And while Web conferencing has improved since its early days, it can still be a hassle for many. For those workers who have to deal with multiple meetings hosted on multiple platforms, it often means having to install several different applications on the desktop just to attend these meetings. And businesses that run multiple meetings a week through one of the leading providers can find that the cost of these Web conferences can quickly add up.

However, there's a new company that hopes to address some of issues, especially in the areas of plug-in hassles and cost. Dimdim is a new service for providing Web conferences that incorporates a few welcome twists.

One, at Dimdim.com, users will be able to host and access basic Web conferences for free. Secondly, since Dimdim is based on Flash, no extra plug-ins are required to attend a meeting and attendees can use any platform to view a conference. Thirdly, the entire engine is open source and can be downloaded and run for free by any business.

I had a chance to test the current beta version of Dimdim using the free hosted version at Dimdim.com. And while I liked some aspects of it, it is definitely a beta and has its fair share of usability annoyances and feature limitations.

Click here to read the entire review Free and Easy Web Conferencing