Never ones to let a screen pass us by without slapping some Fuze on it, we’re excited to announce that when you go to pick up your Android Tablet from your local bodega, you won’t even have to wait 1 day to collaborate online!
Why’s that?
Because Fuze Meeting is available on all Android Tablets as of right now! (We also upgraded our phone app with the same capabilities.)
Scan this from your Android Device or search “Fuze Meeting” in the Android Market and you’ll be meeting online in no time!
For now the app is attendee only, but we’ll be updating it to a full presenter app within a couple of months (and of course, we’ll update you).
So, what can you do on your Android tablet?

• VoIP into meetings – Users can attend a meeting via their tablet even if they don’t have a phone nearby. VoIP is also added to the Android phone app, solving persistent CDMA voice and data streaming limitations.
• Content and desktop viewing – Only Fuze Meeting offers the ability to view a shared computer desktop real-time from an Android device. Attendees are also able to watch and listen to high-quality video and audio – start, stop and pause with the same level of functionality as meeting hosts have.
• Share content from the tablet – Once the meeting host designates an Android attendee as a presenter, users can share video or image files by uploading directly from their device.

So there you have it! Go ahead and print this post for justification when you want to expense your new Android Tablet.

Here’s a riddle for you – Let’s say you’re going to schedule a one hour meeting for ten people.  How many hours is that in total? If you said 10 hours then you are CORRECT!  When you think about it – the true cost of meetings are staggering.

No wonder 37 Signal’s founders Jason Fried and David Heinermeier Hannson in their latest book REWORK called most meetings “Toxic” (they wrote a whole chapter on it!).   And they may have a point – the majority of meetings fall well short of their objectives for a variety of reasons – Agendas are too vague, no clear purpose for the meeting, no one is in charge, and worst of all, meetings have a tendency to procreate. (Into another meeting, and so on, and so on..)

So what’s the solution?

Trumpets blow – (ta da ta da!!!)

1.       Send a typed agenda with the meeting invite. Agenda item #1, announce the meeting objective and clearly state the purpose for the meeting. (It also helps to set a time limit.)

2.       It’s your meeting, own it! Be sure all points of view are given a respectful hearing, but remember  it’s your job to make sure everyone stays on topic and to suggest a “why don’t you take this offline” when the moment presents itself.

3.       End on time. At this point hopefully your meeting was a wild success, but if your attendees know that your meetings end on time come rain or shine, they’ll be that much more ready for a no-nonsense meeting next time you meet.

4.       Send out minutes of the meeting (or a meeting recording via Fuze) within 24 hours.  This recording can serve as a record of what was discussed and can help you assign follow-up duties.

Follow these simple rules and you’ll be well on your way to hosting healthy meetings for you and your team.

Happy Fuzing!

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This blog post was brought to you by guest blogger Floyd! When not rocking out with his band (yes that is HIM rocking on the mic), you can find him dishing up the live demos for Fuze Meeting. Say hello!

Still loving that iPad app?

Let me answer your question with another question.

Is San Francisco an energetic sea of orange after the Giants’ victory last night!?!?!?!

YES and YES.

We’ve had some questions about scheduling a meeting from your iPad, so for you…we have a how-to video! Enjoy your latest web conferencing tutorial and let us know what else you’d like to see!

Waiting for webinar? Well, you won’t have to wait much longer! For those of you who thought 55 attendees just wasn’t cutting it, VoIP was the way to go, and application sharing was a MUST, then we’ve got some great news for you! Your web conferencing service just got a dose of fancy!

Our webinar product is in BETA, so if you just can’t wait for the launch, you can sign up to be a beta tester here!

And, if BETA’s not for you, we’ll be launching the complete and tested webinar on all pro accounts (yes…only on pro) in just a bit.

So, until then…BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA.

As promised in our post earlier this week where we showed the ‘serious’ answers to What is Fuze Box, we of course had quite a bit of footage that didn’t make it into the final reel, and we thought it was such a shame to let it go to waste.

So we present…the outtakes reel.

Sometimes, you just need it to be visual. Which, coincidentally is why web conferencing is such a fantastic idea in the first place! So, thank goodness that everyone’s favorite demo master, Larry B. turned out this handy little number on who can do what in a meeting!  Thanks, homie.

We did a more in depth presentation earlier if you’re just starved for more info on attendee controls. I mean, who isn’t…really?

“So Fuze Meeting is browser-based and I don’t have to download anything. So what?”

“I download things all the time. iTunes is a 70.8MB download. Yahoo IM is a 17MB download. I download apps to my iPhone like it’s a morphine drip. I download movies to my laptop almost every week and would be nowhere without HBO’s Entourage downloaded to my iPod Touch.”

So, why do we care that Fuze Meeting is browser-based and not a download?

Because we are last-minute kind of people that get ready for our online meetings 10 minutes before they start. And because online meeting software available today has conditioned us that online meetings are not intuitive and difficult. How many times has your 10am online meeting started at 10:17am because everyone participating is trying to figure how to get the software working. It’s a negotiation to get the software working leaving everyone frustrated before the meeting even starts and renders you worthless should you try to have an ad-hoc last minute meeting. The whole experience available today is the digital moral equivalent of trying to catch a cab during shift change in Manhattan. Please kill me!

Doesn’t browser-based make more sense now? I thought so. And, no, we don’t discriminate. Bring Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, whatever. Bring it. You will love doing online meetings with Fuze Meeting all inside of a browser. It’s so easy.

So, that’s the down-low on the download. You should check it out. It’s free. http://www.fuzemeeting.com.

Note:  This isn’t to say we will NEVER do a “pro” version for download.  We’re in love with Hulu’s Desktop Pro App — we just want to make it EASY for you — our users — to interact with our service!

Posted by Patrick on behalf of Brook West.