Collaborating Up There, in the Cloud

In April 09, IBM launched LotusLive Engage. Popularly known by the code name
Blue House, it is a cloud-based web meeting and online collaboration services
suite. Being a cloud-based solution, users can conduct/attend web meetings from
anywhere in the world. Under the Web Meeting option, it allows sharing of
applications as well as the desktop of presenter and participants. Web Meeting
also supports instant messaging, real time creation of polls as well as surveys.
For collaboration, LotusLive Engage has a feature called Activities, where you
can plan your projects, store and share files, presentations, code, etc. Here
you can also determine your To do tasks, assign tasks to a particular member,
set priorities, etc. LotusLive also allows users to share files amongst them.
You can upload images, presentations or audio files. All the shared files, IM
messages and shared content have end-to-end encryption.

Getting started

You require IE 7 or Firefox 3 and above, JVM and Adobe Flash player. Once
inside Lotus Live, the first thing you need to do is create an Activity. To do
this, click on 'Start an Activity.' A floating window will appear. Here give a
name to this activity and define a goal for it. To share this activity with
other members, choose contacts from member options. An email with a link to this
activity will be sent to all members. Finally, click on Save to start the
activity. You can add new entries, to do items, files, etc and share them with
other members.

Web meetings

Hosting a meeting is simple. Just click on 'host a meeting' option in the
main dashboard. This would launch LotusLive meetings in a new window.

From here you can invite new participants through emails. To start sharing an
application or the entire desktop itself,click on Share, present at the top of
the menu bar.

In LotusLive Web Meeting, you can share applications as well as desktops of both the presenter as well as participants.

The software would ask you to choose applications you want to share; you can
even share your entire desktop. You can also share more than one application at
the same time. Similarly, you can also create and conduct surveys as well as
polls during a meeting.