I've been using Adobe Brio for a few weeks now. According to Adobe this is the definition of the service: "Brio is a web meeting service designed for small collaborative meetings for individual professionals and small businesses. With Brio, you can instantly communicate and collaborate through an easy-to-use, easy-to-access online personal meeting room.".
I find it very good! even it is only for 3 participants at a time for small business it is rare to have more persons in one conference.
Brio is the code name for the next generation of "Adobe Acrobat Connect", it is 100% usable in a Web Browser and no matter if you use a PC a Mac or a Linux computer. Brio works with Adobe Flash 9 (free download). You can Enter to a Brio conference room like a guest or like the host. Guests doesn't need to create an Adobe account.
Brio lets you share documents and make them available for download to all participants. That means that you could be uploading documents before the meeting starts in order to share important information for the guests. During the conference it is also possible to upload documents.
Within the Brio environment you will find many tools, they are called "pods". One of them that is very cool, even I didn't use it in any of the past meetings, is the "whiteboard". It lets you draw basic shapes, write texts and format the elements with different colors. When someone draws something the rest of the participants will see the drawings on their screens as well.
One of the most interesting characteristics of Brio is the possibility of sharing your computer screen. That is just great! works perfect and it is certainly the ideal tool for showing persons how to perform tasks with their computers, like a customer support tool. The great thing is that it works no matter wich OS you are working with. I could see my friend's screen (Windows Vista) while I was on a Mac.
"Shared notes" is one of the less cool "pods" but certainly is the most useful. Any participant can add notes and that is really helpful to have a resume of the meeting. Then you just need to copy the text and send it by email to the participants to not forget the agreements and conclusions.
Brio is integrated with a telephone conferencing system. It is free for the countries that are listed. In my case, Slovenia is not listed but that is not a problem because using Skype I could call to the free telephone number for United States and I had to pay nothing!
There are many more interesting things about Brio that you should check. You can use a web cam and use a chat room as well.
Don't forget that the documents, notes and drawings will be erased automatically after exiting the conference. At this moment you can't store the files or save the meeting configuration for later use. Remember that Brio is a free service in Beta version. But certainly covers my expectations.
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