We’ve Been Pumping Iron
*Manly grunt* UUUUHHHH! Nine hundred ninety nine!
*Manly grunt* UUUUHHHH! YES! Woooo! Done!!
Oh yes. We’ve been at the gym, eyes on the prize and cranking out the reps. And what have we got to show for it? Well, only the most buff, robust version of Fuze Meeting that you’ve ever seen. With that, we give you:
Fuze Meeting 3.1
It has all the slick stuff you’re used to, but it’s also got 3 giant upgrades.
#1 Remote Desktop Control
Need to show someone how to use a program? In the past, you needed to ask them “can I drive?” to get the best view of how to navigate. Not anymore! Now you can show your software with Fuze’s lag-free screen sharing and remote desktop control. Not to mention – more comfortable. Just take control of someone else’s mouse and go for it.
#2 Laser Pointer
Once you turn on the laser pointer, your meeting attendees can see exactly where your mouse is. Just the other day, I was on an Fuze Meeting webinar, and someone was explaining precisely the different parts of a bell curve he was showing and…let’s just say I know one person who is going to be happy about the new laser feature!
#3 Keynote Support
Sing it loud and sing it proud – Keynoters, put that chin up, we have something for you! Once you export your Keynote presentation to Quicktime, you can load it into your meeting and watch it play like a video!
Did you just see the game-changing update you’ve been waiting for? Sign up for Fuze Meeting by calling our sales team at (866) 470-1901.
Fuze Meeting iPad Beta Testing
Submissions via Facebook
Do you parade around your iPad mocking those who have only tiny sad glowing screens in their cellular hands? Do you try to prove all the naysayers wrong by toting your iPad into work meetings to showcase the ‘not just for play’ functionality?
Then we want YOU to be a Beta tester for our Fuze Meeting app on the iPad.
The thing is…we only have 10 coveted spots available for Beta testing, so we’re going to make a bit of a game around it!
The Game: A Posting Frenzy
The Time: THE TIME IS NOW…THE TIME IS NOW
The Commitment: Is not teeny. It could take up to 30 minutes to install the app depending on your iPad proficiency. We ask for about 1.5 hours of testing (AKA attending/conducting meetings) over the course of a couple of weeks. And then, we’d like your feedback!
The Reward: Is gargantuan. You’re the first (and only) to get a sneak peek at the slickest thing to hit the market since roller blades. You’ll also get to keep the app on your iPad when Beta is over – enlisting the envy of all.
How to become an iPad Beta tester for Fuze Meeting:
- Get an iPad – You’ll need to have your own. It would also be fantastic if you had some knowledge things like…ad hoc app instillation and UDID.
- Like/Fan us on Facebook
- In a short post to our Facebook wall, explain why YOU’D be an ideal Beta tester
- And we are saving one (or more) spot for whoever can best convey this message in haiku form.
- If you are chosen, keep an eye on your Facebook inbox. Our Community Manager Kristen will send you a message letting you know the next steps. You’ll have 24 hours to respond before we move onto the next person on the list.
The contest is open NOW. So get to it! We’ll make our choices by the end of the week by alerting you over Facebook and we’ll take it from there!
What if I don’t get a Beta account?
Don’t worry, the real deal is on its way. We’re beefing it up and beefing it up and now …it’s looking a little more like late Summer/early Fall. But – she’s a-comin’!
See you in Beta,
The Fuze Meeting Team
Annotator to Presenter to Host
Icon Explanation and More
Check it out! Per your requests, we’ve decoded all those funny little icons, trying our best to make your meeting experience as easy as possible. Actually, we went one step further and created am entire tour of the Web Attendees Box. Check out our very thorough presentation. You are able to view it in full screen mode by clicking on the menu option in the bottom left.
Anything else you need help understanding? Let us know in the comments! We’d love to make sure we’re helping you as much as we can.
Oui Oui, Fuze Meeting!
Why the sudden international flair?
Well HERE’s why. Last week in a previous post, we whetted your appetite for ALL the features in our new release, and we’ll spend the next couple of weeks unpacking all the details for you.
We’re global, baby!
*ring ring* Hello Fuze, Is that you there with new dial in numbers in Mexico, UK, France, Brazil, Netherlands, Spain? Si, yes, oui, sim, ja and si again!
What this means:
Before this update, if you had a meeting in a country outside of the US, the audio conferencing portion of the meeting was still being routed through phone numbers in the US…so you would have to pay international phone rates even if you and all your attendees were scattered around Brazil (or…anywhere else). No More! Now…we have local numbers in-country, so having meetings all over the globe just got cheaper.
I will take my meeting online, s’il vous plaît!
And while we’re at it, we’ve also added some international flav-ah to the meeting experience. You can sign-up for Fuze Meeting through a French site and hold a meeting with a French interface. I’m guessing because this blog is in English, you may not be choosing French, but feel free to call Pierre and Chloé and let them know the good news!
Voulez-vous avoir une conférence en ligne avec moi? Ce soir?
Stay tuned for MORE languages coming our way. Next on deck: Spanish!
We’ve Launched New Features, and Oh Man, They are SLICK
I’m warning you now… Fuze Meeting doesn’t take any responsibility if you faint with excitement, but…it’s official…we’ve launched a clutch of new features, and MAN they are SLICK. Please hold while I show you a dangerously sexy screen shot of our new interface.
*waves smelling salts*
Do you FEEL THE LOVE? Because…heck, we love you. Why else would we have gone to all this trouble release all these fancy new bells and whistles.
“What, PRAY TELL, WHAT is going on with all these new features,” you pant in eager anticipation.
Well, in short:
- We’ve released 2 additional packages to add on to the basic service that carry some added functionality. You can check them out on our pricing page.
- Basic – what you’re used to
- Pro (Basic + recording and playback, up to 45 attendees and 10 GB of storage)
- Premium (Basic + recording and playback, unlimited storage and all the attendees we can muster up – 55 and climbing)
- We’ve released meeting recording and playback. (Check out that red dot in the top right corner). As in, record your meeting and save it for later. (Or just rewatch to hear the soothing sound of your own voice and behold the adroit swishing of your mouse cursor.)
- We’re international, baby. Call in from Mexico, United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Netherlands, and Spain. AND you can attend your meeting in French if you prefer.
- Life got a little easier for you – we updated our contacts features.
- Boom. Search your uploads and downloads.
(Read all about it in our Press Release)
We really packed a ton of cool stuff in the latest update , and we realize we just gave you tons to pour over, and we realize that you probably just fainted and may be completely out of it. We promise to unpack these one by one and provide training vids on the new features over the next few weeks. So…keep on checking back for news and updates!
Why Apple Stores Want Our App
(and)How To Get A Free T-Shirt
The Fuze Meeting team got quite a treat yesterday when a couple of us were wandering through the Apple store scopin’ the iPads on Market Street (we’re in SF) and WHAM, we saw that …
The Fuze Meeting mobile app is one of the default apps on all in-store iPhones!!!
For serious! I mean, yes, we were expecting it…but we didn’t know when they would hit stores and man-oh-man are we pleased!
So naturally, I cut my Fuze T-shirt into my best 80’s-off-the-shoulder get-up and popped out to take a picture with our little mobile collaboration buddy. Say cheese! *click*
“What,” you ask, “makes Fuze Meeting on the iPhone so amazing that Apple would actually ask us to feature it in stores?” Well – a few things actually.
- It’s super sexy. You know Apple cares quite as much about design as they do about functionality. Don’t worry, we’re functional too, but the sleek factor really gave us a leg up here.
- It’s intuitive to use. As in – you probably won’t find yourself using the Google machine to tap out ‘how to use Fuze Meeting iPhone.’
- It’s the only free app on the iPhone that is a client for OCS. OCS is the Microsoft Office Communicator program – like IM for the workplace, but you can’t get it on your phone for free, unless of course you use Fuze!
Calling all pseudo photographers who want free T-shirts!
I see right through you. You’re almost probably for sure definitely going to sneak into an Apple store in the near future to ogle over the iPad. While you’re waiting, swing around to the other table and take a picture of you (or…anyone) holding up an open Fuze Meeting app, send it in to community(at)fuzebox(dot)com, and maybe, JUST MAYBE you can have your very own hand cut 80’s Fuze Box T-shirt. I will personally break out the scissors and mail the sender of the email their very own sliced-up t-shirt if I deem the photo to be “totally awesome.” Awesomeness includes but is not limited to costumes, poses, puppies or Apple stores in fun locations!
Disclaimer: This is hardly a real contest and judging is completely based on my personal feelings of awesomeness. I may send 4 T’s, I may send 40…not knowing is part of the adventure! If I feel like I want to post the images on our Facebook or Tweetshare pages, then I will. So don’t send something you don’t want public. And good luck!
UPDATE: Known Issues on Fuze Meeting Beta
& Gmail Beta Nostalgia
Ah, sweet Beta. Who doesn’t love a good Beta round once in a while, eh? I remember when I was on gmail Beta. I thought I was pretty cool, but still kick myself for not picking a phenomenally cooler (and at that time available) gmail name like…all.that or chewbaca or…well, you get it. I have a cousin who immediately registered for best.grandpa or something. How’s that for unbelievable foresight?
All that said…
FUZE MEETING IS UP ON BETA.
If you’re a Beta user (you know who you are), big thanks and endless back slaps for helping us out here. But, well, as is the case with Beta, we’re still working out some of the kinks…so here are the KNOWN issues.
- Skype’s not ripe! Skype-In does not work on Beta. It’s fixed now!
- PowerPoint slides will show a watermark in the lower left of each slide. This only occurs in Beta and won’t occur when we’re totally up and running.
- Mac Pro and MacBook Pro Screen Share has delays of up to five seconds. We are actively working on a fix for this, but in the mean time…feel free to use those 5 seconds to login and follow me on Twitter (oh SNAP shameless Twitter plug!)
- What to give it a spin with more than 3 attendees? Shoot an email to community(at)fuzebox(dot)com and I’ll send you along to the appropriate parties.
- We’ve seen a few hiccups with tab synchronization when playing back meeting recordings. We’re working on it (obvi).
- New issue 3/26 - Starting a recording then fetching host will result in no audio recorded. Workaround: Don’t start recording until host is fetched.
So excited about the new changes that you CANNOT WAIT for the launch? Me too. You can still sign up for Beta by clicking here.
Got other names I-wish-I-had-thought-of in the early gmail days? Comment below and I promise some nice juicy content for next week.
Fuze Meeting Network Outage Update (3/12/10)
To all customers and partners of Fuze Box.
Today at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time, we experienced a network outage that impacted our Fuze Meeting, Fuze Messenger and Tweetshare services. This outage was related to a network failure in Nevada and had a material impact on our ability to serve our customers for nearly ninety minutes.
We took immediate and all necessary steps to remedy the problem so that our customers could get up and running as quickly as possible. These are the unfortunate circumstances that surround the internet and networking technologies, and today we were no exception.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this outage caused our customers. We at Fuze Box also rely on these services and we know how difficult it can be when unexpected outages occur, but as a customer you should be able to consistently expect and rely upon high availability services from Fuze Box and I want you to know that we take your business very seriously.
We have been working for months now on mirroring our services in a new data center in Virginia, which will give us full geographical redundancy, enabling us to balance the load of all services and traffic across two sites. This is important as we want to ensure that our customers would never experience a failure of services in which you have come to expect, and upon which you rely for your business collaboration. Through geographical redundancy, we are well architected to continue servicing our customers with speed and reliable uptime, and only extreme acts of nature or failures of the internet in general, are risks which we as well as any web services company, would remain vulnerable. In a matter of a week, we will have our new Virginia data center operational. Once this work has been completed, we will communicate with you on what you can expect in terms of improved service quality.
I speak for all of us here at Fuze Box in saying that we are committed to providing you with exceptional service and we are sincerely grateful for your trust in us and for your business.
Please feel free to email me directly at jcavins@fuzebox.com, if you would like to comment on today’s events or if you have any questions.
Thank you.
Jeff
Jeff Cavins
President & CEO
Fuze Box, Inc
Online Collaboration? – A Little Tweeting Helper for Sharing Files
Just when you thought Fuze Box couldn’t do anything else to help you out with your web conferencing, document sharing and online collaboration, we raise our fists and the Fuze Box team collectively shouts “Lo! Yet another collaboration tool!”
Oh yes, you heard me. We’re turning out new products quicker than you can utter “sign me up for 30 new licenses, please!”
New Product: Tweetshare
Logo: Black bird with enviously skinny thighs and a firm gaze through wee beady eyes.
Purpose: Share and discuss files at Twitter speed. You can also setup Twitter Fan Pages – just like Facebook Fan Pages, but better! And as you would expect (because it’s logical and you expect us to be logical) conversations will now be *drum roll* in order!
Tell me more!
Yes.
Of course it’s our sister site and of course we love it in that special familial way, but it is OF COURSE meant to make your life easier.
All you have to do get started IS:
- Visit Tweetshare.com
- Log in with your Twitter credentials
- Upload or embed videos, photos, presentations, docs and more to Twitter!
- Watch the Twitterverse comment and vote!
Wait there’s more!
Do you work for a brand, or are YOU the brand? (Probably yes to both.) Do you ever need feedback on your brand? (Obviously yes) Are you trying to leverage Social Media to promote yourself? (If not, get with the program) Oh. Well, then how about Fan Pages?
Fan Pages on Tweetshare are the answer to your “What the heck do I do with Twitter” musings. On Tweetshare, a Fan Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products easily with Twitter users. You can also showcase presentations, videos, product shots, whitepapers and webinars to a professional (or unprofessional) audience. Engage your community real-time with posts, polls and questions!
Go ahead. Give Tweetshare, a whirl. You’ll love it.
Your new best buddy on Skype: Fuze Meeting
It’s pretty simple… you can now Skype into a Fuze Meeting? Hate phones? Do you love talking to your computer screen? The team here has been working on providing even more ways for you to connect and collaborate. We are also working on integrated VoIP, which will be available in an upcoming release, so stay tuned.
Click here to view a pdf explaining how to Skype in to your next web conference.
Cheers,
The Fuze Meeting Team
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fuzemeeting: Doing your best to spare some air? Good job! Telecommuting also has it's headaches, though! http://fuze.me/9Sr #sparetheair
9/02/10 06:45PM
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