Recently in Video Conferencing Category

Some great news from TMC about our IP communications conference & expositions (ITEXPO) taking place this week that I thought I'd share. The show is still going on, with today being the last day. Yesterday's exhibit hall attendance was tremendous as seen by some photos I snapped and posted yesterday. I had some great meetings or saw many important VoIP companies, including Asterisk/Digium, CosmoCom, Fonality, Microsoft, Packet8, PIKA, Skype, and more. Many companies announced news or launched new products at ITEXPO, which is now the #1 IP communications show in the U.S. Further, in talking to two vendors I learned some interesting news coming out next week at Astricon, that I can't divulge yet, but stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out this news release put out by TMC

ITEXPO West 2008 to Generate over $1 Million for Los Angeles; Brings Next Generation Technology to the City of Angels

Leading Communications Event Attracts Largest, Most Diverse Audience of any Conference in the Internet Communications Technology Industry

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) today announced that ITEXPO West 2008 taking place September 16-18, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, expects more than 7,000 attendees from around the world. Year after year, ITEXPO West plays a prominent role in supporting Los Angeles, with estimates of a more than $1 million influx surging into the local economy in less than three days.

ITEXPO West 2008 is the world's largest and most significant communications technology event, featuring more than 150 companies exhibiting on the EXPO floor, and hundreds of sessions led by the industry's most prominent thought leaders. Attendees are afforded unprecedented access to a diverse population of both global and local companies; in addition to executive keynote speeches from household names like Skype, Microsoft, Avaya and Texas Instruments, local companies, such as AireSpring, Fonality, Grandstream, TW Telecom, will use this conference as platform to make announcements and showcase their groundbreaking voice and video offerings.

What is also important to note, is that contrary to other declining economic sectors, IP communications and VoIP salaries had a noteworthy rise in the second quarter. OnForce, Inc., is an online jobs mart where employers and workers meet on the Internet and agree on an hourly rate. A recent report from the company showed growth in VoIP rates have increased from 1.5 to 1.95 between Q1 and Q2; VoIP jobs are now paying twice the average of all IT jobs.
"Over the past several years, we have welcomed many people from around the world who flock to the Los Angeles Convention Center each Fall to attend the Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO," commented Pouria Abbassi, P.E., CEO & General Manager of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

"Communications technology is important in every type and facet of business operations across the board, especially in Convention Center business. Knowing the communications technology of today will help anticipate and address our business issues of tomorrow. We are honored to host the ITEXPO 2008 at our World Class Los Angeles Convention Center," added Abbassi.
The show helps attendees identify the issues and challenges affecting the deployment of IP-based communications technologies. It provides a comprehensive forum for evaluating the latest products and services, and delivers a face-to-face networking opportunity that service providers, carriers, resellers, distributors, equipment manufacturers, and IT executives from enterprise and SMB companies need to cultivate new business relationships.

"Converged applications that leverage VoIP and video-over-the Internet are diving our industry forward, and may very well be one of the few silver linings in an otherwise dismal economy," said Rich Tehrani, TMC president and ITEXPO West 2008 conference chairman. "Clearly, this technology is here to stay as over 16 million U.S. consumer VoIP lines were in service by the first quarter of 2008, according to new data released by TeleGeography, representing nearly 14 percent of all households and 27 percent of broadband households.
"It is a no-brainer for us to host this event in Los Angeles at the Convention Center, as this facility and this City are second to none."

The expo hours for ITEXPO West are: Wednesday, Sept 17th from 4:00 to 8:00 PM, and on Thursday Sept 18th from 11:00 AM until 5:00 PM.

Free expo passes are still available, and interested attendees should visit https://www.tmcnet.com/scripts/itexpo/ca08/itfall08reg.aspx?theplan=D for more information. In addition to educational content and new product information for today's latest communications technology, ITEXPO also features several vendor promotions -- including the Toyota Prius Hybrid Giveaway, which is free to participate, with no purchases necessary. For more information on this exciting promotion, please visit: http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/west-08/w08-prizes.htm.

According to Reuters, Skype has become an indispensable tool in teaching South Koreans to speak fluent English. Good English speaking skills are considered the key for success in South Korea.

The article states,"On any given day, students ranging from kids learning their alphabet to adults preparing for job interviews sign in on their Internet messengers, fire up their webcams and wait for English teachers to appear -- from faraway continents."

In fact, according to the article, "South Korea ranks No. 1 in the number of international students in the United States, ahead of more populous India and China, according to U.S. Student and Exchange Visitor Information System."

Skype, the #1 VoIP software in the world, has become one of the main tools in their arsenal to train students to speak English.

This blog entry will show live video streaming (via my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone's camera) of various ITEXPO events, including keynotes, receptions, and of course the exhibit hall. I'm going to broadcast starting at 3:30pm PT (6:30 ET) when Skype's Jonathan Christensen and Microsoft's Xuedong Huang and Sonus Network's Vikram Saksena will be keynoting. So if you couldn't make it to ITEXPO, you'll at least be able to see the keynotes in just a few hours.

I'll also livecast the show floor when it opens. I'm going to "future date" this post so it stays on the very top of my blog's home page. I'll update this blog post as I find out exact times I will be live video blogging.

Live Video Feed (when available) follows:

I live video streamed the ITEXPO keynotes from earlier today using my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone. But in case you missed it, I recorded the live video stream.

Here's a link to two video recordings I made for two keynotes:
Skype's Jonathan Christensen (2-3 minute filler in beginning so fast forward)
Microsoft's Xuedong Huang

video quality isn't the greatest. Will have to try and tweak it in the future. Though a lot of it has to do with the poor video camera built into the XV6700

SightSpeed today announced that its video and voice communications software is now available on Linux-based "netbook" (mini-notebook) PCs.  Dell Video Chat powered by SightSpeed will come pre-installed on the Linux build of Dell's newly-launched Inspiron Mini 9 device. Dell Video Chat, Windows version, is also pre-installed on the Windows XP version of the Mini 9. SightSpeed works on Macs, Windows, and now Linux and it is currently the the only multi-party video software to walk on all three major operating systems.

Dell pre-installs Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution on the Mini 9, as well as Windows. With SightSpeed pre-installed as well on these popular Dell netbooks, Sightspeed will certainly increase the number of subscribers. In fact, Sightspeed has their software launch icon in a prime location, which will not doubt entice users to check it out. Another key advantage of Sightspeed is that it can do 4-way video and even 9-way video, while most competitors (i.e. Skype) are limited to just 2-way video.

SightSpeed informed me that a standalone installer for other Linux distributions is in the works, but for now if you want the Linux-version of SightSpeed, you'll need to buy a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu.

"We know the specifications of the camera, speakers and microphones that are going into these new netbooks, and so we've optimized the factory version to take full advantage of them," says SightSpeed CEO Peter Csathy. "As a result, SightSpeed's best-in-class video and voice services have never been easier to use - the user is up, running and can make video and voice calls in less than 30 seconds."

Well, thought I'd do a live streaming test from my Windows Mobile 6.1 XV6700 mobile phone in preparation for Internet Telephony Expo (ITEXPO) next week. I plan on live streaming portions of the show, which you'll be able to watch via my blog. I may do some video interviews as well.

This streaming video test will last until at least 11am.

As a fan of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007) and with OCS 2007 R2 just around the corner (later this year/early next year), I'd like to see 3rd party vendors offer utilities to monitor OCS 2007's performance to ensure reliability and uptime. After all, your communications are your lifeblood. Microsoft's OCS 2007 is a unified communications (UC) platform that handles several communications methods, including IM/presence, voice, video, and collaboration, so it's even more critical that OCS 2007 stays up. As such, I came across a new product just launched from NetIQ called NetIQ AppManager for Microsoft Office Communications Server.

NetIQ AppManager for Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) was designed to proactively ensure the performance and availability of Microsoft OCS 2007. AppManager's core capabilities of real-time monitoring and management now extend to Microsoft OCS to ensure it is up and running.

Key Points:

• Monitor the health and availability of Microsoft OCS servers
• Monitor session and call activity
• Get alerts when usage metrics reach critical levels
• Report on adoption and usage trends

Key Features and Benefits

• Provide proactive event management - Proactively detects problems with Microsoft OCS and sends alerts to your OCS administrators, often before end users are impacted.
• Enables application health visibility - AppManager's end-to-end service visibility vastly reduces downtime to your business services and visually represents service issues via service maps, helping you understand who is being affected.
• Visualize your data - Use interactive charting and snapshot reports to give a visual view of your data for easier analysis and information sharing.
• Delivers application performance reporting - Leverage AppManager's data repository for all of your management information - events and performance data - giving you a centralized view of all servers and resources. This single repository will also streamline your reporting.

You can find out more about NetIQ AppManager for Microsoft Office Communications Server here.

Qik, the popular live streaming mobile phone video app, is now available on a variety of new Windows Mobile enabled phones including select HTC devices.

New support includes:
• HTC Touch Dual
• HTC Touch Diamond
• HTC TyTn-II
• AT&T Tilt
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

Qik added mobile video blogging to the Apple iPhone just last week. I was actually going to use Qik on my Verizon XV6700 HTC Apache Windows Mobile 6.1 device to live video blog Internet Telephony Expo in 2 weeks - but it isn't supported. While the HTC Apache isn't specifically listed, I'm going to try again in a few minutes to see if it works. Many HTC devices have the same core software. Will let you know how it goes. [crossing fingers]

If I can't get Qik to work, I may just use Livecast on my Windows Mobile at ITEXPO. It works just fine. Although not as well known as Qik, the performance was surprisingly good. I'll have to compare Livecast with Qik once I get Qik working.

Well if the cat wasn't out of the bag already over the naming convention (OCS 2007 R2 vs. OCS 2009) for the next release of Office Communications Server 2007, we can put that to rest. It will be indeed be called Office Communications Server 2007 R2. In fact, just a few days ago, Microsoft shipped the beta for Office Communications Server 2007 R2, "in record time after shipping OCS 2007 last year."

Kintan Brahmbhatt, a Program Manager at Microsoft writes, "It is a great achievement for the team. Today brings back memories from my earlier days, when Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 had recently shipped and we were all gung ho about Office Communications Server." Kintan goes down memory lane showing a video with Scoble (when he was still with Microsoft) along with some of Microsoft's Real Time Collaboration gang - Dhigha, Mallika, Kyle and Kintan. Check out the video & news about OCS 2007 R2 beta here: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/office-communic.html

I'm happy to see Kintan involved with OCS since back in the early days of OCS. I wonder if Kintan was with Microsoft when Microsoft launched technologies formerly referred to by the code name "Greenwich", which was part of the Microsoft Real-Time Communications Server (RTC Server) 2003. I was one of the early RTC Server beta testers 5 years ago. It only did SIP/VoIP and IM and not video, and was the precursor to Live Communications Server 2005 -- if I recall correctly. Of course, LCS 2005 later evolved to become OCS 2007.

If memory serves me correctly, RTC Server didn't do well in the market and perhaps didn't even actually launch out of beta. RTC Server was more of an IM/presence platform and didn't have strong PBX integration. I do recall that the ability to enter in SIP credentials was removed from Windows Messenger, which was annoying since I wanted to deploy it at TMC. It appeared Microsoft was giving up on SIP and any sort of open SIP-based communications platform.

It was then in January 2006, that the Exchange and RTC (Real-Time Collaboration) groups were merged together that indicated to me that Microsoft wasn't giving up on unified communications and that they were truly serious this time. Microsoft has had many stops & starts in VoIP - from Netmeeting to Windows Messenger with support with SIP providers (Net2Phone) to RTC Server. It appears with OCS 2007 (which I've reviewed) and now OCS 2007 R2 beta Microsoft finally got it right. I'm looking forward to checking out OCS 2007 R2 in the near future.

Via Kintan's MSDN blog.

Update:
I should mention that this beta release is only available for customers/partners that were accepted for the OCS Technology Adoption Program. There is unfortunately no Public Beta available.

Just want to wish Skype a Happy 5th Birthday. Skype has helped make VoIP a household name and has carried more VoIP minutes than any other VoIP software application out there. Well done Skype.

I hope you continue to innovate, though Andy Abramson writes today Skype is dropping Skypecasts, a nifty feature. Andy poo-poohs the move when he writes:

What's puzzling though is that Skypecasts are one more example of how eBay really missed the mark with their purchase of Skype. For example, SkypeCasts were the perfect way to hold training sessions for new sellers; for sellers to provide how to tips to customers and for eBay buyers to share experience with eBay and eBay sold items.

Skype is the best example of Voice 2.0. Unfortunately, eBay is all about trying to be 1.0 and that's the disconnect.

Well, I just hope Skype gets their innovative mojo back.

Here's to the next 5 years, Skype!