ZipDX "identity conferencing" remains the most powerful conferencing paradigm available, allowing you to invite participants by E-mail. This provides a secure conferencing environment, and permits everyone to join the conference without any frustrating codes. But sometimes it makes sense to use the more traditional Conference Code approach, and now your guests can get access to the ZipDX dashboard (in "view only" mode) as well as the Web Sharing capability when using this approach. Just direct your guests to guest.zipdx.com. Remember that hosts should still log into www.zipdx.com, and should continue to use their ZipDX "identity" on the phone, even when hosting code-based conferences.

New capabilities have been added to the already-powerful ZipDX dashboard. If you want to hear a participant's name, just click the ID and select "Play Recorded Name." For the host: When recording a vote tally, you can include a descriptive label with each tally. When using the dial-out feature, you can click to disconnect the last dial-out call (if, for example, you get voice-mail).

ZipDX offers dial-in numbers in several countries around the world. This month, we added numbers in Hong Kong and Hannover, Germany. We've also expanded capacity with new numbers in Tokyo, Japan and London, UK. You can always access the latest dial-in number list on our login page. Also, remember that you can instruct ZipDX to CALL YOU anwhere in the world at conference time by specifying "call-me" numbers in your profile.

Sometimes you want to deliver a PowerPoint presentation or share some other application as part of an audio conference. With this new ZipDX feature, it's easy to allow other conference participants to see your screen. As the host, just make sure you're logged in at www.ZipDX.com, and click on the "Start WebShare" link that you'll see next to the "Dashboard" link under the "In Progress Conferences" heading. Once you've done that, other participants can go to www.ZipDX.com and a "Join WebShare" link will now be visible. They just click on that, and your screen-sharing session is underway.

When you and your colleagues are ready to have a conference, you expect ZipDX to be ready for you. We now have a full complement of servers on both the East and West coasts of North America, and a redundant routing structure for our incoming and outgoing phone lines. Our automatic systems continuously monitor the entire network to insure proper operation, and will instantly reroute traffic if any anomaly is detected. That means that under almost any imaginable circumstance, ZipDX service will always be available.

You've probably occasionally heard the annoying buzz that can bleed into conference calls from mobile devices such as BlackBerrys. ZipDX now has a built-in filter, active on every conference, that can sense the buzz and automatically mute the associated line, preventing it from disrupting the entire conference. When the buzz stops, or if the associated participant starts talking, the mute is lifted. Our tests show that this unique filter eliminates 90% or more of "buzz events."