I’ve used FaceTime with my MD (iphone to iphone). It worked very well but there were just 2 of us on it. I’ve used Zoom as a presenter and it worked fine. Didn’t have any of the hacking problems I’ve recently read of. Used some program our local allergist insisted on and it was awful—very poor reception. Those are the only things I’ve tried so far.
I’d never used zoom before our current reality but have now used it probably 15 times. If you have a group, it really is a great platform from a functionality and ease of use standpoint. I haven’t encountered any of the security issues we’re reading about. I guess there’s some risk but I’ll still continue to use it. Hopefully the measures zoom is trying to take will be effective. If you do use zoom, click on gallery view and you end up with a ‘brady bunch’ or ‘hollywood squares’ kind of view with pictures of each participant of equal size which I find the most pleasant way to engage. And, only the person setting up the call has to create up an account. Invitees will click a link in an email you send and, if it’s their first time on zoom, they’ll be prompted to open zoom. It’s all very easy.
I’ve also used google hangout but everyone is in a small box at the bottom and whoever speaks populates the screen. I believe FB works the same way but am not positive. While it’s a great option in the absence of zoom, I find the speaking piece and having the speaker populate the full screen awkward–much prefer the gallery view in zoom where you can see everyone and watch out for people speaking at the same time, etc.
When I’m just having a one on one video chat, I do use facetime.
One last note, if there are many people participating, you may want to ask everyone to mute themselves until they want to speak. It’s tough when background noise, dings from texts, etc. go off–the more people on the call, the more distracting and disruptive it is.
I know this post is getting long but one more thing worth noting. One limitation to zoom is that the unpaid version only allows you to go for 40 minutes before it closes out. Everyone can go back to the link in the email and start again. If anyone in your group has access to a paid account, there’s no time limitation. Hope this helps.
Skype we found has a lot of internal noise but maybe it was us. Zoom works and they have new updates and is meant for multiple people and personally I would just use that. You would be the administrator and invite people. If a lot of people you might need them to turn off their mics if not talking but not always. We just used Google hangouts with my son and that worked great. All of them similar idea’s of sending an invite though the app and talking. I have a Google Pixel phone and Google duo (changing it’s name and basically Google hangouts) is good. Think it’s Google meets now.
BTW - my son last week put on a 6 hours conference with Zoom but had security in place (invites with passwords) and other things and it really worked nice.
Google hangouts is part of google, and is free. Google meets is the video component of Gsuites. which is a paid service. https://stackshare.io/stackups/google-meet-vs-hangouts
^^^ I just read somewhere that they are merging… Hmmm…
https://zapier.com/blog/google-hangouts-meet-guide/
Let’s just make it really confusing… Lol. Seems they are rebranding some of these… Lol.
I don’t think you are supposed to link a blog, and that one looks like an ad (for people to use/interface the different platforms with their product) , but if I understand (and I probably don’t) google hangouts is merging only within the gsuites (paid) platform https://support.google.com/a/answer/9291305?hl=en
totally confusing https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/report-google-planning-tenth-messaging-app-this-ones-another-slack-clone/
Totally agree and I should of noticed the blog but sent it and not fully awake… Agh…
I think I heard that zoom is offering unlimited time during this stay at home time. We did church on zoom last week without a paid account and went at least 2 hours with no issues.
Also, the administrator on zoom can mute everyone while he/she is conducting a meeting.
^^I’ve been in at least 3 zoom meetings where they shut down after 40 minutes. After the first one, where we had a flurry of texts and confusion, we discovered the original link still worked so we all just went back in. But I’ve had others where we went beyond 40 minutes so maybe it has to do with how much bandwidth Zoom has available at a given time. Or maybe they’ve changed their policy recently.
Our synagogue has been using Zoom for minyan, abbreviated services and social gatherings. It’s $15/mo, but that may be a non-profit rate. We’ve doubled and at times tripled our usual attendance.
Because we’re an older congregation, it also serves as schmooze time for seniors living alone. They are showing up in droves for online minyan – which confirms to me that nighttime driving is a real deterrent to participation in our events.
Our rabbi took a certification class for online religious education couple years ago and it is truly paying off in these circumstances. No need to bring in techies and he understands halachically what can and can’t be done.
Older S uses Google Hangouts for conference calls with work and us; younger son uses WhatsApp or Skype since he’s overseas.
As a hint. When we are using the "Free’ zoom we send out 2 links so when we go over we just go to the other link…it works well for us.
All I know is we were on for 2 hours last Sunday without getting kicked off. My H is the pastor and says it was the free version, no one paid for it.
I was also on zoom for an hour last Sunday with my parents and sisters. No one got kicked off that, either. It was also the free version.
H says that zoom, at least temporarliy, is expanding the free version during this shut down time to allow for things like church services and family gatherings.
He does not know how long that will last before they go back to normal pricing.
There is a new extension called Google Meet Grid View which displays the participants in gallery view. I have never paid to use Google Meet.
I’ve been doing many webinars on Zoom in the last week. None have cut out before the end of the meeting, 1-1.5 hours. The speaker puts everyone on mute so we don’t hear anything, just see the speaker and/or the slides from the PowerPoint. Working pretty well for the most part, plus free.
For my study group, our leader is trying to get us going with WebEx, but he’s having trouble downloading the modules from our source. I was able to download WebEx, but we haven’t “gathered” yet.
My little social group got kicked off Zoom Thursday after 40 minutes. That was enough time for me!
We use Google Duo with our son for video calls (and voice calls) since it works on both IOS and Android and has no time limit. Very clear reception. But it only allows eight people on a call; we haven’t tried group calls.
I did Zoom for the first time today, and we have up to about 8 groups on. We were expecting it to cut off after 40 minutes, but at some point we got a notice that said we were extended for “infinite minutes” or something liked that. It was fun to see many relatives, but after awhile it gets a little odd.
Pre-quarantine, if you had free Zoom the 40 minute limit was if you had more than a certain # of people on the call. It’s a low number of people. I know for sure that if it was a one-on-one Zoom call you could exceed 40 minutes even with the free plan.
They may have lifted that for now. Most of my work calls on Zoom are lots of people and well over 40 minutes - but the host organization has a Zoom paid subscription.
A friend asked me to download an app called houseparty as she wants to have cocktails virtually tomorrow and that is her preferred method. I asked her to consider zoom but she preferred this, so I said I’d give it a try. I only put it on my ipad (not phone) and I was unwilling to let it access any of my contacts. TBH I am not a fan, but she likes it so I am willing to try it for her. But it seemed to drop little notifications every time she was online, and that is not something I want or need. Does anyone use this app and know how to turn that off? I’ll check the notifications. ** OK, I’ve turned off notifications and contacts. Hopefully that will do the trick.
If you use Zoom, it is best to have a password on the meeting so that pranksters wardialing Zoom URLs have more difficulty getting into your meeting if they find it by wardialing.