Palbee

Infobox_Company
company_name = PalBee.com
company_
company_type = Startup
foundation = March 2004
location = Seoul, South Korea
key_people = Albert Heekwan Kim, Founder and CEO
industry = Video Conferencing
num_employees = 11 (Aug 2008)
revenue = US$ 1.2 million (2007)
parent = Zenitum, Inc.
homepage = http://www.palbee.com

[http://www.palbee.com PalBee.com] is the service of an Internet startup company, Zenitum Inc. More accurately it is two closely-related services. The first is free, online video conferencing, and the second is the ability to record presentations and share them similar to the way YouTube videos are currently shared.

The service has been developed with Flash, which means it requires no downloads or installation for all internet-capable computer systems, it works as soon as the web site loads up in most browsers. It is accessible anywhere, at any time, with no hassles.

The PalBee application was originally developed as an internal continuing education tool for engineers at Zenitum Inc. The company was asking noted professors and engineers to give presentations and lectures, and developed a format for that to happen. Originally the company tried to use existing activeX-based video conferencing software, but everyone involved hated it. So the engineers put together a flash-based server themselves which would support powerpoint slides and video conferencing in early 2007.

The web site and public format was put together on the spur of the moment in July 2007, in about two weeks. It was thought that other companies would like to use the setup for internal company training as well.

Development History

The service is still in a beta stage of development, but so far has gone through five major milestones.

Free Video Conferencing

The first major feature was offered on July 11, 2007, one hour video conferencing sessions for free. [ [http://www.creativeblvd.com/first-come-first-serve-basis-free-video-conferencing-for-the-rest-of-us.html CreativeBLVD.com » First Come, First Serve Basis Free Video Conferencing for the Rest of Us ] ] The service allows up to 9 people to speak together in a video conference, and includes a white board area with drawing tools photo and PowerPoint slide show capability.

Presentation Recording

The second major feature in the development of PalBee, presentation recording, was announced on September 25, 2007. [ [http://www.prweb.com/releases/1969/12/prweb556012.htm Record your Webinars and Share Anywhere for Free ] ] This was a major change to the way PalBee was viewed by its users. Instead of just meeting with people and talking to them over the Internet, which many other companies and systems already do, PalBee also became the free platform for recording presentations, especially since it had the ability to read and use PowerPoint presentations.

=Mashup API=

On December 19, 2007, the third major revision of the PalBee service was announced. This was the ability to embed a PalBee video conferencing window similar to YouTube or other flash-based video programs. [ [http://www.atff.net/article.cfm/id/237502 Free Video Conferencing in the Comfort of Your Own Website - ATFF ] ] [ [http://www.conferencingnews.com/news/18317 Copy, Paste, and Video Conference! - PR-USA.net ] ] Potential users of PalBee were invited to take the resizable PalBee windows and embed them into their own web spaces.

One unintended consequence of this capability is that different windows embedded into different web sites which contained the same ID would connect together. This made it possible for users in both different physical locations and visiting different web pages to speak to each other with the same video conferencing session, which is almost too much versatility.

Personal Conference Windows

The fourth major addition to the PalBee service, announced January 9, 2008, was the ability for each PalBee user to have his or her own private conference window. [ [http://blog.express-press-release.com/2008/01/10/clonable-private-video-conferences-for-everyone/ Clonable Private Video Conferences for Everyone » EPR Network Blog ] ] Users can invite anyone to the conference window by two ways. The first is to copy and paste the URL and give it to other people. The second way is to embed a conference window into an HTML page and allow people to access that window. The same video conferencing session is accessible through multiple different embedded windows, so that users accessing different web pages can still speak to each other.

cheduling Interface

The fifth major addition to the PalBee service has been the scheduling interface, announced July 13, 2008. [ [http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/07/prweb1101664.htm PalBee Launches Brave New World of Video Conferencing] ] This allows Palbee users to schedule meetings for a later date and invite other PalBee users to the conference at that time. The scheduled meetings are listed on a user's private page. The invitations to other meetings are also listed on the user's private page. When a meeting starts, a button next to the schedule listing is activated so that users can join the meeting in progress.

Web Site Changes

Palbee.com has gone through a number of changes to the web site. The first version had very large, shiny buttons with a lot of flash objects embedded that linked directly to the conference interface. The second version of the web site was green and gray, and had quite a lot of tabs. The third, and most recent, change to the interface has a pale green and white tone, and looks much different from the previous two. Also, on the latest version of the web page there is an introductory video.

External links

* [http://www.Palbee.com/ PalBee website]

References