Recently in Video Conferencing Category

Rich Tehrani has a very interesting post about Nortel's foray into virtualized business meetings. Think Second Life virtual world meets business world...

Rich participated in a virtual world demo with Nortel where they showed him web.alive. This business-oriented virtual world looks eerily similar to Second Life, including the 3D avatars, and 3D world but under the covers it sports something else - namely 3D audio powered by DiamondWare 3D stereoVoIP technology. Both Rich and I have espoused DiamondWare's technology over the years and recently their technology was acquired by Nortel. No doubt Nortel was impressed as well, and this virtualized business meeting world with 3D audio appears to be the fruits of that acquisition.

Rich explains, "I have touted DiamondWare's patented technology for over half a decade and it is as impressive now as it has ever been. It allows you to have your voice volume increase and decrease as you get closer or move farther away from others. It also allows you to hear people on the left or right when they talk and it seems these people are really speaking from one direction or another."




Rich goes on to explain that the technology could be used to power virtual tradeshows, as seen by the screenshot above showing what could be a keynote room complete with full Powerpoint and video & telepresence support. Does this mean no more Internet Telephony Expo in sunny Miami in the middle of winter here in the Northeast? Nomore pressing the flesh? Say it ain't so, Rich!

Rich seems excited by the technology when he says, "I really feel like Nortel is onto something here. This could just be a short-lived fad but it just seems like there is just so much productivity boosting that can be done with virtual business worlds - it just has to happen."

Rich is one of the busiest guys I know - a true multitasker, so he's always looking for the most efficiency in business. Considering how many internal & external meetings Rich participates in, I can see why he likes the idea of 3D virtualized meetings.

I'm a little more skeptical. Reading Rich's demo, I like the idea of "the room of silence", the ability to 'dress up' to indicate to co-workers that you are an an important meeting with clients (so they don't interrupt), and the ability for 3D voice is certainly cool & sexy. I'm just not sure these features replace the good ole' telephone with a WebEx session. I suppose for meetings larger than 6 people, this idea makes more sense, since I've been in conference calls where you get too many people talking at once and you can't tell who is the one talking. The 3D audio with animated avatars could certainly help for larger meetings. Though meeting software such as WebEx allows you to raise your hand to speak. Maybe if I held a few meetings in Nortel's Web.Alive I'd be less skeptical. Definitely has the coolness factor though.

In any event, check out Rich's blog for more details, including a plethora of screenshots.

Grandstream just announced the GXV3005 IP video phone is coming this month. The GXV3005 features an additional FXO port and is part of the GXV3000 IP video product line series.

The GXV3005 features the same design and all of the functionality as the GXV3000 model, but it comes with the advanced versatility of an FXO PSTN line port, which enables customers to receive both video telephony service over an IP network and their home land-line. One thing I like about Grandsteam is they follow industry standards, such as SIP, but also H.263 & H.264, so in theory their video phone will work with other H.263/H.264 compliant video phones. We don't need a videophone war, after all.

The GXV3005 is based on the same feature set as the GXV3000, including a 5.6 inch TFTP adjustable LCD screen, a VGA camera which allows nearly all viewing angles, support for real-time high-quality video (up to 30 frames per second) using H.264/H.263 video standard at bandwidths as low as 32kbps and up to 1Mbps. The additional FXO/PSTN port supports calling over and between two networks (IP and PSTN network) from a single phone and
offers both a layer of security and back up for IP video phone communication by providing the option of a PSTN life line.

"We are excited to announce the availability of GXV3005, which further enhances the versatility and convenience of telephony-over-any-network on top of our popular GXV3000 IP video phone," said David Li, CEO of Grandstream Networks. "The GXV3005 is the second model in the GXV3000 product family and we will continue to introduce more innovative enhancements to the GXV3000 series of advanced IP video phones in the near future."

The GXV3005 is priced at $325 and it will be available through Grandstream's worldwide distribution channels beginning mid December 2008.

An interesting article at the Register claims that a recent uTorrent decision to use UDP for P2P file transfers (instead of TCP) to get around ISP "traffic management" restrictions will cause a meltdown of the Internet. Poppycock you say?

It's worth pointing out that traditionally P2P sharing apps such as Bittorrent,  use TCP not UDP. So why would UDP cause VoIP apps to fail? Well for one huge reason, TCP allows for congestion control.

First, the article explains:

Gamers, VoIP and video conference users beware. The leading BitTorrent software authors have declared war on you - and any users wanting to wring high performance out of their networks... Upset about Bell Canada's system for allocating bandwidth fairly among internet users, the developers of the uTorrent P2P application have decided to make the UDP protocol the default transport protocol for file transfers.

The article then adds:

By most estimates, P2P accounts for close to half of internet traffic today. When this traffic is immune to congestion control [i.e. TCP], the remaining half will stumble along at roughly a quarter of the bandwidth it has available today: half the raw bandwidth, used with half efficiency, by 95% of internet users. Oops.

Yikes! Say goodbye to VoIP. No more Skype. No more fring, Gizmo5, Packet8, Vonage, Bandwidth.com SIP trunks, and all the rest of my beloved VoIP applications and services. May you rest in peace my good friends. [sniff] Now I'll have to change my blog to the "Gadgets Blog".

Game over man, game over!


Click above to hear this famous audio clip from Alien.

Sick and tired of cr**py YouTube video quality? Well, check out kottke.org's tips on how to enable HQ video on YouTube. It's not HD quality, but much better than the default.

The specs for the Youtube HQ video is mp4 encoded using H.264 and stereo AAC sound at 480x360 resolution.

Also you need to do to link to a high quality video on your blog is simply append &fmt=18 onto the end of the YouTube URL, i.e.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuqiGrWBRqE&fmt=18

And if you want to embed the code on your blog/site you add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18, i.e.:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MuqiGrWBRqE&hl=en&fs=1 &ap=%2526fmt%3D18"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MuqiGrWBRqE&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Now head on over to Kottke to see the before and after video quality comparisons. Good stuff!

Today, TMC announced the launch of NGN Magazine focused on next generation networks and how service providers and carriers can build these networks and what they will need to know to maximize savings and ARPU (average revenue per user).

"We're in an interesting time," says TMC President and Group Publisher, Rich Tehrani. No, he's not referring to the American political scene or the chaotic American economy. Rich is referring to Next Generation Networks, which Rich believes will be critical to the future of service providers and carriers. Certainly, in these tough economic times, squeezing the most efficiency and most value-add services is critical. Verizon is probably the best example of that. They've been investing billions in their fiber-based FiOS service which supports high-speed Internet, voice, and TV/video/HDTV.  They are no doubt also looking to tie in their considerable wireless/cellular network with their FiOS network to offer customers a competitive advantage over competing solutions.

In his video interview with TMCnet Group Managing Editor Erik Linask, Rich discusses NGN Magazine. [click to visit video link]



The topics TMC's NGN magazine will address, some of which Rich mentions in the video interview:

» How do you deploy new services and applications ?
» What technology should you consider ?
» How do you integrate new technologies with legacy elements?

Erik points out that a lot of publishing companies have been cutting down on staff and even folding print publications. Rich addresses this point by pointing out that 2-3 million executives visit tmcnet.com to read the content digitally. He also discusses how TMC offers digital (PDF) versions of the print magazines which greatly reduces costs. Thousands of people subscribe to the digital PDF format.

While all facets of the economy seem to be slowing down, TMC continues to grow -- not only launching a new magazine, but recently adding new telecom/wireless industry talent such as Carl Ford, Scott Kargman, and more. Newspapers may die, print magazines may fold, but good information and news will always be needed. And where there is a need for good information, people will pay for it. Publishing companies which are nimble enough to adjust to the trend towards online news dissemination will survive, while those that can't will die.

Case in point is the NY Times, which must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009 or face bankruptcy. But if you're a New York Times fan, don't worry. I'm sure President-elect Barrack Obama will add them to the $700+ billion bailout. Can't have the NY Times go bankrupt, can we? Don't answer that question...

Cisco Systems unveiled a supercharged router called the ASR 9000, which is capable of moving 6.4 terabytes per second of traffic. The router is aimed at service providers with next-generation networks which plan to run bandwidth heavy services such as video, IPTV, mobile broadband, and more. With the explosion of Youtube videos, and other bandwidth-hungry apps, service providers are looking to stay ahead of the bandwidth demand curve. The ASR 9000 hopes to address that need with the ability to support the future "Zettabyte era". According to CRN, "The Cisco Aggregation Services Router 9000 Series (ASR 9000) is designed to be the carrier Ethernet foundation for the "Zettabyte era," said Doug Webster, Cisco's senior director of service provider marketing. According to Webster, Cisco expects IP traffic to reach half of a Zettabyte by 2012."

Cisco's Pankaj Patel, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Service Provider Technology Group called and left me a message stating that their new hardware took four years and a whopping $200 million to develop.

The ASR 9000 router is capable of transmitting data at a rate of 6.4 trillion bits per second, and it has 10 times the bandwidth capacity of Cisco's ASR 1000 router.

Pankaj Patel also told the San Jones Mercury Times, "We truly believe consumer IP traffic will more than quadruple by 2012," He said the new router is capable of delivering 200 movies per second or 250,000 MP3s per second.

Price: It's expected to go for around $80,000.

NetQoS today launched its first unified communications focused management tool called NetQoS Unified Communications (UC) Monitor. NetQoS is broadening the focus of its formerly named VoIP Monitor product to reflect the growing role and functionality of unified communications. NetQoS UC Monitor 2.0 supports voice and video quality metrics in a Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) environment as well as enhanced diagnostics and reporting for Cisco IP telephony environments.

In my conversation with NetQoS I asked them what the upgrade/migration path was for current customers, and they said existing customers would be upgraded to NetQoS UC Monitor 2.0 free of charge. One interesting feature in NetQoS UC Monitor 2.0 is that it can adjust the MOS alerting thresholds based on codec. For instance, Microsoft's RTAudio FEC codec can have a lower MOS score than other codecs, but sound just as good than other codecs with a higher MOS score. Screenshot of the codec thresholds:


UC Monitor adds support for monitoring both voice and video in a Microsoft OCS environment and it passively monitors call setup flows between IP phones and their call server(s) including 'call setup' and end-of-call quality statistics. It also actively queries voice gateways for end of call statistics. Additionally, it passively receives QoE reports from Microsoft's QoE Monitoring Server, including call setup failures, and audio and video metrics

Here's some screenshots of the tool in action:

Stonevoice has created SkyStone Video, a unique Skype-gateway product that allows video communications between enterprise video solutions from vendors such as Cisco, Sony, and Polycom and the popular Skype software. There are several voice over ip-to-Skype gateways, but this marks the first time someone has created a Video-to-Skype gateway that "bridges" the gap between high quality enterprise video conferencing solutions and Skype.

"Video has become a fundamental need in the day-by-day communications. The technology is now ready to handle video calls and conference calls; however, one fundamental element was missing to take it to the next level: simplicity - says Christian Bongiovanni, CEO of StoneVoice - today, ahead of competition, Stonevoice, has demonstrated its technical excellence and strategic thinking by releasing a unique product worldwide: SkyStone Video that allows standard based video solution interfacing with the Skype world, bringing excellent quality, rich and mobile communications, with extreme simplicity!"

With Skystone Video, Stonevoice has eliminated the Business-to-Consumer and Business-to-Business barriers. Today a user can call a business partner, a mobile employee or a customer on their Skype account and do video calls and conference calls, as simply as if they were placing a standard call (for instance through speed-dials). Furthermore, combining Skystone Video with Meetnow, Stonevoice branded software MCU, conference calls can be done with internal and external parties without the security - VPN barrier, providing a WEB 2.0 service accessible from anywhere with any device to everybody.

Skystone Video is available for early testing on http://skystone.stonevoice.com.

VoxOx is a new unified communications client launched by San Diego based startup TelCentris. Think of it as Skype on steroids since it not only support VoIP, IM, and video conferencing, but it also supports social media, such as Facebook, SMS, fax, e-mail, and content sharing all in one unified desktop application.

VoxOx creates a "meta address book" of contacts from all of a user's disparate communications networks into a single user interface, accessible from any device. To ramp up they are providing a free phone number, along with two initial hours of free talk time. TelCentris' CEO Bryan Hertz is making their API open source in hopes of duplication what Skype has done with Skype Extras and their developer community.

Features include:

• Full inbound/outbound calling capabilities
• Voicemail and interactive voice response "personal assistant"
• Two-way texting
• Call forwarding and "one-number-follow-me service"
• Inbound faxing and fax-to-e-mail
• Landline replacement option
• Interconnects users to major instant messaging networks (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Google Talk and others), allowing members from different IMs to chat and video conference with each other from one service
• Integrates with all major social networks, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and others
• Enables flexibility for integrating existing and future applications via its open standards platform

It currently supports Windows and Mac, with Linux support coming soon.

One interesting feature is Call-Back, which is similar to Jajah and a feature lacking in Skype. feature is what sets  Call-Back allows you to initiate a call-back via the Web or via SMS. Under the Web callback tab, you enter the phone number for are located as well as the number you are trying to call and VoxOx will call you from a local number.

Skype has a lot of momentum, and there have been a lot of "pretenders" to the Skype throne. However, VoxOx has a lot of "eye candy" with an iPhone skin which might attract users. It also has an interesting feature-set and the 120 free minutes might entice users to check it out.

To download VoxOx, head here.

I'm a huge fan of SightSpeed and so I was pleasantly surprised this morning to read that Logitech has acquired SightSpeed for approximately $30 million in cash. I'm a fan of both companies actually, and my favorite webcam is the Logitech Quickcam Orbit AF, The acquisition is expected to close in early November. Just check out my favorable review of SightSpeed here and how SightSpeed carried out their patriotic duty in offering SightSpeed videoconferencing for online gameplay between Pros and G.I. Joes.

SightSpeed supports up to an amazing 9-way videoconferencing. Take that Skype! Even Dell jumped on the SightSpeed bandwagon by offering SightSpeed preloaded onto all Dell consumer PCs (called Dell Video Chat).

No doubt with this acquisition, Logitech will bundle the SightSpeed software onto their software CD that ships with every webcam they sell. This will no doubt boost the number of SightSpeed users. My heart congrats go out to the SightSpeed team, including SightSpeed's VP of Marketing Eric Quanstrom whom I have spoken to many times.

Founded in 2001, SightSpeed has approximately 25 employees and unlike Skype which is proprietary, SightSpeed leverages the industry standard SIP protocol.