SightSpeed Business Unveils 9-Way Video Conferencing

June 23, 2008; 08:50 AM

SightSpeed Inc., the leading provider of Internet video communications, today announced a significant breakthrough in business video conferencing - simultaneous nine (9)-way video conferencing and text chat. No other business video conferencing service gives small and medium businesses this kind of significantly extended utility within a high-quality,www.sightspeed.com - Comunicano, Inc. Sue Huss, 619-379-4396 sue.huss@comunicano.com fully portable and cost-effective solution at $19.95 per month.

The upgrade in functionality to nine-way video conferencing highlights the next edition of SightSpeed Business, a full-featured, affordable suite of collaboration and productivity tools for use anywhere in the world - even portably - that was introduced with high acclaim in the last quarter of 2007. Additional updates to SightSpeed Business include new audio codecs, which mean enhanced wideband audio for conferences, array mics and improved performance for Windows Vista users.

While other providers of business-grade, multi-party video conferencing require dedicated, high-capacity bandwidth - often T1 and above - or a co-located server to make their systems work, SightSpeed Business requires nothing more than consumer broadband. SightSpeed Business users, with or without built-in or plug-in Webcams and microphones on their laptops or desktops, can participate in nine-way conferences.

"Simultaneous nine-way video conferencing is an exciting development for us and for the industry," said Eric Quanstrom, SightSpeed vice president of Marketing. "It's something our early users asked for and we listened. With this greater number of simultaneous participants we're also further differentiating SightSpeed Business from other providers that are still trying to catch up to our quality, our ease of use and our features.

"SightSpeed Business is both high-quality and simply functional over the public Internet at whatever broadband speeds users have at their disposal, whether they're working from homes or remote offices or traveling," said Quanstrom. "For the company looking to stay face-to-face, with employees, clients or contractors - wherever they are - there really is no better solution."

SightSpeed Business is priced at $19.95 per user per month, with savings incentives based on full-year and multi-party licenses. Like all SightSpeed services, the business capabilities are fully cross-platform, meaning SightSpeed Business users can communicate across Windows or Mac platforms via the global SightSpeed network.

"The price and ease of use of SightSpeed's new nine-way capability will enable users - especially small businesses - to hold larger multi-location calls, at no increase in their costs or complexity," said Elliot Gold, President of TeleSpan Publishing Corporation. "For instance, this breakthrough addresses the very real need of the road warrior market, made up of people who can't afford to miss large group videoconferences."

The new nine-way capabilities enrich the value of several standard features of SightSpeed Business, including:

-- Video-on-Top - Any SightSpeed conference allows participants the ability to put the video screen on top of or adjacent to other files, thus multitasking and using screen real estate effectively.

-- The Administrative Console, which provides the ability to add, change and manage users centrally.

-- Recording video/audio of conferences - For file-keeping, subsequent sharing with non-participants or webinars, conference proceedings may be recorded with one click. Conferences can be recorded in multiple formats for easy sharing--a far superior option to renting a costly conferencing bridge.

-- File sharing - Users can share and discuss any document or file, seeing it and all participants at the same time.

-- Multi-party text chat - During nine-way conference calls, all participants have a continuous chat channel for asking questions, embellishing points or multi-tasking.

Other features of SightSpeed Business include:

-- Unlimited video calling and text chat

-- Video e-mail - Users may record video messages up to five minutes long and send them to any e-mail inbox; works with all major e-mail software, plus unlimited storage of video e-mail.

-- Custom Click-to-Call links - Users may embed click-to-call buttons on their Web pages or e-mail signatures to give other SightSpeed users the ability to start video, voice or chat sessions instantly.

-- Unlimited PC-to-PC voice calling for free

-- Voice calling to phone numbers worldwide at prices typically lower than standard long-distance. For example, average rates within the United States are 2 cents per minute.

-- New users get 500 free calling minutes in the U.S. or Canada.

-- Detailed call history

-- Multi-user licensing

-- One-click invitations to clients or colleagues to join conference calls

For more information on SightSpeed Business, visit www.sightspeed.com.

About SightSpeed, Inc.

SightSpeed Inc. is the award-winning provider of Internet video communications for both the consumer and business user, offering the broadest portfolio of industry-leading Internet video communications services. These include, SightSpeed Free, SightSpeed PLUS and SightSpeed Light (for social networks), the most widely praised consumer-focused video chat services, which turn a PC or Mac into an easy-to-use video phone to communicate with friends and family around the world. In addition, SightSpeed Business is the world's first high-quality, cost-effective and hardware-free videoconferencing service for all businesses, including SMBs.

SightSpeed's services are SIP-based and standards-compliant. The company's revolutionary human perception-based technology is patented and based on more than ten years of R&D originating at Cornell University. Among the many awards SightSpeed has received are Frost & Sullivan's "Company of the Year" award, PC Magazine's "Editors' Choice," PC World's "100 Best Products," and a 2008 "Codie" from the Software & Information Industry Association.

Founded in 2001 and based in Berkeley, Calif., SightSpeed is a privately held company funded by The Roda Group, best known for launching Ask Jeeves and PolyServe. For more information visit SightSpeed online.

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