Way back in the mists of time, or somewhere around 3 years ago, we reported on a little Google Code project which was a rudimentary but functional web conferencing system, with scheduling and audio/video communication. As we said at the time, it was OK, but a little Spartan. 

Well the little program seems to have grown up. OpenMeetings has now moved off from Google and is part of the Apache family of open source projects, which is nice. It’s also gone all cool and feature rich, and includes not just video and audio conferencing with screen sharing, but also a nifty meeting arranger with built in calendar plus a session recorder for both audio and screen actions.

There’s also full moderation integrated into the product, as well as a whiteboard, chat and private messaging system.  It can even support voting and polls now. The icing on the cake for educators is the plugin for Moodle, which is a course management system for building educational courses online.

The bottom line is that the software is now a great example of how a team of developers can really build out a solid product if they’ve got the skills and dedication.