I tested Yugma some time ago. To be honest, I found it unwieldy, failure prone and felt like the experience overall was far from acceptable. I didn't write about it extensively because each attempt on Yugma's part to show that it worked felt like a "you just don't understand how great this is" chiding from them. Frankly, I wrote them off my radar and quit bothering. My partner Sheryl is far more tolerant and forgiving in evaluation solutions than I, but repeated emails saying they'd upgrade her account to the pro version just led to no action and more frustration. She tried to use it and was far less favorably impressed than I...and she's the forgiving one in our house.

I got this press release yesterday, and confess it took me buy surprise. I wouldn't have guessed Yugma at anywhere close to #3. I'm not sure exactly who's behind www.webconferencing-test.com, but I've got personal experience with every product they compared against listed in this release. And I note that Cisco's MeetingPlace isn't listed - big mistake (or conscious exclusion, perhaps). Including NetMeeting in the press release is like including DOS 5.0 in a discussion of why OSX is a superior operating system. NetMeeting is dead, and anyone still using it is so woefully behind the times we shouldn't include them in comparisons.

My experience with the range of competitors has been quite good. I use several of them regularly. I honestly haven't bothered with Yugma in months because my evaluation left me completely apathetic and unimpressed.

Based on what I read here, I'm going to take another look at Yugma and see what I think today. And I'll share my findings, good and bad, here. I'd also like to hear from you. What's your favorite and least-favorite web-conferencing solution, and why? Please leave comments.

YUGMA OUTPACES MICROSOFT, IBM, ADOBE IN INDEPENDENT WEB-CONFERENCING REVIEW

Yugma_on_white Minnesota-based company pricing at a fraction of the Top 5 Web-conferencing products

MINNEAPOLIS (AUG. 5, 2008) - Yugma, the leading Web-collaboration service that lets people connect instantly over the Internet to share content and ideas using any application or software, announced today that a vendor-independent review of 21 Web conferencing solutions rates Yugma Professional at No. 3 in the world, ahead of providers such as Microsoft, IBM, Adobe and NetMeeting.

On a scale of evaluated features ranging from 1 to 10, Yugma 3.0 Professional achieved a score of 9.0, barely behind the 9.1 received by WebEx MeetMeNow 2.1 and the 9.5 awarded to Citrix GoToMeeting 4.0, according to www.webconferencing-test.com reviews of online- collaboration products.

The evaluator, based in Frankfurt, Germany, found that only Yugma works seamlessly across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, and that Yugma 3.0 professional was priced almost 50 percent less per user per month when compared to the Citrix and WebEx products.

"We pride ourselves on Yugma's radical ease of use and reliability for users on any platform, so it's very satisfying to have an independent evaluation confirm our attributes versus such strong competitors," said CEO Vas Bhandarkar.

Skype-certified, Yugma revolutionizes real-time collaboration by enabling quick and instant sharing of ideas by letting users conduct virtual meetings or webinars and to share desktops spontaneously.

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About Yugma, Inc.
Yugma is a secure, easy-to-use Web-conferencing service that allows users to host or attend online meetings on Windows, Mac, Linux computers at a fraction of the cost of WebEx and GoToMeeting. Users can connect on-demand, real-time, securely, and reliably with co-workers, clients, friends and family -- locally or globally. Popular uses include spontaneous collaborations, presenting proposals and creative work, product demonstrations, conducting training, customer service, team reviews, remote support and troubleshooting, collaboration by artists, writers, and design professionals, study groups or tutoring sessions, and hosting virtual clubs or social events. Yugma is available in Personal and Professional service levels. Yugma also offers Enterprise solutions that provide Group Account Management features across large organizations. "Yugma" is a word from the Sanskrit language meaning "the state of being in unified collaboration." Yugma, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Minneapolis and has offices in Silicon Valley, Calif., and New Delhi, India.