Dimdim takes beta tag off conferencing service

Conferencing and collaboration startup Dimdim on Wednesday finally slipped the beta tag off its Web 2.0 service, unveiled new scalable synchronization features and released the source code.

Dimdim 4.5, which has been in beta for nearly two years, features a new co-browsing tool that lets users share a browser session. The feature is one off-shoot of Dimdim's new SynchroLive Communications Platform, which is also a new feature in the 4.5 version.

Dimdim is a browser-based Web 2.0 service that lets users share their desktop, show slides, chat and broadcast via Webcam. The service is free for up to 20 users. The Pro version is available for $99 per year for unlimited meetings.

With the new SynchroLive platform, Dimdim has added a clustering technology that provides scalability and lets a user synchronize many forms of collaboration into a multimedia presentation.

SynchroLive also supports the deployment of Dimdim on corporate networks so users can set up internal collaborative environments.

The platform is built on an service-oriented architecture so that Dimdim can be integrated with other services or platforms, such as Zimbra or Moodle. Dimdim will eventually let users create templates that provide different user interfaces to the service, such as one focused on video and chat only. Today much of that work is done via a set of APIs.

Dimdim uses SynchroLive as a development platform to deploy collaboration applications and will eventually make that feature available to other developers, according to Prakash Khot, co-founder and CTO of Dimdim.

Also new in 4.5 is the ability to record multiple streams of audio and support for large-screen video.

In conjunction with Dimdim 4.5, the company also released Liberty, the open source version of the platform. The company also made available the source code to Liberty under a GPL3 license. Liberty is also available as a VMware virtual appliance.