Last week I was given access to GotoMeeting Version 4.0 which will be released next week.  I have been using GotoMeeting for 3 years as part of their sponsorship of my podcast so would consider myself an expert user.  I was blown away by what they have brought to the table with Version 4.

Since I have been using the application I have really wanted two additional features  The first was native Mac Support and internal VOIP support to eliminate the need to use a third part phone service for conference calls during online meetings.

Well the folks at Citrix have hit a homerun. In GotoMeeting Version 4 the application has a native Mac edition. It is not some cheesy adaptation it looks and feels like a Mac program. The feature sets between PC and Mac are exactly the same which now allows Mac users to lead meetings and no longer just observe.

The second major feature introduced into the new version is native VOIP support. During the briefing I simply put on my headset choose VOIP for the connection and was able to participate in the meeting and chat about the new features as if I was on a land line.

Since that time I have tested the VOIP feature with 26 people in the online meeting. The reception was clear and the ability to mute noisy participants was very easy. The interface has been cleaned up and while the core tools remain the whole online meeting pipeline from start to finish with the VOIP support makes the user experience much more rewarding.

GotoMeeting Version 4 is an explosive leap forward. With raising gas prices and the economy slowing the need to save money the application continues to be well poised for business owners to save huge amounts of money on travel each month by no longer needing to leave ones desk.

While GotoMeeting is a sponsor here let me be clear this is a product I use daily.  I completely endorse GotoMeeting and am quite passionate about the product. When a product simply works each and every time I use it there is nothing more one can really say.

The new version is not available till next week but you can get a free trial at www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts and it will update automatically when the new version is released.

Disclaimer: GotoMeeting is a Sponsor of Geek News Central Podcast while no promise of a favorable review has been promised. I am a big fan of the product.

Today we had our 18th Live Event over at TechPodcasts.com, and over the past several months we have been experimenting with different audio services. Last year we started out with everyone dialing into a phone bridge, that graduated to a Phone Bridge coupled to a Skypecast. Everyone migrated to the Skypecast, but the problem we had was the line noise. Speaker Feedback, people not muting there mics etc it was not the perfect solution. But today we had a TalkShoe Session coupled together with a Skypecast for Audio and of course using GotoMeeting for the Interactive portion of the event.

I muted the Skypecast listeners, and for the most part allowed all of the TalkShoe participants to chat online and left their lines open. This worked out amazingly well. We had a large number of people connect via the stream. My initial estimates is that we had our largest live audience ever.

The comments I am getting in my e-mail tonight is totally awesome, because those on Talkshoe could chat and also watch the presentation while the presenters where covering their topics. During the next Tech Podcast Round table we have I am going to record the Live event as we normally do, but also screen record the talkshoe client, because the back channel stuff was AWESOME, unless you were there at the event seeing both elements as it went down you will not understand the total coolness factor of this.

I just need to figure out how to do a two pane flash presentation to get the GotoMeeting Live Content, and the back channel on the same final video. The Audio and Video we will release over the next 24 hours will not be able to replicate the experience people had today but I am pretty pumped up about the way the presentation went down. For those running two screens on their PC’s it was even better. [TalkShoe] [GotoMeeting]