Month: November 2007
-
/
A simple answer to why I’ve done more videoconferencing in the past 3 weeks than I have in the past 3 *years*…
Continue Reading: A simple answer to why I’ve done more videoconferencing in the past 3 weeks than I have in the past 3 *years*…In the past three weeks I have done more videoconferencing than I have in the past three years…including my year or so as the product manager for Mitel’s video collaboration products.
Why?
There’s a simple answer, really. And it speaks to the heart of why I think it has taken so long for videoconferencing to take off… I mean, we’ve have been talking about videophones for what? 40 years or so?
The answer is… duh!… I have a camera always available!
It is always there, sitting at the top of my MacBook Pro screen, just waiting to be used. Whenever I am in a Skype call, or using Sightspeed or iChat… or any other communication program that supports video… moving into video is as simple as pressing a button in the GUI and… ta da… we’re in a video conversation.
Contrast that to the situation a few years back where moving into video involved making sure your camera was connected first. In fact, some of the various programs required a restart after you connected a camera, which meant that you couldn’t just escalate into video while you were in the midst of a call. Back when I was…
-
/
It’s about the platform – Google finally answers the “Gphone” speculation… with an Android!
Continue Reading: It’s about the platform – Google finally answers the “Gphone” speculation… with an Android!“It’s about an open platform, stupid!” While I didn’t include Google when I first wrote my post about how voice is really all about application platforms, I did note in the comments that I had intended to do so… and today’s announcement really shows that they should be in anyone’s list of telephony application platforms. As announced on the Google blog with “Where’s my Gphone?“, Google today announced the Open Handset Alliance and the associated set of forthcoming software called Android. The front page of the Open Handset Alliance provides a rather compelling (to me) statement:
What would it take to build a better mobile phone?
A commitment to openness, a shared vision for the future, and concrete plans to make the vision a reality.
Welcome to the Open Handset Alliance™, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. Together we have developed Android™, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.
We are committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform in the second half of 2008. An early…
