Fuze Meeting is a free online meeting service allows sharing of video in high definition (HD) for up to 15 people.  Adobe Connect allows considerably less participants in its free online meeting offering.  It also expands online meetings to smartphones such as the Apple iPhone, Blackberry and, soon, Windows Mobile devices.

For those familiar with Adobe Connect’s interface, using Fuze Meeting web interface will be a natural transition.  After you’ve created your free account, a simple straight-forward process, and logged into your account, you’re taken to the Meeting page which displays a dashboard type page.  There are other pages for maintaining contact information and viewing your account information.  On the Meeting page, there are tabs for viewing Upcoming Meetings, Past Meetings, and your Content Library which stores your pictures, videos and other files (such as documents, spread sheets and presentations) to be used in your meeting.

The Quickstart section allows you to start a new meeting right away or schedule a meeting.  Starting a new meeting takes you to a meeting page which displays your online (web) attendees, your call attendees, and a chat box for IM’ing attendees.  If someone attends your meeting that you don’t want in the meeting, you can simply remove them.  Audio attendees may be fetched, however this option is disabled for the free trial accounts.  Fetching an attendee means Fuze will call the phone number or contact you provide to have them attend the meeting.  Call attendees can be muted and unmuted singly or en masse.  The phone number of Call attendees is displayed for each attendee.  This allows you to determine if someone is attending the meeting that should not be and remove them from the meeting.  Call attendees hear music until the host dials into the conference.  The Quickstart tab on the new meeting page allows you to share your desktop (this option is “Coming Soon”), add content (files and whiteboard) to the meeting or send e-mail invitiations.  The Info menu pops up a box showing the meeting URL and dial in information.  To end the meeting, simply click the End Meeting menu.

The Contacts page allows you to organize the people you invite to meetings.  You can create and delete groups of contacts, create and delete contacts, see all contacts and search for specific contacts.  Contacts can be imported from various avenues including Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and Outlook Express.  Contacts can also be exported to a CSV (comma separated value) formatted file.

My Account allows you to view and modify information about your account including your subscription type, billing information (if you upgrade your account), contact information, password, e-mail invitiations options (awkwardly labeled as Email Notification Options even though it deals with invitation options), audio meeting options, IM options (Fuze can be used as a web IM client for popular IM services), and some optional applications (which are not required to use Fuze, but just enhance the experience for some users).

The iPhone app allows you create an account or login using your existing Fuze account.  Once logged in you can see your contacts (from the Contacts page mentioned above), chat with attendees, view meetings, start a new meeting, view/modify your info and change various settings (including server, IM, Contact List/Status options, and Notification options).

If you use Fuze Meeting, please drop us a comment about this service.

To get more information and sign up for your free account, visit https://www.fuzemeeting.com/ .

Captain’s Log Stardate: -313698.7183853373

Received a message from Starfleet Command today stating that the Oracle have gained control of the Sun system for $7.4B.  While our Science Officer has concluded that this is “logical, simply logical” and this does not seem to be a hostile takeover of the Sun system, one must question the intentions of the Oracle.

The Oracle’s fleet is already known for its database management system (DBMS) among other things.  The Sun system, a member of the Open Source federation, is known for Java, an planet which recently joined the Open Source federation.  However, the Sun system also is also home to Open Source planet MySQL.

Oracle, obviously, has a lot to gain by controlling the system where Java was born.   However, a more important question may be what will happen to MySQL?  MySQL is a DBMS used extensively to power web applications.  With Oracle at the helm, MySQL could be sent to the brig to wither away?  Perhaps it may be assimilated into the Oracle fold.  Resistance is futile.  Or is it?

With both Java and MySQL planets enjoying the freedoms granted by the Open Source federation, will the Oracle be able to control those planets?  They are much larger and stronger than the Oracle may be aware.  The Oracle may be able to coexist peacefully with the inhabitants of Java.   However, it is rumored that the Oracle have grown fearful of the MySQLians. The alliances that the MySQLians have forged throughout the Web universe is well known for light years in all directions.  Will the Oracle be able to coexist peacefully with the MySQLians?  Will the two civilizations cooperate and share technology towards the benefit of both races?  Is that even possible?  Are the MySQLians regretting their decision to settle in the Sun system?

Tune in over the next few weeks (or months) as the saga unfolds!

This is such a serious threat that Microsoft is offering a $250,000 bounty for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the author of the worm.  The worm first appeared in late 2008 and has grown more complex since then.  The worm is suspected to already have infected millions of PC users.  There may be no indications that a computer is infected until the worm is activated on April 1, 2009.  There is much speculation about what the worm will do.  None of it is good.  Anything ranging from wiping data from your PC to allowing unauthorized remote access and control of your PC to slowing down the internet by clogging it with useless traffic.  Nonetheless, it is not exactly clear what the program will do come April 1st.

Here are a few ideas you can take to help protect your Windows PC:

• If you are Windows user that has received automatic Windows updates in March, you are probably safe according to an article on CNN.  If you’re not sure if your Windows PC is up-to-date, you can go to http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm for a safety scan.
• Make sure your anti-virus software and virus definitions are up-to-date.

Please visit the following links for more information.

• Wikipedia article on the Conficker worm
• CNN.com article on the Conficker worm