Working Better Together with Webex
So, you want to collaborate online? You want to work over the internet with other people, and not just chat or use webcams. You want to share your desktop, so you can fix your mom’s computer, or work with your partner in Photoshop? Easy, right?
Ha. Until fairly recently, there wasn’t even a reasonable way to do this stuff. PCAnywhere and other similar programs could take your computer and make it accessible elsewhere, but couldn’t help you work with someone else. The same goes for Remote Desktop Sharing, the under-utilized feature built into Windows XP Professional.
We needed another solution. We wanted to work with a lot of graphics, text, and animation, and wanted to get a few people (artists, musicians, random people in other countries) all working together at the same time on the same material. Essentially, one computer would load up the programs, and everybody else would connect to that machine and see the same thing- and could take control if they had something to add or change.
Enter Webex. It allowed us to do precisely that, quickly and painlessly. That ease-of-use comes with a price though- after a 14-day free trial, Webex offers an ala carte plan (at 33 cents a minute) or a monthly subscription (over $100 a month)!
You’ll need high speed internet to make such a service useful, of course. We tested it briefly with a dialup modem, and found it practically unusable. In addition, you’ll want a fairly fast computer- Webex can be a bit of a system hog, on older machines you will notice a big decrease in performance.
It’s not quite ready for Grandma yet- but Webex is much better than other products we’ve tried. You simply logon to their web-based system and send out email invitations. The other users simply click on the link in their email, and join the session (it only takes a minute or so to download the software the first time). Whoever is in charge can then share control of his/her computer, or take control of one of the other machines- each user is asked for permission, and can retake control at any time simply by clicking the mouse.
As long as you have sufficient bandwidth, a good enough computer, and a large enough pocketbook, Webex is great. Collaboration is simple, and it is easy enough to trade control that you can take turns drawing pictures or editing photos. For some people, such a thing is a dream come true; for others, you might want to stick to working in the same room.
