Recently in Video Applications Category

 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...

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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...

Logitech just launched a new service called Vid.

Essentially, it's an application Logitech is supplying along with the webcams they usually sell. Why? To sell more webcams, of course.

Their selling point for the service is all about simplifying the complex offering out there, that requires installing applications and managing user accounts (think Skype, ooVoo, etc.).

So if Logitech doesn't require you to have a user account, how do you actually connect with the person you want to talk to? Well, the Logitech logic says by email address. Everyone has one. But it's not that simple. Continue Reading...

The visual communication industry has been asleep for a long time. Too long, or so I'd like to think. No great progress has been made.

We've been playing around with room systems, telepresence and other high-end devices, trying - as an industry - to push it as a replacement to flight tickets. Our industry has finally grown, but too slowly.

As the technologies have improved, it seems like the time has come for our industry to wake up and see what's going on in the consumer market of visual communications. Continue Reading...

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...