Firespotter Labs‘ visual conference calling solution UberConference is rolling out several new features today, including international phone numbers and integrations with online file sharing services Box and Evernote. The company previously worked with Evernote to offer optional call summaries, but the new features are an expansion on that, allowing users to share their online files with other call participants.
In the calling window, there will be a new button on the bottom right of the screen, accessible to all the participants in the call. With a click, the sharer can authenticate with Evernote and/or Box, and see all the notebooks and files available for sharing. (This file list is only visible to them, of course, not everyone on the call).
After selecting which files to share, those then become available as thumbnails below the main call screen. Other callers can click on the thumbnail to view the file, which can be an image, video, PowerPoint, Doc or Excel file type. With the Box integration specifically, because of the work Box has done on its API, there are also additional options like zoom controls, rotation features, the ability to move in and out of full screen view, as well as support paging through documents.
CEO Craig Walker says the Box integration took a couple of months to complete, but future integrations will be quicker. He says the company is looking into adding all the popular online file storage and sharing services, and will eventually even go beyond read-only access. “Our long-term vision is that there’s going to be more and more collaboration. This first iteration is file sharing – it’s not online editing – but that does make a lot of sense in the future,” he told us. UberConference is already available for deployment through Google Apps, so it makes sense that Google Drive would be a future integration type here.
For UberConference’s business customers, the other notable news today is the availability of international access numbers in over 40 countries including across Europe, Asia and South America. The feature is available to Pro and Business account users. Pro users are the next step up from free accounts, and can pay $10 per month for a local number or $20 for a toll-free number. “A lot of people have conference calls with parties in Europe or Latin America and they have to dial internationally to call in. Now they can just call a local Paris number, a local Berlin number, a local Mexico number – and we can bridge them into the conference,” Walker says.
These new features are live now, and the file sharing is available to free and paid users alike. UberConference’s mobile apps are getting a slight refresh too, with added ability to view and edit upcoming conferences, add people to calls on the fly, support for contact groups on Android, and more.
In typical UberConference style, the company announced the launch with one of their irreverent videos. In this one, the people of San Francisco have gone missing because file sharing while conference calling is just “too powerful.” Oh ha ha. (But seriously, why can’t all tech news be announced like this?”)