New Tech: Online Office Hours with Vyew, WizIQ and DimDim

This semester I am going to allow students to visit my office without stepping on campus. My college has recommended that we use DimDim for this purpose. At MCC Math and Tech we looked at using Vyew and WizIQ. So this semester I will be trying them all and reporting on their use.

There are some features that each highlights that are starting to sway my opinion, but these may be available on the other platforms as well. To try to be fair, I will highlight some features of each as an initial post and explore them more in depth in the future.

DimDim:
No software to install - meet instantly.
Desktop sharing. Great for showing students where to find things on the course webpage.
Use microphone, webcams and chat.
Can record meetings and get a link and embed code to share with students - but this appears to only be available with a pro account.
Whiteboard with many pages - can collaborate with students or lock them out.

Vyew:
No software to install - meet instantly.
Each web meeting becomes archived for future referencing.
Pages can be inserted, removed, re-arranged, and easily flipped-through.
Open VyewBooks during live sessions on-demand, switching between different versions or various content - this could allow you to review old material or have a different Vyewbook for different courses.
Draw, import, move, paste, scale, etc.
Allow users to review, comment or build content even when you're not present - Asynchronous office hours? A new way to meet?
Publish your meetings via direct URL or embedded in a webpage/email.
There are many useful plugins, like polling, etc. That might be useful.
It appears that the only difference in the free version is the number of Vyewbooks (20) and pages per book (50). Both of those limits are reasonable for my office hours.

WizIQ:
Up to 500 meeting attendees.
Includes a whiteboard.
Students must login to the site, but they can be easily invited to participate.
2-way audio, video and Instant Messenger chat
PPT, Excel, Word, PDF, mp3, flash and video sharing
Embed Class on your Blog or Website
Can make only 3 recordings with the free version.

I'll be trying the different platform this year and sharing information about ease of use (for me and students), tools available (particularly for mathematics), and other features that arise.