Work ‘Live’ With Online Colleagues Using Liveminutes

Online or remote meetings can be a huge pain to manage and most apps and services tailored to project management don’t have features tailored to online group meetings. Want to keep everyone on the same page? Check out Liveminutes.

Everyone has their favorite tool to work on, so from the get-go Liveminutes gives you a standardized workspace to keep everyone on the same page. Whether you want to go into conference mode, or just work on a document or on a sketch together, Liveminutes have it all. Let’s take a look.

Getting Started

You have two options, sign up using Facebook or the traditional registration form using your email, password and your full name. Once signed up it will instantly direct you to an example workspace and meeting, which will then walk you through a step-by-step tour.

Workspaces

The interface and design of Liveminutes is well designed and organized. You will be greeted with a three-section interface with the workspace in the middle, a list of recent activities on the right and chat sidebar on the left. Until you add team members the chat sidebar will give you an invitation to extend to friends and colleagues via email.

You can create several workspaces depending on the pricing plan you are on. The free plan gives you 2 free workspaces to start off.

At the top of your workspace there are some handy tools you can use to manage your media:

  • New Note: which opens a fully featured word document editor or upload a readymade note from Evernote
  • Upload File: allows you to upload files from your computer
  • New Sketch: allows you to simply sketch your ideas or examples with your team or clients (Note: not yet launched at the time of this writing)

You can work on the same document with fellow team mates. The editor also shows a log and graphically shows the edits (changes, additions) from each of the different users that have worked on the same document – what they have changed or added.

The app has support for Evernote syncing so you don’t have to start from scratch if you have a readymade document.

Communication

Besides conference calling, you and your team or users can easily and quickly chat back in forth using an instant messaging system placed conveniently on the left side of your workspace. Alternatively you can set up meetings with the team.

 

One of my favorite features that Liveminutes offers is the unique, easy to use, conference calling tool. To start or join a conference call with your team, users or clients, simply click the start audio button on the left menu and you will be presented by a conference calling popup.

Within the conference calling popup you have the option to have the Liveminutes app call a phone number, dial the Liveminutes phone number provided, join the call with Skype or simply join within the Chrome web browser.

Plans and Pricing

Liveminutes has some great affordable plans for users who want to move from the free plan (which starts you off on 2 workspaces) to premium options with their accounts. Registrations with .edu addresses get 10 free workspaces.

Advantages

  • Organized and well designed user interface.
  • Conference calling which supports physical phones, Skype, in-browser calling and dial-in calling via a phone.
  • Organized and Feature filled workspaces.
  • Connect your account with Facebook or Evernote. More account connections will be available soon i.e. Google Drive or Dropbox.
  • Account activity to show all recent messages, posts, notes, files and more.
  • Notifications for new updates to workspaces.

Disadvantages

  • Currently, no official video calls through the browser. Unless you get a Skype plugin or use your desktop applications.
  • No individual profiles users or team members.
  • No customizable notifications.

Conclusion

Liveminutes is a great app, very organized and beautifully designed. It is so hard to find a good meetings webapp that is versatile, neat, feature packed and most importantly, affordable. So far the site says that it is free until October 1, 2013, so give it a test run, while the offer is still up.


    

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