GoToMeeting: Web Conferencing made possible

GoToMeeting is a great web conference program. It has countless conferencing capabilities that make it possible to hold meetings with people hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Like other web cam services, you can face-to-face conferencing. This program lets up to 15 people in your meeting, and you can use the program on a computer, iPad, or smartphone. This is an example of the ever-increasing mobility (Campbell and Park) in computer mediated communication. You could conference from anywhere, at any time. Being able to tune into a business meeting from any place is a great advantage and could cut down travel expenses an incredible amount for any company.

GoTo could be classified as part of Web 2.0, which in this case are web applications interactively shares information. The author (host of the meeting) interacts and collaborates with the others attending the meeting. The host of the meeting can get people to webcam with each other, pull up documents on their own screen which is projected to everyone else in the meeting. You can avoid the hassle of e-mailing attachments to everybody, and needing to wait for everyone to download and open the files. The program has a couple of communication modes, either text-based, audio based (just like a conference call), or visuals with webcamming and/or presenting documents and files to all the others in the meeting. GoTo allows the host to show everybody their own computer screen, leading to high efficiency and little wasted time. There is a sense of community building and trust development during these meetings. Hearing someone speak specifically to you through the GoTo audio program, or chatting with each other on a webcam is very personal. There is a lower level of anonymity and as a result, users feel like they can trust the others more (Joinson).

GoTo is revolutionizing business meetings. With all of its capabilities, it follows the new communication trends that include collaboration, personalization, and active participation (Alcatel-Lucent). In a business world, a product such as GoToMeeting is a very efficient means of communicating with customers and partners.

Dropbox: Community Building through File Syncing

Dropbox is the easiest way to sync your files over all of your devices. This includes your work computer, desktop, mobile phone, and any other computers you want to sync with. Devices always seem to break at the most inconvenient times, but with Dropbox, your files won’t be lost. The “cloud” is the future of Web 3.0 and beyond, where less and less is stored on your personal hardware. While cloud storage is not new, Dropbox offers one of the most developed, yet intuitively clean and simple cloud storage utilities. Once you install it on your computer, you simply drop your files into the new Dropbox folder found in the Favorites section of Windows Explorer, so you don’t have to go out of your way to open up any other program or log into an account.

File syncing can be used on a personal level, by having all of your files backed up and easily accessible on the cloud, but the possibilities for collaboration with friends, family, and coworkers make this software particularly exciting. In your Dropbox folder there is a Public subfolder. This makes it easy to share files with a broad group of people in one place, at the same time, instead of tediously sending out individual files to each person. This grants affordances of consolidation of information, as well as the affordance of easily broadcasting or disseminating your multimedia and documents. The Public subfolder allows for community building through providing a curated list of files which are as visible or invisible to others as the user wishes. In addition to the Public subfolder, you can create other folders and share these folders with specific people or groups of people. This allows the user to control the information that is available to any given person. Once a folder is shared, all files added to the folder are automatically synced with everyone connected.

Speaking of community building, Dropbox’s website fosters the development of the larger community of all Dropbox users. It does this in two major ways, one being the traditional method of hosting community forums. This allows for users to create and enter discussions with other users as well as receive feedback from forum moderators. It has a personable yet still comfortably anonymous method for posting, in that posters are labeled by their real first name and last initial. The second, more innovative method Dropbox uses to promote community building is their Votebox. Votebox allows users to raise issues about the current software or suggest new innovations for Dropbox. After an initial suggestion is posted, others can vote in support of these innovations.

So you can look at Dropbox as an intuitive, customizable file syncing and cloud storage tool. However you can also look at as a new way to easily communicate with individuals and groups through user-friendly sharing of files. Updating Public or shared folders are automatic and hassle-free, so you are keeping the people that matter to you in the loop just as easily as you would save a file to a folder.

MyEdu- A new way for college students to communicate online

I recently heard about this campus connection website entitled MyEdu.com through an organization affiliated with The University at Albany. This week, Lambda Pi Eta, the communication honor society at our school, asked all of its members to create a free account on the MyEdu.com using the special link (www.myedu.com/free/lph). For each individual who signs up for a free account, using the unique link, MyEdu donates $1 to Lambda Pi Eta. Through the MyEdu Campus Connection Program, MyEdu.com promotes involvement on campus by giving back to student organizations in this way.

MyEdu is a website dedicated to campus connection. According to Wikipedia, “MyEdu was founded in 2008 by Michael Crosno, Chris Chilek and John Cunningham. The company formerly known as Pick-A-Prof, officially changed its name to MyEdu in the summer of 2009.” This campus connection website is an interactive site that “works by collecting data from college students, as well as official academic data from universities, to identify patterns that lead to unexpected costs.” In addition, “MyEdu also provides interactive web applications to aid those seeking a college degree, including services that focus on college decision making, such as degree planning and requirements, class schedules, courses, and professors.” Tabs or resource categories on the main page of this website include, class schedules, professor grades, professor ratings, course booklists, course catalogs, degree requirements, transfers & APs, degree timeline, careers & salary, time management, and, finally, data, stats & graphs. The main objective of this website is to “concentrate on helping students organize their academics.” CrunchBase.com asserts, “MyEdu is the definitive online source to increase success and save money in college. Combining the largest warehouse of academic information in the US with easy-to-use web applications, MyEdu helped students to create a personalized graduation plan and make informed decisions about their courses, schedule, professors and major.”

On the official site, MyEdu contends that they are “the leading students academic platform for completing college.” Something that I found out while exploring this website, and the ‘About MyEdu’ tab is that, “with only 56% of students nationwide achieving a degree in 6 years, too many students are saddled with the burden of college investment without the benefit of a college degree. [Their] mission is to help students improve their return on education by raising graduation rates, decreasing time to graduation and supporting career readiness goals.” In addition, “MyEdu provides millions of students attending US colleges and universities with information and tools to better plan and manage their college experience.” On their website, they contend, “We provide students information on over 7,000 institutions and detailed degree planning, graduation roadmap, schedule planning, grade histories, faculty ratings and credit management information at over 800 institutions and growing.” The website is a very beneficial tool for students who are trying to get statistics and detailed assistance about their university or a university that they could potentially be attending.

In addition to providing statistics and information, MyEdu also is a beneficial tool for student networking. When I created an account, I was automatically prompted to both tell friends from my other social networking accounts to join, as well as to meet my ‘schoolmates’ who are other people who have accounts on MyEdu who attend The University at Albany. Additionally, there is a ‘Ask A Question @ SUNY Albany’ section, that is similar to Twitter, where students can post questions, comments and concerns where other Albany students can see postings from their ‘schoolmates’ and have the opportunity to answer or respond to the postings.

You can also upload your schedule to the website and request to see your friend’s schedules. This site is a way to keep track of your courses, grades and textbooks throughout the semester. Finally, “Working closely with students and universities over the last decade, MyEdu has assembled the richest academic warehouse of course, professor, grade history, student review, and degree information – sourced directly from universities nationwide. This data is the foundation of the MyEdu approach, which arms students with customized and relevant information so they can make better decisions at critical academic milestones – such as choose a major, plan a degree, build their schedule, select the right courses, balance their workload and map out their path to graduation. Students using MyEdu to manage and plan the process of earning a college degree can realize up to 20% savings on the cost of college.”

MyEdu also uses other forms of social media in order to gain publicity. MyEdu currently takes advantage of social media sites, for example, they have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube channel, just to name a few in order to get their name out there and increase visitors. By using multiple channels, MyEdu increases the traffic that they could potentially receive, by making the website more visible to others. They also have a blog affiliated with the site and a pressroom to keep users up to date on their current events. Through these tools for increasing traffic, the website uses labels, tags and keywords, hash tags and links in order to increase their users.

You can also access this website from any mobile device, which is Web 3.0, to ensure access to this information when you are on the go. This website is a great resource for computer mediated communication; students can access information, as well as, communicate with other students concerning more personal questions regarding their education. This website is a great tool and should be taken advantage of by all students.

Finally this website is visibility stimulating and user friendly, ‘Appappeal.com’ contends that MyEdu “does its best to avoid intimidating new students. Visitors are welcomed by soft, pleasant colors that add variety to the modern user interface. Each area is very clean and contains no clutter, just the information the user needs. Stylish icons add even more personality, giving the site a very upbeat feel as the user navigates to the tools they need. The application makes it easy for anyone to compile all of their basic school details and planning resources in one convenient place.” Because this website is accessible and easy to use, the user traffic will increase and users will be more likely to visit again. All in all, this website is a great resource for students and extremely user friendly.