Today I have some spent some time testing WebHuddle, a passionately homegrown open-source web conferencing and live presentation system available right now online.

The brainchild of John McCaughey (of whom I publish a genuine audio recording as he first guides me to explore his baby - available at the end of this article), this is a humble, hype-less system with the foundations to provide a good basic solution to all those organizations and institutions yet unable to afford a full-fledged, commercial solution.

WebHuddle is a new, still in beta, cross-platform and fully open-source server-based web conferencing system integrating text chat, VoIP (one-to-many), PowerPoint presentation facility, live annotation and markup tools, application sharing, polling and recording in a secure environment.

Here the details:

Outside of a few idiosyncrasies and quirks WebHuddle is rather simple and uncomplicated. Some of the functionalities are accessible only from the web-based back office from which one can set-up a meeting, turn on or off various functionalities and upload PowerPoint presentations for later delivery.

The interface is poor and unrefined, and it would really benefit from a partnership with some talented information design team wanting to put its signature on a potentially pioneering and unique tool.

The presentation facility allows the host to upload any PowerPoint file which is then automatically converted by the system in either a JPG or GIF depending on the type of content detected (photographs convert automatically to JPG and text slides to GIF). Other file formats supported for upload and delivery via WebHuddle include Open Office Impress files, individual GIFs or JPEGs, and ZIP files containing images (again GIF or JPEG). There is no option or control to modify the quality of the compression, the graphic file format used, the final slide resolution (800x600) and the background displayed behind it for attendees with larger resolution monitors (for now it defaults to white). Obviously, as for any other service/tool converting PowerPoint presentations into individual GIFs or JPGs, all PowerPoint transitions and animations are not supported.

Application sharing is enabled through a resizable, floating frame that is utilized as a continuous capture window that broadcasts whatever content or application is placed within it. It still feels a bit rough, at least from an interface viewpoint, but it does work.

Any of the participants can be promoted to be the official presenter/moderator with just one click on a dedicated icon.

The live annotation tools are available at all times and offer as a default a useful yellow highlighter effect which I find very handy and useful. The default annotation tool also allows the presenter to draw straight lines or boxes over whichever element on the page needs to be highlighted. Other annotation tools are available including rectangle, ellipses and a (in my opinion useless) freehand mode.

Text chat offers the basic functionalities and in an upcoming release it will also provide auto-url functionality, optional date-time stamps and the opportunity to use an alias in place of your email address.

Security can be enabled by the technical administrator managing the WebHuddle installation and it supports the HTTPS security and encryption standard. This is the same protocol used for online banking and ecommerce. Technically speaking, HTTPS is HTTP on top of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). HTTPS virtually guarantees the identity of the server, and the privacy and integrity of data sent over the network. WebHuddle sends all data -- including voice -- through secure sockets, not just chat or some subset of the content types. A side benefit of using this protocol is that almost all firewalls allow it through. As an option, the meeting host can require the 128 bit strength HTTPS encryption for all participants. In other words, if this option is enabled, people with older browsers that only support 40 or 56 bit HTTPS encryption will not be able to enter the meeting.

One unique security feature is the ability to participate in a meeting without having to "trust" the applet as normally expected. Not granting trust prevents any participant from sharing her desktop or going "on air" with the microphone, while all other features remain fully available.

Any WebHuddle meeting can be fully recorded, and all text chat exchanges, PowerPoint slides and instances of a screen sharing session are fully recorded along with the optional voice channel of the presenter. The recorded sessions can be played back through WebHuddle or distributed and hosted on other servers for people to see without needing to login into a WebHuddle session. The recorded session can be saved in a format that integrates its own dedicated player making it sufficiently portable.

WebHuddle is a Java-based technology and it is fully cross-platform. Not all vendors' Java versions, however, are supported. All versions of Microsoft's Java released since Internet Explorer 5 and the current versions from Sun and IBM are supported.

WebHuddle runs on PCs, Macs, Unix and Linux boxes and on all major browsers. The WebHuddle client applet weighs in at only 75 to 175 kilobytes, depending on the platform and the features used.

At least a 233Mhz processor and 64 MB of RAM are recommended no matter what type of computer you use.

I personally invite you to download and test this encouraging first release and to provide generous feedback, comments, suggestions and ideas to the dedicated man behind this non-commercial project.

I think that however limited and modest compared to many of its more popular commercial competitors WebHuddle is a notable first cross-platform free, open source web conferencing and live presentation solution to hit the Internet in a long time. The benefits it could bring to grassroots, academic and non-profit groups seeking a very low-cost solution to their conferencing and online presentation could be certainly substantial if enough of you test and tell more people about it. With no marketing budget or sales staff t is only up to us, the users to make sure that the people behind such projects get enough work and word mouth promotion to keep contributing to the marketplace.

WebHuddle is available in English and Spanish.

To try WebHuddle, you can either download the binary from http://sourceforge.net/projects/webhuddle and install it on your own server (please note that for installing WebHuddle from the binary, the JBoss application server is a requirement (www.jboss.org), or you can visit www.webhuddle.com and sign up for it (free hosted service during Beta period) by expressedly requesting an account.

For more information go to:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/webhuddle or at www.webhuddle.com.

Here is also the recording of my online conversation with John (37 mins.), in which I explore, text and provide live feedback to him during my first visit to his conferencing tool.

It streams immediately to your computer with no need to download a separate audio file - just press the Play button, wait a few seconds and start listening...

N.B.: This is a recording of our spontaneous exchange during my first visit to WebHuddle. The recording quality is not perfect and Skype does play some of its familiar tricks on us from time to time, but I must say that you can distinctly understand all that we say.