Dimdim demo and evaluation

Thanks for putting this together, Gus. I like that there's no desktop software to install (unlike Adobe Connect, which has a download for people who want to share their screen).

I wasn't impressed with chrishughes1's difficulties answering my questions but that doesn't necessarily reflect on DimDim's product.

Does anyone know how the DimDim-Moodle integration works?

Hello All,

We have now been using dimdim for our classes here at Polytechnic Insititute of NYU, Brooklyn, U.S.A. for a semester now and I wanted to share my experience with you all. Dimdim does offer all the advantages stated above with the best one being there is no need to install anything and that it is browser based. We have been using dimdim in about the most testing scenario tha you can imagine.

Our Organizational Behavior class meets in a classroom and the professor has an assistant pull up relevant material on the screen for all the class to see. At the same time, we transmit it all to our remote students via dimdim. We use lapel mic for the professor, an omnidirectional mic for the classroom and route the audio through a mixer to dimdim. We also have a webcam on looking at the classroom. Our sessions go on for anywhere between 2:00 to 2:45 hours.

Dimdim integration:
When a dimdim room is created, a URL specific to that room is available, we have 'integrated' dimdim into our course pages by placing a link with this URL. The participant can follow the the link and join the room as long as a session is on.

Some issues:
1) Audio from participants: Dimdim allows only 3 participants at a time to speak back, this makes it difficult for the moderator to shuffle the mics between the participants.
2) There is no audio cue for 'hand raised'. "Hands raised" is a typical feature where the participants notify the moderator by some blinking icon to communicate the desire to participate.
3) The audio talk back has considerable lag. That being said Dimdim provides exceptional audio quality!

As you will see these issues should not really matter much to someone who is not using it in conditions like ours. On the whole we have been very very happy with dimdim and realise that we are streching dimdim but still getting good results.

I would be happy to answer any questions or help set up dimdim sessions.

Why not use dimdim just for presentation, video etc. and user an extern sound tool. Another positive expect is that it will be easier to record a extra application (like teamspeak)

There are even some opensource projects(for example Mumble) which provides a much better sound quality and a ACL System, so only the presentator can speak in a "presentation" channel.

Hi,

I found your posts while searching for DimDim and Drupal.

My organization created a Drupal Widget that integrates with DimDim. We call it the "Drupal Rec Room". DimDim is launched with a push of a button. No sign in or account creation is necessary. The widget also includes Drupal Blogs, News, and Events.

Please try it out and tell me what you think. I plan to submit it to Drupal.org. I hope it makes the front page!

Ray

ECMINSTITUTE.org
ECMHUB.com

Here is the link:
http://ecminstitute.appspot.com/html/widget/drupalrecroom.html

Dimdim just launched a new version with some additional features -
http://www.dimdim.com/products/dimdim_new.html

Once Josh gets our Dojo pro version set up, possibly we can arrange another personalized demo in which we can provide more feedback and go over some of the issues we're having. In the meantime, keep the feedback and feature requests coming.

Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions

Also, I haven't yet found the 'main chat' screen shown in their demo.

Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (book, in October!)
AaronWinborn.com (blog)
Advomatic (work)

At Vordude's request I'll post my experience. I tried to join the web conference twice and both times had my browser crash. The first time I connected my browser crashed within the first minute. The second attempt went a big longer (3-4 minutes), but as soon as I opened new tabs and started working in them it crashed again. I'm not sure the crashing had anything to do with me working in the other tabs, but I thought it warranted a mention.

My browser information follows:
Firefox 3.0.5

I also have the following add-ons installed:
DrupalForFirebug 0.0.4
Firebug 1.2.1
FireGestures 1.1.3
Live HTTP Headers 0.14
Selenium IDE 1.0b2
User Agent Switcher 0.6.11
Web Developer 1.1.6
YSlow 0.9.5b2
Zend Studio Toolbar 2.1

Did anyone else have a similar experience?

Had some strange issues on January 13th. Could only hear 1 presenter, and nothing from the other. Watching the chat, I was not the only one with this issue. Are there differen't "types" of users? it seems some were okay, while others were not.

I saw two "boxes" for the people who were I guess sharing their screen, but I saw no video in either box. There were audio settings for "arthur" and "drupaldojo" (and they were at resonable levels) (and not muted) (I did see a camera through the "desktop sharing" only)

I did find an audio settings slider for gusaus (in the upper left corner) where all participants are listed.

I clicked on All Participants, to see if there were audio settings that were hidden from the main window, and that new "window" popped up in front of the screen sharing that was going on, and dimdim was having problems, determining what wanted to be "in focus" It really caused the ui to fall apart. (until I closed that new "window")

I clicked on "Full Screen" accidentally, (in the upper right corner) and my browser crashed.

The desktop sharing worked fine. (as far as I could tell)

Based on only this experience, I'm not convinced DimDim is all that great.
It is an answer, but so far I've seen issues are very similiar to the problems the dojo is used to.

I'm hopeful for change. And I've seen it work in the past better than this. Maybe multiple presenters was a bad Idea... I don't know.

(Max OSX 10.4 Firefox 3, Flash 9 (I think--when my browser crashed, I updated it to the latest, came back, and the session had finished...) )

Just got done with DimDim session and the audio issues were pretty annoying.

The audio from the presenter would intermittently stop. This is a problem with the DimDim software it would seems since others in the chat could still hear the audio and the video was still playing perfectly. Others were experiencing the exact same issue each at different intervals.

We need to get this fixed before DimDim can be used to lessons with 20-30 people at a time or we will spend more time troubleshooting DimDim than learning the actual lesson.

When I use Skype, it works instantly, I can share the screen or my video, and response time is instantaneous.

When I used Dim Dim today, there were huge lags, and it was also confusing to schedule the meeting and then have to log on to the site as drupaldojo to start it....I would have thought the purpose of scheduling would mean that I could use the email I got to then initiate the meeting.

That's how GotoMeeting.com does it.

But basically, the lag time between my screen actions and what the two other participants saw made DimDim unusable today.

-Bram

There were three of us in the Webmeeting 12/2/09 about DimDim module (http://groups.drupal.org/node/17096#comment-109016) that matt.robinson1 setup for yesterday. The experience using DimDim was mixed, at least from my perspective.

I missed the first part of the meeting perhaps Chris or Matt can fill in what I skipped over.

We had participants in Australia, Seattle and New York and there were significant time delays in the VoIP audio. Text chat worked well, Screen sharing seemed to be working although we didn't test it extensively. Video didn't seem to be functional. I did try to call in and was presented with hold music, not understanding that the VoIP and dial-up calls were different. As usual the biggest problem was one of user prompts and users (me) who think the understand the GUI but skipped over any orientation that might have been available.

Generally the DimDim integration module that univate / Chris Hood has been working on worked well for me. (http://drupal.org/project/dimdim) It was an easy install and config. Easy to create a conference by adding content in drupal and open and attend the conference.

There are several known limitations with the current module. For example only one conference can be setup at one time and for those of us interested in integrating it with a setup such as the Kata or Dojo, there would need to be more work done to integrate the events into group permissions and atrium calendar.

I gather from our webmeet that Chris may do some more with the module but was really wasn't very happy with DimDim and was more interested in building a better API that would work with multiple conference providers. Is that right Chris?

If anyone is working on integrating a web conferencing API specifically within Atrium groups, Dojo or Kata, I'd be interested.

I manage an Adobe Connect server at Yukon College and would consider donating its use for testing purposes. How many people would be using it? One limiting factor - I live in Yukon, Canada. We're at the end of the pipe and could not support lots of users. But you could certainly take a look and see if it's worth following up. (Our license is for a maximum of 200 concurrent users - but I think our bandwidth would probably limit us to about 20 to 30.)

Grant

While you are able to personalize some elements of Dimdim, you can't remove the big splash screen in the videos. Being able to customize would be a huge +1.

Also made note in their forums -
http://help.dimdim.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6791#post6791

Hi,

I am trying to integrate dimdim with drupal.

Please let me know if anyone can provide me the link for the latest DimDim-drupal integration pack.

Thanks,

Raj.