Online Meetings

Live Meetings
Just read that Nick Herbert MP is doing a live online Q&A session on www.number10.gov.uk on Monday Aug 2, 2010 at 11am, discussing 21st Century Policing.  They will be using www.coveritlive.com

I tried out one of these online meetings which was hosted recently by Whitbey neighbourhood police officers. They ran it as a live text only meeting but Cover it Live can also support video and audio live meetings too.  As the Home Office are using it, I think it is likely to be a good candidate for a system which we could use for a national live meetings system.  Does anyone know of any other similar live online systems which could offer a good environment for public consultation. Maybe there are free alternatives?  Google Wave look tantalizingly useful but I've not yet had time to understand exactly what it is and how it works. Likewise, Google Talk with the audio and video add ons could also be useful.  Skype seems to have a '5 users at a time' limit and then there are all those other IM offerings too.  I think we should experiment with some of these services with a view to finding something we could use to develop a live public chat/video/audio service to be used alongside a public meeting or as an alternative.