September 2009 Archives

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 goes:

• Garrett Smith asks if video conferencing is over-hyped on VoIP Insider - no it isn't. I'd say it is quieter out there than it should be.
• If you are new to video conferencing, then Carol Skyring has a good starting point for you - her Videoconferncing: The Basics. It comes as a new series of posts or an ebook.
• China Unicom is reported to have started a fixed line video telephony service - good luck!
• Jack Loftus brings a videophone concept from 1910 on Gizmodo - did anyone patent it?
• Michael Graves provides interesting information about immersive audio - not really video, but reminded me a lot of 3D video communications. It's in our future, but will take time to get there.

 It is about time we stop pretending as if video conferencing is here to replace face-to-face meetings. Or that it gives a "life-like" experience, which will surely make airline companies redundant. As Rich Tehrani reports from a recent Forbes survey:

... executives still expressed an overwhelming preference for face-to-face meetings, with more than eight out of ten (84%) saying they prefer in-person contact to virtual...

...

I've been whining a bit about the lack of innovation in video conferencing in my RADVISION blog, and even took the time to suggest what the next innovation might be.

At the time of writing these posts, I haven't had the time to read Robert Cringely's post about the education system:

Education, which - along with health care - seems to exist in an alternate economic universe, ought to be subject to the same economic realities as anything else.  We should have a marketplace for insight.  Take a variety of experts (both professors and lay specialists) and make them available over the Internet by video conference.  Each expert charges by the minute with those charges adjusting over time until a real market value is reached.  The whole setup would run like iTunes and sessions would be recorded for later review.

And this is just a quote. You should definitely read the whole post, especially the beginning of it, which is rather amusing.

The thing is, that his post got me thinking:

What if the innovation in video conferencing should not be in the technology or the service, but rather in the applications that people use?

Cisco Telepresence used in a class (commercial)

Maybe it's time to start thinking about video conferencing infrastructure (endpoints, bridges) as vehicles or enablers for other industries. The technology is mature enough and solid enough to take the next step. Continue Reading...

On my VoIP Survivor blog, I've been complaining about the lack of innovation in the video conferencing market.

I'd like to take this a jab at suggesting what can be the next innovation for the video conferencing market.

1. Connectivity between enterprises

It's no secret that video conferencing today is a niche where only large enough enterprises play. You need to have multiple locations around the world in order to utilize video calling. Why? Because there is no easy way today to "dial" calls between enterprise boundaries.

Our industry has created islands of video conferencing equipment - equipment that has no real problem of interoperating with each other, just a minor issue of being able to find each other over the network.

The company that will be able to take this problem and solve it, effectively being a global carrier of video telephony, will be a true innovator that will open the door for far better collaboration and communication between corporate partners, suppliers and customers.

It will make video conferencing a true B2B solution, instead of the B solution it is today.

2.