Fuze Meeting App

FuzeBox launched new iPad and Android apps for Fuze Meeting today, enabling multi-party HD video conferencing from virtually anywhere. With these new apps, Fuze Meeting makes a compelling business case as a cost-effective, cross-platform conferencing solution.

If you have turned on the news in the last...oh, six months or so, you might notice that travel can be perilous. You have blizzards grounding airplanes in the entire northeast United States, political unrest and rebellion throughout the Middle East and Africa, and earthquakes, tsunamis, and potential nuclear meltdowns in Japan. Even if none of those factors existed, travel is expensive and in most cases does not provide enough value to justify the cost.

On the other hand, online conferences are complex and glitch. I can't even count the number of times I have been a participant in an online whiteboard or video conferencing session where we were forced to spend the first half of the allotted meeting time just troubleshooting issues and trying to get connected so we could start the meeting. That effort was then rewarded with intolerable lag and glitchy performance that made us all wish we hadn't bothered. Scenarios like that are frustrating and counter-productive.

To be fair, video conferencing technologies in general have improved over time, and the more ubiquitous availability of high-speed broadband connections also makes the prospect of video conferencing more attainable. But, I still generally find that I have to join a meeting five or ten minutes ahead of time to make sure I have the right client software installed and that I am prepared to join the meeting without holding things up.

So, imagine my surprise when I turned on the iPad 2 ten minutes ahead of my scheduled Fuze Meeting demo with the FuzeBox team and found that I was connected in a matter of seconds without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. FuzeBox product manager Greg Saiz had apparently encountered similar skepticism from previous demos, so he was already online waiting for me.