February 2009 Archives

Have you noticed this new trend of "connected TV"?

It showed up at CES in full force, with every TV manufacturer out there having its own version of a television that connects to the internet - showing YouTube videos, latest news, stock market tickers or even your collection of photos out of Flickr or Picasa.

Chris Albrecht at NeeTeeVee  questions this evolution step:

How much of the Internet do you want on your television? Is the full web on the TV the way of the future?

I believe that while the question is valid, this is a done deal - television sets will be connected to the internet. Just like pretty much every other home appliance (OK, maybe not your washing machine...). Little by little, it seems that the interactivity that formerly existed in set-top box is moving down to the television set.

Set-top box vendors should be worried. Very worried.

Stacey Higginbotham just reported on GigaOm about Chumby's deal with Broadcom:

For anyone who recalls the Chumby as a countertop device for accessing widgets, you're thinking of the right company.

I'll be placing here links once in a while of news items and blog posts that I find interesting and are related to visual communications.

If you have items you'd like to feature here - just email me at tsahil@radvision.com.

Here's a first batch:

• TELEPHONY Online that Verizon is planning to provide video conferencing service on their FiOS network "sometime this year". Bill Heilig from Verizon says "If you think about the full video-telephony program, we think it has to be on the TV, but it also has to be on the PC." I couldn't agree more that video telephony has to be on the TV.
• Garrett Smith, a VoIP blogger by heart, is now  to video (or a video believer). If you are not reading his blog - it's time you start. The fact that he is looking closer at video calling goes to show that video is catching on.
• Skype has released version 4.0 officially this month.

I've meant to write about downloadable VoIP Clients for a long time now, but didn't quite know how to tackle the issue. I finally wrote about it on my VoIP Survivor blog, stating I don't see the value of having downloadable VoIP clients in mobile application stores. However, there's an additional aspect that needs to be tackled, and that is video.

I'll start by quoting Morten Hjerde on the fragmentation on development platforms:

"... if you intend to interact with the phone itself - if your app uses the camera, the GPS, or any other internal phone feature - you are back to developing a separate app per manufacturer...the dream of cross platform development seems further away than ever.

If there's anything I like about Sagee it's the amount of interesting links he sends out on twitter (and via email).

Last week he sent this one out: apparently Apple has filed a patent on a camera that is "hidden" behind a display screen.

If there's anything that makes video calling weird it's the fact that you simply can't keep eye contact.

Before you jump in with your hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars worth telepresence conferencing system equipment, I ask you to think about people like me for a second. People like me, with their laptops and webcams, which constitutes the most common way for people to conduct their video calls, and which is going to be the most used scenario in the corporate domain as well in my opinion.

When using a web camera, usually sitting on top of the screen or on the desk, keeping eye contact is impossible, simply because you need to gaze at the screen to see the people you're talking to, while the camera shows off either your nostrils or your scalp to the rest of the world. I, by the way, prefer scalp.

The original post comes from Zach Spear of AppleInsider who covers this Apple patent. I've bolded out the interesting tidbits:

Submitted in July 2007, the filing details plans for a camera mounted behind a display that could capture an image "while the display elements are in an inactive state (in which the display elements are darkened and at least partially transparent)."

According to the document, a similar, additional system could involve two or more cameras, with software combining the two images into one.  Video would also be possible by cycling the display "between the active state and the inactive state repeatedly".

• I guess they could have called this patent the iContact, if it wasn't already trademarked.