We're very close to releasing Dimdim v4.0 which, among other things, will introduce Mac Desktop Sharing, or "screencasting" as we call it. And we want this new feature (along with recording, multiple presenters, and other goodies) to be the best it can be. If you are interested in helping us test this new Mac feature, please sign up for Dimdim then send an email to me with your Dimdim ID and we'll sign you right up. Thanks for helping us make Mac Dimdim the best it can be!
Now that the Dimdim Open Source Community Edition v3.5 "Eagle" has been posted to Sourceforge, we're hard at work on implementing new features. Make sure you get your vote counted on our New Features poll, so we can makes sure that our priorities are your priorities. Currently Mac/Linux screensharing is leading the pack, followed by recording and archiving of meetings. I'm proud to say that both features will arrive soon. Yesterday Prakash and Bharat showed me how far along things are with Mac screensharing - here is a 
snapshot of that session. (Click for a larger view)
One thing you'll notice in this screenshot is the new "Actual Size" and "Fit Screen" feature we just rolled out today. Many of you requested we make it possible to scale the presenter's screen so you don't need to scroll to see their entire desktop. More great work from our Dev team! Thanks guys!
Please keep those cards and letters coming and fill out our survey. With your help we will continue to ensure that Dimdim is the best web meeting solution on Earth. And if you want to help me thank our hard working Dev team, please simple tell your friends to try Dimdim and share it with everyone. Remember, that with Dimdim, now the world can meet freely.
One of the things that prides us here at Dimdim is being able to quickly respond to your needs. We read and react to all your emails and we encourage you to voice your opinions. Since our public launch a little more than 3 weeks ago, we heard that you really like Dimdim but that there were a few areas you wanted to see improved. One of those areas is our Open Source Community Edition. You didn't like the fact that the current version is not on par with our Dimdim Free hosted version, you hated the 5 person limit and only one meeting at a time, many wanted more than one video stream, some of you didn't like the server software installers and a few even complained about our documentation. Well, I'm proud to say that your voices have been heard! (and that we've been really busy...)
In the next week we will release a new version of the Dimdim Open Source Community Edition to SourceForge.net. (UPDATE: our new Open Source release is now available) That version is on par with the features of our hosted offerings, removes the 5 attendee limit, enables multiple simultaneous meetings and even adds a 2-way video chat feature. We have also packaged the Dimdim Servers into a single VMWare Virtual Appliance to ease the installation process. You'll also notice much improved documentation and a new admin console.
We hope you will spread the word to everyone that we're committed to the open source model and that our actions here speak louder than words. We're seeing some really innovative uses of our product and we really want to see more. We simply ask you to tell everyone that Dimdim is serious about democratizing the web meeting space and to come and try it. Remember, you don't need to download a thing* to test out Dimdim (just sign up by clicking that orange button on the upper right of this page) and your invitees don't need to join Dimdim to attend your meetings. (and we won't make any of them install a thing either.) And if you want, you can download and test our Open Source Community Edition on your own servers. Enjoy.
*Some of you have also said we've been a bit misleading about this "no download" thing. Please read this article to clear the air. We're sorry if we've caused any problems with our overly aggressive marketing. Blame the CMO.
Just back from LA and our launch event with TechCrunch. Prakash and I spoke about Dimdim to what seemed like every one of the 2000 people there and we had a great time in the process. Almost everyone who came to see us had already heard about Dimdim via the TechCrunch post earlier in the day. We demoed non-stop for 5 hours between Mac and Windows, using Safari, Firefox and IE (sometimes running multiple browsers and meetings simultaneously!) and it just worked. It was a testament to the hard work the entire development team has put in to making Dimdim easy, open and affordable.
We'd like to thank everyone we met and the entire TechCrunch team including Heather, Michael and Jeanne for the great event.
Here is Michael Arrington's quick interview of Prakash and me right before they started letting people into the Vanguard (about 5 hours before we lost our voices)
TrackBack: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/15/2100-people-party-in-la-with-popsugar-and-techcrunch/
Since we launched our private beta program in September, Dimdim has been used in 165 countries by over 350,000 people. And thanks to the feedback from our private beta testers we have upgraded our service to provide better screen sharing, dramatically enhanced our video and audio chat and introduced the MyDimdim meeting portal where you can host, schedule and search your meetings.
And today we opened our public beta to the rest of the world. Now anyone will be able to host their own Dimdim Web Meetings for free. We hope you will tell everyone you know that Dimdim - the easy, open, and affordable web meeting - is now available for free at Dimdim.com.
To thank you for helping us achieve this milestone, every private beta tester who signed up before March 23 will have their account upgraded to host meetings with up to 20 people, customize your meeting room with your own logo and more. This is just our way of thanking you for helping us make Dimdim even better.
We have many more exciting features coming, including recording and archiving, Mac and Linux screen sharing, and cool meeting widgets. So stay tuned and thank you again for supporting Dimdim.
Sincerely,
Steve
Okay, time to spill the beans. In less than 2 weeks we'll open up for Dimdim's first public beta!
To all our existing private beta testers, I just want to say thank you! And to all the new public beta testers who will surely arrive in droves I can only say welcome.
Welcome to the world's first free, open source web meeting.
Welcome to Simple. Open. Affordable.
There are some great people doing amazing things with Dimdim and I can't wait to see what you'll do when you get the chance.
Okay, back to getting ready for your arrival.
Steve
p.s. We have a very special surprise for all our private beta testers. Keep watching this blog for more.
Blog post by Saurav Mohapatra
The first version of Dimdim was (and the conference server part of the current version still is) a java web application running in Tomcat. We’ve slowly been moving towards more native components in our server stack on a case by case basis. Not to be drawn into Java vs. Other server tech debates, this move is a part of a growing consensus about leveraging the OS provided capabilities to the fullest to achieve high throughput, optimal performance while balancing that out with development cost / learning curve.
For our latest feature, the Screen share capability, we switched to a C++ based FastCGI application behind the NGINX webserver.
The move was done after a lot of thought and exploration. For the traffic pattern of something like desktop sharing, the current java technologies simply did not add up. A typical screenshare traffic pattern transmits around 1-2 mb of data for a 1280 X 1024 for per minute of share for something “heavy” like Powerpoint slide show or Full screen image viewing. Thus we switched to a robust native technology server. The app was written using FastCGI technology and first version ran behind the lighttpd server. As we continued testing, we found better performance especially for longer duration shares with the NGINX web server and thus that was chosen finally as the front server for the desktop screencasting application.
We built on top of the tried and trusted RFB protocol of VNC adding HTTP/S communication layer using libcurl for publishing the desktop stream.
The viewer was adapted from FVNC code base from OSFlash and we added tight encoding to it along with HTTP/S communication layer.
The point I’m trying to make here is that we built on top of existing robust components and application and were able to achieve significant progress in a shorter duration than if we’d have developed the whole thing from scratch.
Now this whole exercise kind of paraphrases and proves what I have always believed about open source. It is an organic philosophy, perhaps one of the best displays of the most positive sides of human nature. You build something based on stuff that someone has been built before and others after you will use the stuff you’ve developed to build their own.
It is a really wonderful philosophy and in this geek’s opinion perhaps one of the best ways to live life.
Blog post from Tuhin Sengupta:
So can customer satisfaction actually lead to job satisfaction? Let me tell you how this thought got planted in my head. My job at Dimdim is to talk to customers, inform them about our product and eventually sell it. Recently, I was reading stuff on job satisfaction. So at that moment I asked myself, “ Am I getting job satisfaction at Dimdim? Am I really happy working these long hours talking to customers ?” The first thought that came to my mind was not the compensation and benefits, not the working conditions, not the leadership which normally are the factors that would determine the concept of job satisfaction. What was it then? Was it the job itself? The challenges? So as I thought through more clearly I asked myself another question, “ what is it that brings a smile to my face when I am working at Dimdim? What is it that keeps me going ?” The answer was the innumerous times my customers said, “ thank you” or ”we love working with your guys” or “ I appreciate the quick turnaround” . It was actually these notes of appreciation which made me think aloud that customer satisfaction = job satisfaction.
Now some of you may not buy this point of mine, however, think real deep and you will see that whatever positive step is being taken by you in your job has an impact on somebody out there. If I can strike the right connection with my customers and they feel they can depend on me it simply gives me joy which cannot be measured . Nothing can make Dimdim more happy to know that their customer's crucial business deals depends on them. So let me share with you a particular line, from an email which our CEO had sent some time back, when a client of ours generously appreciated our product and services.
" Team,
Awesome!!!
Well done!!!
Pure music. Better than Beethoven's Moonlight Piano Sonata & Bhimsen Joshi's Ramkali.
I love these moments!!! I live for them. "
Reading the above, I can see the reality in the thought Customer Satisfaction = Job Satisfaction. Can you?
Tuhin
I've been trying to determine what category our product lives in. Is it web conferencing software? Is this more about virtual meeting rooms or web-based meetings? What do you think? The noun has changed a couple of times - look to the right of this page and you see a badge that says Dimdim: Web Conferencing. But look at other parts of our site and you'll see we refer to it as Dimdim: Web Meeting.
I just don't think any of those terms do justice. When you are having an IM chat with someone on AIM or using Skype to have an audio call do you think of the "place" you are both at as a meeting? When you share your screen to a classroom of students are you holding a conference? These are all forms of collaboration, but do you even think of the word "collaboration" while you are doing it? And since Dimdim can do all of the above (and a whole lot more) are we selling it short by not calling it something else. Is this a "Collaboration Suite" or a "Communication Toolbox" or something else?
What term should we use? I'm all ears.
I've been having a lot of fun hosting the Tuesday "Featured" meeting for the last few weeks. Today I guest-starred in Sundar's Thursday meeting with about 10 total participants. It's amazing to me how easily and fluidly people, from all across the world, can come together for 20 mins and actually feel like we're at the same place. At one point I was speaking through my iSight camera on my MacBook Pro here in Hollis, NH while Sundar was broadcasting his webcam and sharing his PowerPoint deck from Hyderbad, India using a PC. And our guests from Germany, France, Canada, Argentina and Australia where chatting and drawing - all in real-time. It really is amazing when you stop to think about it. (Sorry that just sounded like thinly veiled marketing for Dimdim...it's just that I'm really excited about it.)
You see, this is something that our parents could never have imagined. This is a new way to bring the world together, to communicate without borders, to meet freely. In the meantime, come meet me at next Tuesday's meeting simply by clicking on the date, entering your email address and hitting submit in the bottom left corner of dimdim.com. Hint, if you attend a meeting, you'll get an invitation to join the private beta and you too can start to experience the freedom of Dimdim web meetings. (<--ugh, more marketing...make me stop!)
