agreement to provide VoIP and PSTN audio conferencing for GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar.

I'm curious what happened to the $26.6M investment Citrix made in Nov 2008 to acquire VAPPS, a provider of VoIP solutions. From my understanding, the acquisition was made so Citrix could provide better VoIP to its customers. Was the VAPPS integration more challenging than expected? Did management opt to scrap the integration project in favor of OEMing with a VoIP provider instead? Was positioning VoIP as an audio solution hard for the Citrix sales team?

I thought the VAPPS acquisition made sense but like all acquisitions, execution and integration can be very challenging.

Global IP Solution's Voice ConferenceEngine and VoiceEngine are the two components that will be utilized by Citrix.

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

Mobile Meetings: WebEx on Apple's 3G iPhone

The Apple 3G iPhone now supports WebEx Meetings! This is the first device to ever support "Mobile Meetings." Leveraging Apple's 3G Network and WebEx's MediaTone Network for "Any Device Connectivity," iPhone owners can host and join WebEx meetings.

With already over 50,000 downloads from the Apple App Store and a Top 10 Business Application rating along with the "Best in Show" Award from MacWorld, WebEx on the iPhone is taking the business world by storm. (There is even a group on Facebook called "I Love WebEx on my iPhone"!!!) 

Whether it's joining a WebEx meeting from your iPhone or accessing documents via WebEx Connect on your iPhone you are always connected and ready to do business.

In a recent survey conducted by the NASCIO Summit, one of the top technology priorities of CIO's is "mobile workforce enablement." WebEx on the iPhone or "Mobile Meetings," is right in line with this strategic initiative. Improved productivity, increased corporate performance, better collaboration and communication with customers, partners and colleagues.

Mobile Meetings on the iPhone Virtual Tour

Blackberry and Smartphone support is coming April 2009.

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

New Adobe Reader, Acrobat Vulnerability

Hackers are targeting a zero-day vulnerability affecting Adobe Reader and Acrobat with malicious PDF files. Adobe officials say a fix for the issue will be available for Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat in the coming weeks. (This vulnerability has raised some concern of starting Adobe Connect meetings directly from PDF files.)

Hackers have once again turned to PDF files to spread their wares, this time assaulting a zero-day flaw affecting Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

Fortunately, the unpatched bug is on the company’s radar, and fixes for Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 are slated to be available March 11. Updates for earlier versions will come later, company officials said in an advisory.

The bug is due to an error in the parsing of certain structures in PDF files. If exploited successfully, the bug could allow a hacker to take complete control of a vulnerable system.

“In parsing a specially-crafted embedded object, a bug in the reader allowed the attacker to overwrite memory at an arbitrary location,” blogged McAfee researcher Geok Meng Ong. “The attacks, found in the field, use the infamous heap spray method via JavaScript to achieve control of code execution.”

“While the distribution of this exploit thus far appears to be targeted, new variants are expected as more information is made public,” the researcher continued. “As with the Conficker experience, the lack of good patch management is a very worrying trend that deserves more attention from IT security practitioners. Adobe is expected to release a patch very soon.”

In the meantime, security researchers at the Shadowserver Foundation recommend users consider disabling JavaScript. Symantec also recommended Adobe users keep their antivirus up-to-date.

“While we continue to investigate this issue, customers are advised to follow best practices and only open email attachments from people they trust,” blogged Symantec researcher Patrick Fitzgerald. “Enabling DEP (Data Execution Prevention) for Adobe Reader will also help prevent this type of attack.”

Brian Prince: eWeek

Telepresence for NBA and ESPN

The NBA and ESPN utilized Cisco Telepresence technology to create one of a kind "in-person" experience that bought NBA players and legends closer to fans at he NBA All-Star Game this past weekend in Phoenix, AZ.

Supporting Quotes: Steve Hellmuth, executive vice president of technology and operations,NBA

"Cisco has been helping the NBA stay connected since 2007 and we're thrilled to extend this interaction to our fans by bringing Cisco TelePresence to the Jam Session show floor. We will be able to provide our fans with unprecedented access to both current NBA players and legends."

Ed Erhardt, president of customer marketing and sales, ESPN "ESPN is working with Cisco to enhance the NBA All-Star viewing experience for basketball fans. Thanks to Cisco, we'll be able to offer our audience a closer look at the All-Star Game with exclusive interviews via Cisco TelePresence."

Alan Cohen, vice president, enterprise marketing, Cisco "By deploying Cisco TelePresence directly on the NBA Jam Session show floor, we are bridging the gap between athletes and fans, giving basketball enthusiasts a virtual pass to the arena with a unique ability to interact with players in new ways that were not possible at previous marquee sporting events. Building on our relationship with the NBA, we're bringing fans closer to the game, from the boardroom to the locker room."

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

iLinc Deregisters from Stock Exchange

On February 13, iLinc, a provider of web conferencing services, filed paperwork with the SEC to end the company's registration under the SEC and will no longer be listed on the NYSE Alternext exchange.

The iLinc Board of Directors concluded that the benefits of being a publically-traded company and having to report financial numbers no longer made sense and that de-registering was in the best interest of the shareholders. (Return on Equity or Shareholder Value was -89.26%!)

iLinc last traded at $0.08 per share.

Recent financial data provided by Yahoo Finance:(See below)

VALUATION MEASURES

Market Cap (intraday)5: 2.78M Enterprise Value (16-Feb-09)3: 7.47M Trailing P/E (ttm, intraday): N/A Forward P/E (fye 31-Mar-10) 1: N/A PEG Ratio (5 yr expected): N/A Price/Sales (ttm): 0.39 Price/Book (mrq): 0.71 Enterprise Value/Revenue (ttm)3: 1.04 Enterprise Value/EBITDA (ttm)3: -2.909

FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Fiscal Year Fiscal Year Ends: 31-Mar Most Recent Quarter (mrq): 30-Sep-08

Profitability Profit Margin (ttm): -29.70% Operating Margin (ttm): -43.39%

Management Effectiveness Return on Assets (ttm): -11.62% Return on Equity (ttm): -89.26%

Income Statement Revenue (ttm): 7.20M Revenue Per Share (ttm): 0.21 Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy): -39.00% Gross Profit (ttm): 7.29M EBITDA (ttm): -2.57M Net Income Avl to Common (ttm): -4.69M Diluted EPS (ttm): -0.07 Qtrly Earnings Growth (yoy): N/A

Balance Sheet Total Cash (mrq): 3.32M Total Cash Per Share (mrq): 0.096 Total Debt (mrq): 8.01M Total Debt/Equity (mrq): N/A Current Ratio (mrq): 1.534 Book Value Per Share (mrq): 0.112

Cash Flow Statement
Operating Cash Flow (ttm):	-2.88M
Levered Free Cash Flow (ttm):	-1.36M

An official statement released by iLinc:

James M. Powers, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer of iLinc, said, "We have been engaged in a thorough analysis of the benefits and costs associated with remaining a small reporting company for some time now. The recent downturn in the stock market, the continuing recession, and the high cost of capital were precipitating factors that made us believe the decision to deregister was the proper direction for iLinc."

Dr. Powers continued, "Simply put, we do not believe that we are likely to derive the traditional benefits of being public and the costs are continuing to rise. Our depressed stock price effectively removed the use of our stock as currency for additional capital or strategic acquisitions. Furthermore, we currently spend almost $500,000 per year just to remain a publicly traded reporting company, and anticipated increasing regulatory burdens are likely to increase those costs. In addition to the anticipated savings, deregistration will permit our employees to focus on sales, marketing and software development activities, rather than public filings. We see the redirection of that cash towards revenue growth and ultimate profitability as a more judicious use of a precious resource.
Finally, while we could have taken steps to remain listed with the NYSE Alternext exchange through the conversion of debt or a capital raise, doing so in these market conditions would have been extremely dilutive to existing stockholders. Delisting by the NYSE Alternext exchange and listing on the bulletin board (OTC) exchange would have been another alternative, but that alternative would not have eliminated the cost of remaining a reporting company. So with the combination of those factors and many others, we believe that the decision to deregister is the most prudent decision for the ultimate benefit of our stockholders, customers and employees alike.

"Please understand that we view deregistration as a first step and we have also begun exploring all strategic options available to the Company. We remain well-positioned in a growing video and web conferencing market and are seeing increasing sales transaction volume that is providing compounding SaaS revenue growth. From the foundation of those upward revenue trends and the expense savings associated with deregistration, we plan to take additional steps that will ultimately obtain for our stockholders the true value of the Company," concluded Dr. Powers.

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

Evernote

 

Evernote CEO, Paul Libin likes to call Evernote the "external brain," where things that you typically cannot remember on a day to day basis can be automatically stored and retrieved at a later time, thus never ever forgetting anything.

 

Evernote is an easy to use application that enables you to quickly capture data, pictures, information, virtually anything you can think of or see and store it for later use. Evernote works on Windows, Mac, on any web browser, camera, or mobile phone. Super flexibile with usability.

 

I have to admit that I have used Evernote in many of the ways that Paul Libin recommended:

• Taking a picture of a business card

• Capturing notes from a white board

• Copying a favorite web page

• Clipping a recipe for my wife

• Saving a Cakebreaad wine label last year when I was in Napa County

It's amazing how easy Evernote captures any form of information! Evernote is dummy proof!

 

On the backend, all your content is stored in the cloud on Evernote's servers which can then be synchronized across all your devices. Whether it's your iPhone, Mozilla browser, Mac OS, you have access to all your important data instantly.

 

I'm signed up for the free Evernote version but they also have a Premium version that's only $5 per month! It includes full file synchronization, 500 MB per month of storage space and SSL data encryption.

 

                          

                                                                     

 

* There is no financial compensation for this blog.

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert