Week 6-2: Dimdim, a short experience using this
I have integrated Dimdim with my LMS recently and I can say it’s quite challenging integrating synchronous web 2.0 tools to the LMS. What is Dimdim? Based on their website, Dimdim is a web application that lets anyone deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet – with no download required. Honestly the last statement that they stated on the web site was no entirely true because we have to install the latest flash and Dimdim (screenshare) browser plug-in to make sure that all features on the application are working fine. Fortunately, the installation process is easy and almost being done automatically. This application is developed based on web 2.0 technologies using well known components like: MySql, Lighthttpd, Red5 (Adobe Flash Media for commercial version of Dimdim), CherryPy, Terracotta, OpenOffice.org, etc.
The Dimdim company offers a community based – open source version that can be downloaded freely on the web site. This is the version of software that I used for intergartion project within the LMS.There are two versions of Dimdim package that are available. First is the source code package (rpm or tar.gz package) that is direct compatible with Linux CentOs or Red-Hat based Linux (with slight modification the source) and virtual server package file. The last package is a compilation of complete CentOs Linux system with Dimdim which is already installed in it. This package is ready to run by using a Vmware virtual server platform.
If you’re not familiar with technical things, Please don’t worry because dimdim also offers hosted version. Dimdim web meeting application offers three web hosting services, the first is free service with maximum 20 meeting participants, professional service with maximum 100 participants and the last is enterprises with maximum 1000 participants. Those three services basically offer the same features as the differences in increased web presentation quality, reliability, enhanced support, custom branding, custom integration and max concurrent users.
Dimdim is a very good web conferencing tool. The company gives free services with a lot of cool features. The performance and reliability are also good. I hardly experience any problems during web meeting session with the only exception in desktop sharing. In some case the system slowly responds when in desktop sharing mode. This problem can be solved by deactivating and activating desktop sharing feature again.This software in a cheap alternative for conducting webmeeting for collaborative works.