When I tested Skype about a year ago, I lamented the fact that it was only point-to-point.  Well, as I had my attention turned to AltamontCowork (and surviving)…… this past May Skype apparently introduced 5 way videoconferencing (video chat), and today, they doubled that to 10 way (in Beta, see the announcement here)

Soooo, Skype is NOW a multipoint videoconferencing tool.  WhoooHooo.

’bout time.

If you want to grab the Beta version with 10 way video chat, go here for the Windows version.  There appear to be no other versions at this time (ie no Mac or Linux).

Conclusion

Videoconferencing:  Anywhere, Anytime, Anyone is progressing at a rapid pace.  Now, with Skype multipoint videoconferencing, for free, at your fingertips, videoconferencing is indeed at the cusp of the hockey stick….finally!

No need for fancy (high cost) rooms, fancy lighting, or the need to travel to a videoconferencing room (how stupid)….now you can videoconference from just about anywhere, to anyone, at anytime.  Cool.

Coworking locations can add a virtual member….hmmmm, 9 virtual members from anywhere in the world!

Never, even on the coldest day, has a Book ever frozen on me.

I’m in the middle of a great book (Brad Thor’s “The Last Patriot”) and my Nook FROZE.

Yikes!   Nothing I did worked.  Rats.  (I used the Nook app on my new HTC Aria to continue reading)

Then I called Barnes & Noble Tech Support, 1-800-THE-BOOK, (how FUNNY is that…Barnes & Noble tech support…..?) and they told me what to do to UNFREEZE my Nook.

1. Pull off the back cover (there are tiny slots on each side to fingernail grab and pull)

2. Unscrew the battery screw and take out the battery.

3. Hold down the Power button for 1 minute (to drain the power completely).

4. Put the battery back in and secure it with the screw.

5. Put the cover back on.

6. Charge it for up to 4 hours (mine only took a few minutes to UNFREEZE).  But I will have to keep charging it since it is severely uncharged.

Barnes & Noble Tech Support….how funny, but, they are great!  :-)

You have probably heard by now that you can make a phone call using Gmail.

I can verfiy…it works!  But voice only, no video…..yet.

Here is how it worked:

• Using my trusty Toshiba laptop (now over 4 years old and going strong) I got on my Gmail account and saw the prompt “Call Phone”.  (I used my Chat 50 as the speaker / mic, but, it would be much better at AltamontCowork to use a headset with a mic.)
• I clicked in “Call Phone” and up popped the dialer you see at the head of this blog.
• I put in a number then quickly realized that I could enter a persons name or a partial name (like the first letter) and see a list of contacts (that have a telephone number listed in the contact info) you can call with that first letter.
• I selected the person I wanted to call…..me (hey, I’m an interesting fellow), and clicked the “Call” button.
• I heard ringing on the computer, and also, eventually, on my cell phone. I answered and could hear the full conversation (no echo, which was very interesting).
• I hung up.

Easy as 3.14.

If you have Google Voice, you can set it up so anyone calling your GV number calls your computer.  I am having soooo much fun with my new HTC Aria….I’ll keep it as my phone.  Dialing out is good enuf for me….

NOW….all they need is video and we can have:

Videoconferencing: Anytime, Anyplace, Anyone

UPDATE:

If my instructions on making a Gmail call (above) were too boring…the good folks at CNET made a video:

I’ll say it one more time:  Videoconferencing anytime, anyplace, anyone.

This is the future….Vidyo is pushing the technology of mobile videoconferencing….whooohoo!

I have been saying this, hmmmmm, since, errrr, 1992 (actually 1988, but, who is counting).

Videoconferencing should be be able to connect anyone, anytime, to anyplace.

Until, 2010 this has not been the case, but, maybe, finally, it is going to happen.  Very exciting.

All new technologies take a good 15 to 20 years to become the hottest thing since sliced bread (an overnight success).  TV, telephone (even longer), microwave ovens, computers, cell phones, Internet, you name it….it takes a generation, or so, for a great idea to become one with the universe.

The time is almost here for Internet based (desktop or, now, mobile) videoconferencing. Why?  Because H.323 was ratified in 1996 and since then the technology has made advancements no one back then could have predicted (like the winning transport would be a shared public network, web cams, very powerful laptop computers, very powerful cell phones, high speed wireless hot spots….on and on).  14 years.

And not just 14 years.  This generation of kids, going off to college as the class of 2014, are everything we were not:

A. Computer and Internet savvy

B.  Social media fiends

C. They watch (and upload) streaming video as a normal course of the day (You Tube, Hulu, etc).

They are comfortable socializing, being seen, being heard, and watching via the Internet.

It stands to reason that VIDEOCONFERENCING could be next on the list!

WhooooHooo….oh, sorry, I just get excited to finally see this happening…

Want proof?

Kristen is going to the University of the Pacific in a few days.  She has grown up with videoconferencing….and completely ignored it (much to Dad’s chagrin), until now.  Kristen’s friend, Ryan Ng, is heading off to UC Berkeley and is new (hey, compared to me anyone is new) to videoconferencing (he probably just now heard the term “videoconferencing”….it is “Skype” to the kids).

Look what they are doing!  How friggin cool is this?

Who needs a fancy (VERY expensive) “telepresence” room with perfect lighting, perfect sound, and boring, uptight, people on each end viewing each others blisters, zits, waddles, and wrinkles in glorious high definition?

Not the kids of today….sit in the room with NO lights on (or in the quad of UOP or Berzerkely), and videoconference with your friends!  THIS is how videoconferencing will finally hit the big time (take note Wainhouse!).  The kids of NOW will take this technology further than WE could have ever imagined!

Don’t believe it?  That is ok, you did not beleive me 20 years ago when I started evangelizing videoconferencing and 18 years ago when I did the same, and more, for desktop (now Mobile) videoconferencing…. so bite me.  ;-)

This is real…and it is gonna take videoconferencing to the stars….so hold on.

Take a look at these pics…..tell me if YOU use videoconferencing this effectively…bet you do not.

Future

The future of videoconferencing will be mobile.  Laptops, WiFi, 3G, 4G, Cell Phones (Gee, Steve Jobs says videoconferencing is “real” now even though Apple dropped it in the beginning), iPads (see my next posting showing Vidyo on an iPad), whatever….you will no longer have to travel to a room to videoconference (did I ever say how stupid that is?)…

Anytime, anyplace, anyone.   Videoconferencing will be as normal to the next generation kids as talking on the phone was to us.

My trusty 4 year old Toshiba laptop

Got a call yesterday from a friend who is buying her daughter a computer for college.

Once we got through the pricing for the system she picked out (it was a good price for a 4 Gig RAM, 320 Gig HD laptop, with web cam) we moved on to discuss virus protection, browsers, and Office.  This is where my advice has changed DRAMATICALLY in the past 6 to 12 months.

Here goes…

1. Do not pay for anti-virus.  Go to Microsoft (lets assume we are talking Windows machines) and download Microsoft Security Essentials.  It is free, and it works fine.  And who knows Windows better than Microsoft?

2. On the flip side of Microsoft, I suggest not buying the Microsoft Office Suite.  There are two valid options here:

A. You can download the free Open Office suite of software which in it’s latest versions (a few years back this was not the case) can read and save files that are Office compatible.

B. Move to the cloud and use Google Docs which are getting better and better at a rapid pace.

3. In the old days, the speed of the processor was what made a computer.  Now, with 32 and 64 bit systems, that does not seem to be the primary measurement anymore (at least not for me).  I would say that any processor you pick (or that is installed in the computer you choose) is going to be good to excellent.   So go with the flow.  I now look at RAM, HD space, size of the screen, and if you want, an embedded web cam or not.  Pretty basic.

4. As for browsers.  My suggestions now are Chrome or Firefox.  IE is not among my favorites, but, I must say it appears to be getting better and, more importantly, safer.  Chrome is so freaking fast….and the fact that I am quickly moving everything to Google cloud…..I use Chrome almost exclusively.  Firefox when I have to, and never IE.

Lets chat about videoconferencing for one second.   With Skype (and similar video chat apps, even Facetime), and the young kids now going off to college with an intimate knowledge, and comfort, with computers…I see the day VERY SOON where videoconferencing will be, finally (finally!), ubiquitous.  Not in the conference room, but, at home, at school, and at any WiFi hot spot.

Conclusion

The world is changing, computing is moving to the cloud, and it makes sense to start making the move, or at least, not tying yourself down with expensive software as you transition.

The kids will push videoconferencing to the levels I have always thought would be the case.  My Sharepoint slide show from March 2009 (or see it embedded below) talked about “mobile videoconferencing”…THAT is fast becoming a reality.  :-)

Move on, move up…keep creating!

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board recently approved $5 million for the installation of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and home chargers.

According to the press release, the money will fund the installation of:

• 3,000 home chargers
• 2,000 public chargers
• 50 fast chargers (off of freeways)

They say that transportation is responsible for 50% of the air pollution in the Bay Area.

My Advice

Although this is really cool, and a big step in the right direction for the environment.

The BAAQMD should push Bay Area employers and government to implement TELECOMMUTING.  That one simple thing gets cars OFF the road (thousands of them) completely, reduces traffic, reduces stress, reduces pollution, saves money,  increases productivity and increases morale.  And it can be implemented NOW….not 5 years from now, or 10.

DUH…it’s 2010…telecommuting should be the norm.

Telecommuting = Coworking = Telework

I was reading Janine Lim’s “Videoconferencing Out on a Lim” blog this morning and she had posted a link to the AARNet Desktop Video Conference Project Group Report.

I surfed over to the report and was pleased (VERY) to find an extremely comprehensive evaluation of several desktop videoconferencing systems.   Great work!

Grab the PDF here

Systems Evaluated (Grabbed from Janine’s Blog)

• Mirial Softphone
• Polycom PVX
• Xmeeting 0.4P2
• Emblaze-VCON’s vPoint HD
• Kedacom PCMT
• EVO
• Vidyo
• Tandberg Movi 2.0
• Microsoft Office Communicator
• Polycom Converged Management Application

This and That

As you know, Desktop Videoconferencing is a subject near and dear to my heart since we Beta tested the first DVC system way back in 1992 (CLI’s Cameo), and then the second, and then the third.

This report is something, that I think, is badly needed:  It is objective, and it is free for everyone.   AARNet rocks!

The uses for “holographic” videoconferencing…long a dream….are pretty obvious.  I would suspect that the need for 8 cameras around the users would be a drawback, but, heck, if you can afford a fancy telepresence system, why not splurge and spend a few thousand extra bucks.

Anyway….I was reading ComputerWorld online today and saw that Google has dropped WAVE.

No surprise there.

AltamontCowork member, Phil, and I played with it last year (when we finally got our coveted invitation to try it) and it was underwhelming to say the least.  I tried for about a week…..I mean, look, I really wanted it to be great stuff.

But….alas, no, it was not great stuff (at least to me).

I finally just stopped using it, and have not touched it since…

Seems like it was not great stuff for others too….but, hey…good try.

I’m more than willing to give something else a try.  I have an android phone (HTC Aria), a Nook, and am slowly migrating to the cloud using Google Docs, Calendar, Tasks, etc etc.

Google up!