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A few years ago, the videoconference was seen as a luxury available for the big companies. Today, thanks to the Web applications and to the expanding broadband services, the videoconference has become available for small and medium businesses too. There are many free or low cost Web applications that can be used for videoconferincing. The advantages are enormous: real-time projects, multimedia sharing, trainings, sales presentations or distance learning. Here I will present you three videoconferencing Web applications.

I will start with Yugma, a free application that offers one-to-one videoconferencing or many-to-many. It is very reliable and it includes desktop sharing, a feature that allows participants to view each others desktop. Yugma has a Skype Edition, in fact a plug-in for the popular Skype voice chatting software. It works fine with Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems and is very easy to use. The Yugma Skype Edition is limited to two-way conferencing.

Another videoconferencing application would be ooVoo. In comparison with Yugma Skype Edition, ooVoo supports six-way conferencing. It offers a very good video quality over a broadband connection. ooVoo requires installing a desktop client and it is totally free for now. In the future, it could become a paid service. The conference participants can record video messages and send them to the others. In addition the application provides whiteboarding, scheduling, desktop sharing and presentation capabilities.

The third application is SightSpeed Business, which provides four-way videoconferencing. To use it, there must be installed the SightSpeed client. Its users can share files, record calls or adjusting video controls. This service costs $20/month per user.

Have you ever considered to use a videoconferencing service?