Online collaboration often requires sending large files back and forth among peers. As online PowerPoint presentations become more complex and embedded media in web conferences and webinars is used more often, the 10MB limit on many email clients is insufficient. Putting the content on a CD or DVD and over-nighting it is a sure and secure option, this is usually expensive and excessive for most collaboration projects. Here are two online file sharing services that I frequently use to transfer large files.

Yousendit

Yousendit has a quick and easy interface to send large files. The service is free to use and you can send up to a 100MB file and transfer 1GB per month. If you pay for the service, you can transfer up to a 2GB file, with no limit on transfers.

SendYourFiles

This site allows you to send files directly from Microsoft Outlook. It also has a transfer-resume function so if your connection breaks during a transfer, it will pick up where it left off when you reconnect. SendYourFiles also lets you send multiple files at a time, so you can select a list of files and have them all sent at once instead of having to select and send each file individually.

There are plenty of other great file sharing services, these are just the two that I use most frequently. Be careful not to send proprietary information through these file sharing services, unless they are encrypted as neither of these sites use SSL.

As businesses of all sizes continue to expand globally, instant electronic communication has become increasingly critical to daily operations. Most companies now have “virtual teams” which comprise of employees of one or multiple companies, often in different locations around the globe, and frequently whom never meet face-to-face. Instead, these virtual teams only communicate by phone, email, video conference and other forms of electronic communication.

The alternative to working in virtual teams, requires constant travel expenses and loss of time and productivity. Virtual teams allow talents in different geographic locations to work together, while still having time to work on other local teams and tasks. However, one of the biggest drawbacks to working virtually is the lack of human interaction.

Michael Beyerlein, a professor and head of the Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision characterizes the problem:

Nonverbal signals, such as eye contact, are huge. Researchers have estimated that about 90 percent of our communication is nonverbal, so obviously working electronically can create obstacles within a team. However, many of the basic meeting management guidelines can help workers get the most out of their virtual team experience.

• If possible, conduct the first team meeting in person and then the rest as virtual meetings. This gives the group a chance to get to know who they will be working with and establish goals and norms for the project.
• Use meeting facilitators. Have a leader who makes sure everyone on the team has a chance to be heard, this helps the group stay on topic and makes sure any technical problems are solved immediately.
• Celebrate the successes virtually. In-person teams celebrate the completion of a project, so should virtual teams. Send congratulatory e-mails, glue pictures of your team to your computer, or if you can, get together and go out to a restaurant. If you’re working with people from Thailand, for instance, choose a Thai restaurant to recognize and celebrate part of your team’s culture. These are little things, but they can go a long way.

Today Glance Networks began offering a free trial month of their web conferencing services to air travelers who have lost valuable office time in the recent barrage of delays and cancellations at airports nationwide. Glance Networks provides online collaboration tools and web conferencing services that aim to eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings and frustrating travel.

The Airline Quality Ratings (AQR) survey reported that 2008 is the worst year since the inception of the ratings survey. American Airlines and other carriers that fly the MD-80 aircraft have canceled more than 2,000 flights as the FAA implements mandatory inspections on the aging fleet. To add insult to injury, Aloha Airlines, ATA Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Skybus are either shutting down or filing for bankruptcy, which has increased the delays and cancellations.

These kinds of delays have amounted to a loss in productivity that is nearly incalculable. We’ve heard reports from recent weeks of more than 300,000 displaced passengers who are missing meetings and losing sales,” said Rich Baker, CEO of Glance Networks. “Our customers have eliminated or dramatically reduced their business travel by meeting remotely through Web conferencing. We want to assist these stranded travelers and anyone who’s fallen victim to air travel delays and cancellations. So starting today, we’re offering a free month voucher for Web conferencing to help them catch up on lost time.”

The free month of Glance Web conferencing service (a $49.95 value) is available today through the end of May. http://glance.net/airlinewoe.

Recent IBM surveys consisting of over 1200 companies have shown that more than 60% of small and medium businesses (SMBs) consider collaboration tools vital to their business success and growth.

Improved and simplified collaboration tools such as video conferencing will allow everyone in the company to teleconference with anyone in the world. These new tools will put the power and control of IT in the hands of the business owner without the need for specialized skills or excessive IT staff.

SMBs will use audio and video teleconference technology to collaborate more easily far beyond their physical location, and will create extended communities built on the Web. These communities will allow them to function as “secure virtual enterprises” on the same scale as much larger companies.

While the cost of professional-grade software may have hindered SMB investment in conferencing technology previously, more online web conference tools are breaking down that barrier. Many of these tools such as InstantPresenter require no software or hardware to buy, install, maintain or upgrade. By running programs from these subscription-based websites, SMBs can focus on their core competencies without incurring the high IT maintenance costs.

Everyone has their favorite collaboration tools for chat, blogs, video conferencing, photos, booking-marking and we all use more than one. The problem is that the majority of these applications don’t work well together and we end up having the hassle of keeping track of all of these different sources of information.

Grou.ps has set out to fix this problem, by creating a platform that integrates all of these collaboration services with a single login. The system supports photos, chat, forums, calendars, blogs, wikis, maps, profiles, all which are available as a separate plugin to add to your Grou.ps account.

While having just gone beta today, Grou.ps already has over 150K members and 10K groups internationally. Grou.ps however has quite a bit of competition. Ning and Wetpaint have integrated forums and various forms of media into their community products. Google and Zoho also have compelling collaboration suites with a similar single login that gets you chat, email, audio and video teleconferencing, presentations, documents, wikis, and many other tools. Grou.ps is backed by Golden Horn Ventures.

Today in the United States is Earth Day. Founded by US politician Gaylord Nelson in the late 1960s, Earth Day is celebrated in many countries each year on April 22 to promote awareness of critical environmental issues. Recent surveys have shown that video conferencing and other types of teleconferencing are among the most effective methods of reducing a company’s carbon footprint. Today is an important day in the conferencing industry.

As part of an ongoing effort to protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions, WebEx has partnered with Carbonfund.org and has announced a tree planting program. Just sign up for a free trial of the WebEx software, conduct 2 online meetings with at least 2 people each, and WebEx will plant a tree in your name. For every 100 trees that are planted in people’s names, they will plant an additional 100 trees.

WebEx and Carbonfund.org help companies work greener. Together we raise understanding of how business travel impacts the environment—and how to minimize this impact with web conferencing. We also plant trees to help offset existing carbon emissions from travel.

So how much carbon emissions can be saved by replacing teleconferencing with traditional traveling?

• Teleconference instead of flying from New York to London for a team meeting. Save 2,690 pounds of carbon dioxide.
• Enable two salespeople to give a presentation via teleconference rather than traveling from Chicago to Silicon Valley. Save 4,696 pounds of carbon dioxide.
• Train 12 employees using video conferencing instead of flying them to San Francisco from Dallas. Save 22,377 pounds of carbon dioxide.

The majority of web meetings today consist of a phone teleconference with a presenter scrolling through PowerPoint slides. While this usually gets the information across, it lacks the personal connection and audience engagement required for the buy-in. With small and medium businesses continually increasing their use of web conference technology, the focus needs to be on customer engagement.

Using live audio and video throughout your entire web conference will create a personal connection between you and your audience. Develop a lens presence. Presenting to a camera with no feedback is vastly different than presenting to a live audience. Look directly into the camera and speak naturally. Don’t over-script your presentation or read directly from the slides. Your confidence and familiarity with your presentation will do much more to sell your idea than mere PowerPoint slides alone.

Audience members of a webinar don’t have to worry about the embarrassment of looking bored or even dozing off during a presentation. As a presenter, you need to keep your energy level up if you expect your audience to do the same. Speak loudly and clearly and stay on topic. Keep your audience engaged. Studies show that audience retention drastically drops after 30-45 minutes unless the content is extremely interesting. Regularly take questions and conduct polls from your audience.

Webinars allow you to collaborate with customers more quickly, and over longer distances with huge cost savings on travel and travel expenses. As the technology grows however, so must your ability to appropriately use that technology for the maximum benefit for you and your audience.

Today, Genesys, a multimedia online collaboration service, released its annual Earth Day survey, pulsing 18,000 customers on environmental issues and concerns in the workplace. This year’s survey showed an increase in attention to environment consciousness and an overall increase in virtual meetings since last year’s survey.

The most effective Green behaviors are those that provide benefits to the people doing them as well as to the environment,” said Denise Persson, Executive Vice President of Marketing, Genesys. “Virtual meetings that take place by phone and web conference really started as part of a movement to save costs both in dollars and environmental pollution, and reduced travel continues to be one of the biggest impacts we can make on our environment. But now, people have embraced virtual meetings as a way to manage work and personal life more on their own terms, mixing work and play in a way previous generations never imagined.

Virtual Meetings on the Rise

• 87% or respondents indicated that their company now uses phone or web conferencing when communicating to employees offsite.

• 60% of respondents said they’d rather participate in a phone or web conference while they were on vacation, rather then missing the meeting altogether and not having their opinions voiced.

Environmental Consciousness in the Workplace

• 56% of respondents believe that their company understands and has taken an initiative towards being more conscious of the environment in the workplace since last Earth Day.

• 62% of respondents indicated that their company has modified company policy to reduce business travel.

Video based conferencing can save your company and your clients an untold amount of time and money. The convenience of being able to meet with your employees regardless of their location saves travel expenses and travel time… time that can more effectively be used completing other tasks. Webinars allow you to touch more clients than you would ever be able to gather in a single meeting place at a single time. More clients = more business. Video conferencing has become an essential tool in today’s business place.

While everyone realizes the benefits of interactive web conferencing and webinars, not all presenters realize the importance of being able to fluidly control their presentation. How many times have you been in an on-line conference where slide transition and controls are out of sync and the presenter spends half of the time blaming the software? More often than not, the software is function correctly, and the presenter is trying to misdirect his lack of preparation.

You wouldn’t make an important presentation without reading over your notes and making sure you’re familiar with the A/V equipment. The same goes for an on-line presentation. Spend some time running through your entire presentation, and read through the Help and FAQ pages of how to operate and navigate the software. If you have any questions that you can’t find an answer to on-line, contact your video conferencing provider and they will work with you to make sure that you understand the software and answer any questions you may have. If they aren’t so helpful, you should consider finding a new video conferencing software provider.

In the ever-expanding universe of audio and web conferencing services, Twiddla, a free white board and audio conferencing tool is now in final beta and available for public use. Twiddla does not require sign-ups and users can instantly turn any website, photo, or graphic into a canvas for instant mark-up and discussion.

Winner of this year’s Technical Achievement award at the SXSW festival, Twiddla doesn’t have the features of more robust interactive web conferencing services, but its ease of use and quick setup make it a stand-out.

As soon as you launch Twiddla, you are presented with a blank whiteboard, which allows you to draw shapes, lines, and text boxes, or even upload media and load external websites to share with your meeting participants. The Twiddla user’s drawings are then overlaid on the media file/website. Another extremely useful feature of Twiddla is that you can start a voice chat using your computer’s on-board microphone enabling an instant audio web conference call.