The other day, long time gadget blogger, and VoIP fan, Jason Harris of Techcraver and I had a call using the new 8x8 Free Meetings app. At first blush it reminded me of many other WebRTC based video calling services. But the more I look under the hood, the more I am seeing how disruptive it could become, much like what Dialpad's UberConference did to disrupt conferencing in 2012.
The keys to it go beyond the "If it's free it's me. If I gotta pay it's no way" crowd attractiveness. First you can secure multiple dedicated conference bridge urls. One for your company, and another for yourself. If people need to dial into the bridge they are offered dial in numbers and pin codes, maybe the only downside i've seen so far.
The service offers participants screen sharing, chat and hand raising functionality. On my call with Jason the video was super crisp, audio was clear and there wasn't any choppiness. As a Chrome user, the experience was really good. When Jason switched to Firefox there was a bit of a lag and the video wasn't as sharp, so back to Chrome we went.
For a free service, it is a great find. And could be for video meetings a replacement for the many "free" audio only conferencing services. Give it a try....and let me know..
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