history labs technology

Hey guys:

once we get the history labs up and running, we will need a better platform than Skype--especially, one that will allow us to integrate audio with text and text management.  essentially, we will want to be able to hear one another (visuals of our ugly mugs is perhaps less important), but see at least a Chinese text, and perhaps even a translation we are working on.

we could probably improvise something, but given that we have money, it might make more sense to actually buy/rent a service.

gotomeeting is one such service I had heard of.  here's the review of it, which is positive but not glowing.  similar products with better reviews are listed in the upper right hand corner of the review.

http://web-conferencing-services.toptenreviews.com/gotomeeting-review.html

click on its demonstration, which will give you an (overly rosy) view of what these things do.

among other things, these services allow us to record the session, which would be very useful for group members who could not attend, or for our own propaganda (we could youtube the sessions).

we'll have to test out various things.