I was chatting with one of our developers, Rishi, trying to understand why would Google want to opensource the full audio and video stack they acquired when they bought GIPS (i.e. give away perfectly good code that they spent plenty of money to purchase). He explained that one reason is…
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Summary: VSee user Dr. Russell E. Brown shares how VSee has helped him successfully practice telepsychiatry. Last week I got to speak with neurologist and psychiatrist, Dr. Russell E. Brown from Atlanta, Georgia. He is the Program Director of Avenia Behavioral Management and works with elderly patients suffering from such issues…
Summary: An example of how a one-click Skype call improved my customer service experience, and how a VSee video call with screen-share could make it even better. Yesterday afternoon, after discovering that my tires had been slashed, I was online trying to figure out if my insurance policy would cover…
Last September, Frost & Sullivan came up with a new way to measure the “collaborativeness” of visual collaboration technology. It looks like a plug for Magor Telecollaboration dressed in pseudo-scientific language to me; but, it does suggest a quantitative way of analyzing whether a collaborative product is worth its return…
Skype, after holding off on plans to launch an initial public offering IPO and amidst rumors of possible acquisition by Cisco, Google, and Facebook, is being acquired by Microsoft for an unsolicited offer of 8.5 billion in cash. Many analysts feel it’s a bit more than the company is worth…
Cisco’s foray into the consumer market has proved too challenging for the networking giant. This morning, Cisco Systems announced that it would cut 550 jobs as part of its plan to exit some of its consumer business. This includes closing the video recording device division which manufactures the once-great Flip…
It could happen. There are rumors (according to Bloomberg) that the two have been chatting about it. Skype users can already call and SMS Facebook friends, making video the next logical next step. Personally, this feels like a natural extension of Skype’s current incarnation as a consumer video calling tool.…
As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Skype and GoToMeeting (Citrix) are banding together to try and shore up each other’s weaknesses as collaborative business tools. The former has begun asking $9 a month for group calling but has a limited screenshare and no collaborative tools; the latter charges even…
Yesterday while I was at a conference Skype announced on their blog that they were dropping the ‘beta’ label from their Mac release, and that group calling would now be a paid feature. Obviously, I had to respond. 🙂 I have a lot of fun talking about Skype because I…
Sometimes Christmas comes a few days early. Forgive me for the Schadenfreude, but the fact that PC Mag, TechCrunch, GigaOm, BBC News, and so many other outlets discussed the BUSINESS IMPLICATIONS of Skype’s crash yesterday amuses me. To quote Om Malik from GigaOm: …over past few years it has become…
“Until a patch is issued by the vendor, Matta recommends you unplug the device from its network socket.” – 11/17 advisory re: Cisco Unified Videoconferencing products Hoo boy. Apart from staving off companies like ours, releasing expensive novelty items to home users, and then getting blasted in the stock market,…
My friend Jeff Urdan, honcho of VeaMea (a friendly competitor of ours that uses a client-server architecture), sent me an interesting email yesterday with the title “A laugh for your blog?” Apparently the big guys, realizing they’re a little behind in desktop videoconferencing innovation (read: not optimized for ad hoc workflow),…
This was a very interesting post Michael Arrington put up on TechCrunch yesterday. I myself am guilty of a one of the sins: I have a two-sentence limit on my IMs before I hit enter and continue…but I’ll explain myself at the end. The points he makes are very good…
Skype announced it will soon have an IPO. (Also here.) Let’s not confuse this with being a business tool. Yes, video calling is handy for businesses. But what about presentation and collaborative tools? Skype has an immense user base, and yet operational income for the first half of 2010 was…
