January 2009 Archives

Andy Abramson stated recently, once again, that video conferencing will take off in 2009:

I've been saying that IP based video conferencing will be taking off in 2009 and it looks like I'm right with that prediction.

NASA and Verizon have reworked their agreements and now will have IP based video and web conferencing supplied by the Baby Bell.

I must say that I believe Andy is correct. It was not that apparent at CES that video is happening, but it was there - in the fringes. It is happening on desktops already and it is gaining popularity in enterprises as well.

Vidtel launched a video telephony service, and now, another service provider called GlobalLinx is reported to join the fray.

Add to these Creative's Broadxent subsidiary and you get a brave new world of video centric service providers.

Video is definitely happening.

Now that CES is over and most of the other bloggers out there have wrapped it up and moved on, it is time for me to look back and ask where was video calling at CES?

Video conferencing is an enterprise thing: it fits large international organizations with multiple sites around the globe. With expensive systems, high bandwidth needs and complex management, this is how it is viewed today.

Now this is changing, and some of the indications of this change were visible at CES. Here's a collection of what I bumped into while walking the show floor.

The personal video phones at the show were quite small in their form factor - similar to an enterprise IP phone with touch screen displays of about 7".

These products were full of applications where video telephony is only one of them: you can find them with calendars, the weather, notes, photos and other widgets crammed into this tiny little device.

The main thing I can say about these beauties is that they all follow the iPhone example of putting a lot of effort and thought into the design and the user interface.

Now none of these videophones have made any considerable commercial breakthroughs, but it's still too early to know whether this will happen in the future. They can become very popular, very fast if these companies focus on easy installation and management to successfully market them.

And what were the most notable ones at the show?

PC Advisor has placed this one as one of the 15 best gadgets of 2009 from CES and for good reason: the iriver is the most slick of them all.

iriver Wave-Home.

They call it talking heads for a reason.

Video chat will never be the same for me.

Found this one at Carl Tyler's blog.

Have you noticed how video is getting bigger and smaller at the same time?

I'll start with an apology - I am living in Israel, where we enjoy those cool electronic appliances that the world is then offered a few years later.

About six years ago, when I moved with my wife and dog from our rented apartment to an apartment of our own, I decided to invest a decent amount of money in to a bigger television set, throwing out that old 25" inch TV for a 32" TV. Today, that seems pathetic.

Then two years ago, I made the move to an 42" LCD TV, while a colleague of mine in the US was already enjoying a projector showing 104" in his bedroom (yap - 104". It looks great if you were wondering).

And this trend is going on - people are replacing their "old" TV sets for something bigger and better. Much bigger. Continue Reading...

There are those who believe that Mobile VoIP is the next best thing, or is the current big thing. Some even take it to the extreme, thinking mobile video chat is going to hit next and will cause the usage of video calling to increase. I am not one of them.

Mobile video calling has so many problems that need to be fixed and it's going to take more than this year to overcome them. My belief is that we will see video calling rising, but not on mobile.

There are two products that make sense to have video calling, in both technical and practical aspects: Laptops/notebooks on one hand, and hardware-based devices such as videophones or room systems on the other.

Room systems have been with us for quite some time now. Continue Reading...