December 2008 Archives

I really wanted to write a prediction post for 2009 on the last day of 2008, but what would I write about? That video telephony is going to happen, Jajah's CTO Amichay already stated that.

So, I was more than happy when this dropped into my lap through my beloved inbox (thanks for this one Sagee!).

So what do we have here? LG is working on a touch screen mobile phone that is worn on the wrist. Its 3G, with video telephony packed into it. As this phone concept is going to be shown at CES, I'll be looking for it there.

Is anyone else thinking Inspector Gadget?

Fun as this may be, I don't believe mobile video telephony will catch up in 2009, and with some good reasons. My bet is on stationary devices and laptops when it comes to video calls. Continue Reading...

Add to that the move of blogging and microblogging heading towards video, and you get a picture of how video is taking over the web:

• Kfir Pravda wonders about video comments. He is using Seesmic on his blog.
• Luca Filigheddu's company Hictu just added a Facebook application to their microblogging service which lets you create and send video greetings to friends.

A podcaster's video set (racum tecnologia)

For me, there are three levels to video adoption:

1. Consuming video content, which is what Hulu provides.
2. Creating and uploading video content, which is what Flickr! and YouTube allow.

Last week I had an interesting conversation with a colleague of mine at work. It was around the chances of success for point-to-point video telephony.

Point-to-point video telephony means two people talking to each other using a video call. This is sometimes referred to as "talking heads", as what you usually see is a head talking.

As an application, "talking heads" hasn't proven itself useful enough. At least if you count mobile video telephony as the main application.

The reason usually cited for this flop is that people want to talk, and for them exchanging voices is enough. Continue Reading...

Hi there.

My name is Tsahi Levent-Levi and I work as a Product Manager at RADVISION. Here, I also write a blog called "VoIP Survivor" as part of RADVISION's company blogs.

When I was approached by Greg Galitzine with the offer of having my own blog on the TMCnet blog network, there was no real debate on whether or not to accept the offer - it was just a matter of choosing the right topic. During the past 10 years at RADVISION, I've been working on various technologies - IP and 3G, both signaling and media related, and as a developer and a product manager.

Finally, I eventually decided to focus on video telephony technologies, a topic which I find to be both interesting and "hot", a topic that is set to change the way we communicate.

A name was therefore chosen - "Talking Video", and this is exactly what I will be doing here: Talking Video.

I'll try writing here once a week, publishing a post every Wednesday, so stay tuned.

I'd appreciate any comments or questions you might have.

See you soon,

Tsahi