Having a daily short, informal, morning meeting certainly helps us. You don't need to be standing up to have "standup". Dogma for dogma's sake is the king of anti-patterns.
For what it's worth, I have noticed that actual stand ups are shorter. When people settle in and sit they tend to start rambling. It is hard to convince people to actually stand though without being dictatorial. Here's a study of undergrads (so take it with a grain of salt) that shows that they are in fact shorter:
I think that's true. When I had a local team we stood, and the meetings seemed shorter. With global or national teams, that's a bit harder.
I have found for phone/web "standup" meetings, that the person running the show needs to set the pace and keep it moving along. Nice and short, keeps the team informed and gets help were its needed.
On the other hand, I've had leads who just let people ramble non stop, and doing that for weeks was just wasteful and demoralizing.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/05/work-smarter-for-shorte...