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Conferencing systems are evolving at a furious rate. No longer do you need to choose from either an operator-assisted phone conference or a cumbersome video conference that requires a roomful of special equipment.

Now, solutions that incorporate audio, video, and file-sharing are coming directly to your desktop. Happily, they're easy enough for anyone to use. Last week we looked at Viack's VIA3, and now we're discovering the new features in Genesys Meeting Center 3.0.

Genesys ought to know something about conferencing solutions. After all, this 20-year-old company sells nothing but conferencing services. It's had some success with it, too, as it has more than 1,000 employees in offices in 21 countries, and it works with 200 of the Global 500 firms.

While Genesys offers large-scale event conferencing and high-end videoconferencing, it's the Genesys Meeting Center that's making an impact in offices around the world. That's because it makes starting a videoconference as easy as starting an instant message chat, and it doesn't skimp on collaboration features.

Version 3.0 installs a new system tray icon you can use to quickly initiate a conference. If conferencing is easy to do, it stands to reason, you and your staff will do it more and will share ideas more often.

Launch the tray application and tell it who the other participants should be. Meeting Center will send them a notification of the conference; they click it to enter the Web portion of the conference and call the included phone number for the audio. If the moderator and participants are all using desktop video cameras, you'll all be able to see each other. Users can see two video streams at once and can select which one they'd like to see. The moderator has full control over all the audio and video in the meeting.

Media Center works on Windows systems using Internet Explorer. In addition to video, it also includes application-sharing (letting users work collaboratively on a document one at a time), a whiteboard, integration with Microsoft Outlook and MSN Messenger, and the ability to create Web tours (where the moderator opens a new IE window so that all the participants can view Web pages at the same time). The moderator can also create quizzes, polls, and surveys for the participants, and all the data or video from a meeting can be recorded and archived.

If you want to set up a quick and simple meeting, you'll like the new Xpress option, which offers a simplified interface mainly for application sharing. Other big improvements with version 3.0 include SSL security and the ability to schedule recurring meetings.

Pricing for the Meeting Center is on a per-minute basis, so you only pay for what you use. Genesys previously offered blanket usage plans, but customers were unhappy they often didn't use all the time they had purchased. So now users pay $.32 per minute per connection. Volume discounts are readily available for larger companies. Contact a representative for more information.

In the upcoming months, users will see several improvements that are now being developed, including online billing, support for more IM clients, support for mobile devices, and Lotus Notes integration.

The Genesys Meeting Center lets you easily share applications and slide shows with other participants, and includes an IM client and full audio and video controls for the moderator.