Most people will concede that the Internet has had major effects on thetravel industry. But they often think only of the way they can now instantlypurchase airline tickets without a middleman (the travel agent), check in andverify flight times and reservations.In recent months, a company called RHUB has added a new wrinkle that makesthese andpresentations even more cost-effective. The company introduced the RHUB4-in-1Web Conferencing & Remote Support Appliance. I'll refer to it asTurboMeeting, which is the name of the software that runs the appliance.

The difference between the standard Web-meeting services and TurboMeeting isthat TurboMeeting runs on a stand-alone box, called an appliance, about thesame size as your home router, which connects the attendees directly. Connectthe RHUB appliance to the Internet; then log into the appliance to host ameeting, attend a meeting that somebody else is hosting, or even connect toanother computer to check for problems or do training.

The traditional Web-meeting services can do these things already, so what'sthe benefit of using RHUB? It can do all of these things in a single servicewithout any monthly fee. While Citrix, for instance, offers GoToMeeting,GoToWebinar, GoToAssist to do different remote meeting activities, it chargesseparate monthly fees for each that could be hundreds of dollars a month. So aninvestment in TurboMeeting, as little as $995, can pay back in a few months.

This makes TurboMeeting a unique solution for small companies, trainingdepartments, sales forces who sell in multicity territories, and anybody whodoes a significant amount of computer or software support when the participantsare in different buildings.

When I first got to test TurboMeeting, I was unimpressed. It looked a lotlike the more traditional services, but didn't perform as well, being difficultto set up and locking up too often. But RHUB introduced an upgraded TurboMeetingsoftware in May, and that made all the difference in the world. Now,TurboMeeting is stable, fast and actually fun to use. I have two monitors on mysystem, and TurboMeeting allows me to share either monitor with the othermeeting attendees, or show them both monitors at the same time.

Meetings take seconds to start up -- even if you hadn't arranged the meetingin advance. It also allows you to hold multiple meetings simultaneously, whichcan be a real advantage, especially pricewise. A GoToWebinar account fromCitrix costs $99 monthly and allows you to hold only a single meeting at atime. The entry level RHUB appliance with TurboMeeting allows two concurrentmeetings and the biggest RHUB appliance allows 200 concurrent meetings with upto 2,000 attendees.

One of the unique aspects of TurboMeeting and the RHUB appliance is itsupgradability. The smallest appliance can be upgraded online.

RHUB appliances open up lots of opportunities for companies. Supportdepartments can hold simultaneous support sessions, where the supportrepresentatives can log into users' computers to see what the problems are,then minutes later allow an interactive training session with 10 trainees. Itprovides meeting flexibility that the larger services don't provide for the price that asmall business can afford. And it grows as the needs grow. It is available at .