Category: Collaboration
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Remote Working: the Benefits, Disadvantages, and some Lessons Learned in 15+ years
Continue Reading: Remote Working: the Benefits, Disadvantages, and some Lessons Learned in 15+ yearsWith so many people now having to learn to work remotely due to restrictions related to COVID-19, what information can people share who have been working from home? Back in October 2019, I realized it was 20 years ago when I started working remotely, and so I sent out some tweets asking for opinions about the benefits of working remotely, the challenges / disadvantages, and then the lessons people have learned. I subsequently recorded podcast episodes on each of those three topics.
The links to the Twitter threads and podcasts are below.At some point I may turn them into longer articles themselves, but in the meantime, I hope they will help some of you with ideas for how to get adjusted to this new way of working.
And… I would suspect many of you might just want to jump directly to the lessons learned…
Benefits
- Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/danyork/status/1181883371611406336
- Podcast episode: TDYR 380 – Remote Working, Part 1: What are the BENEFITS of working from home?
Many of the benefits were about no commute, the ability to be present with family, freedom to work and live wherever, flexibility, caring for family, and more. (Note that a good number of the benefits mentioned (such as working…
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Join Live Today at 9:00 CDT – Internet Video Codec BOF at IETF92
Continue Reading: Join Live Today at 9:00 CDT – Internet Video Codec BOF at IETF92Can we create a royalty-free (RF) video codec that can be deployed ubiquitously and become the new open standard for video communication across the Internet?THAT is the fundamental question of the Internet Video Codec (NETVC) Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) happening at IETF 92 in Dallas today, March 24, 2015, from 9:00-11:30 CDT (UTC-5). You can listen and participate live using the following links:
You also may want to view the presentation that will be used during the session.
The goal of the overall effort is defined as this:
- Development of a video codec that is:
- Optimized for real-time communications over the public Internet
- Competitive with or superior to existing modern codecs
- Viewed as having IPR licensing terms that allow for wide implementation and deployment
- Developed under the IPR rules in BCP 78 (RFC 5378) and BCP 79 (RFCs 3979 and 4879)
- Replicate the success of the CODEC WG in producing the Opus audio codec.
The BOF proposal contains more of a narrative:
The Internet needs a royalty-free (RF) video codec that can become the backbone for universal deployment of video related technologies. Royalty-bearing codecs put constraints on implementors that are…
- Development of a video codec that is:
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Video: VUC 528 Provides An Update On Matrix.org And Wire
Continue Reading: Video: VUC 528 Provides An Update On Matrix.org And WireLast Friday’s VUC conference call / podcast / hangout provided some interesting updates about the ongoing work at Matrix.org to build services for scalable, distributed and federated collaboration systems as well as some discussion of Wire, the app I’ve written about here. Guests included Matthew Hodgson and Amandine Le Pape from Matrix.org, as well as the usual cast of characters and a couple of live demonstrations, too.
You can view the episode web page and listen to the show here:
I joined the show about mid-way through and naturally wound up talking about IPv6, the Internet of Things (IoT), ICANN, DNS and other topics.
FYI, some good info about Matrix.org can be found in their FAQ. Back in November 2014, there was also another VUC episode focused around Matrix.org.
It was an enjoyable show and I’d encourage you to give it a listen.
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Video Interview: What Is The Future of Real-Time Communications?
Continue Reading: Video Interview: What Is The Future of Real-Time Communications?As I posted over on the Voxeo Talks blog recently, über-geek Chris Pirillo recently interviewed VoIP industry veteran Jeff Pulver and Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor on the topic of the future of real-time communications. It was a wide ranging interview talking about the history of communication apps, how VoIP has evolved, the role of standards, issues around bandwidth caps, the role of individuals and so much more. Chris explained a bit more on his site.. The video is now available on YouTube:
As a producer of video interviews, I was personally intrigued by Chris’ use of a Google+ “Hangout” to conduct the interview. I’m going to have to try it at some point.
Enjoy the video!
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Do Cisco’s Cius and HP’s WebOS tablets stand a chance against the iPad?
Continue Reading: Do Cisco’s Cius and HP’s WebOS tablets stand a chance against the iPad?In light of the phenomenal success of the iPad, do “enterprise tablets” from Cisco and HP even remotely stand a chance? Particularly when: 1) Apple is targeting enterprises now; and 2) all signs are that Apple will soon be releasing a version 2 of the iPad with even more capabilities. Yesterday Greg Ferro took this question on in a post comparing the Cisco Cius versus HP WebOS tablets versus the iPad.His post is definitely worth a read for his comparisons… I’ll zoom in on what was for me the key point (my emphasis added at the end):
The problem with this lovely story is the Apple iPad. No doubt Cisco and HP have been working on their tablet stories for the last two or three years. I also have no doubt that the unexpected success of the iPad selling twenty or thirty million units in the first year has seriously upset their plans. But the thing really bothering them would be rise of the articles in the press about the iPad moving into the enterprise. Cisco and HP think that they own the enterprise, and it’s their right to make money out it. The idea that Apple can crossover…
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Skype and the Incredible Power of Persistent Group Chats
Continue Reading: Skype and the Incredible Power of Persistent Group ChatsWhat is one reason why many people continue using Skype for chat / instant messaging when so many other solutions are out there? Particularly when Skype chat is a closed, proprietary “walled garden” that doesn’t interact with IM networks?After I wrote recently about being a huge user of Skype, Michael Graves asked in the comments why an organization like Voxeo that is so insanely devoted to open standards (and even uses a tagline of “Unlocked Communications”) would use something as closed as Skype?
It’s a great question, and while I answered his comment, it bears a bit more exploration.
In 3 words, the largest reason for using Skype is this:
persistent group chats
Being a globally distributed company, Voxeo is an IM-centric organization and we set up “group chats” within Skype for pretty much every activity we’re doing. Some of those are long-living group chats for communication within various teams or groups of people. Those chats may continue to exist for literally years and have people added and removed to them over time. Some group chats are created for short-term projects or deliverables. And some may be created ad hoc for resolving quick issues – and then disbanded as…
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A *CRAZY* Week In Collaboration / Communications News – A Summary from Dave Michels
Continue Reading: A *CRAZY* Week In Collaboration / Communications News – A Summary from Dave MichelsThis has been an absolutely insane week of announcements relating to the Unified Communications / collaboration / VoIP / etc, etc. space… it’s been a while since I can think of a week that had so much news packed into it.
I think it’s called… “everyone wants to get all their news out before it is US Thanksgiving and people start ignoring news because of the holidays!”
Regardless of why, the fact is that each day I’ve watched the Twitter stream just scrolling by with tons of items I’d love to write about. Unfortunately, I, too, have been slammed – and unable to write all that I’ve wanted to.
Thankfully, Dave Michels pulled together a nice summary over on No Jitter:
Watta Week!
Check there for pointers to stories about Microsoft Lync… Mitel Freedom… Cisco’s zillion video announcements… and news from Polycom, Avaya and HP, too.
Some week, I’m hoping to write about each of these myself… but that week is very definitely NOT this week!
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Hands-On with Apple’s new FaceTime for Mac (Screenshots)
Continue Reading: Hands-On with Apple’s new FaceTime for Mac (Screenshots)At Apple’s “big event” today, one of the announcements I found most interesting was that Apple’s proprietary FaceTime video protocol would now be available for Mac computers. To date it has only been available for the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch. Naturally, I had to give it a try! 😉 I’ll show the usage here and then mention some problems I found with this “beta”.
USING FACETIME FOR MAC
Installing FaceTime for Mac was a straightforward download, doubleclick and go through the installer. Once you launch the app, you have to verify the email address you want to use to receive calls. After that, your screen loads to show your video and the contacts in your Mac OS X Address book:
Jim Courtney and I usually try out new toystools like this and sure, enough, he was online and called me. The first time, though, he used an email address that I did not have associated with my Mac. It nicely automagically called me on my mobile (which was also in Jim’s Address Book record for me) and we had a MacBook-to-iPhone call.
It worked fine and we had a great call. It was actually quite handy in that I…
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The New Breed of Tablets from Cisco, Avaya and RIM – will they matter?
Continue Reading: The New Breed of Tablets from Cisco, Avaya and RIM – will they matter?Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all rushing out “tablet” devices now for the enterprise market – but will they actually matter? Will enterprises really want to use these high-end and high-priced tablets versus all the new consumer tablets like the iPad and all the various Android and Windows tables in the queue?
Don’t get me wrong … it think it is awesome that Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all coming out with new tablets. Ever since getting an iPad back in early May it has become a constant companion on my travels around and I use it for so many different purposes.
The touch interface is also so incredibly “natural”… I watch my daughters using the iPad and just have to think: “Why shouldn’t computers just work this way?”
Any user interface improvements that improve the communications user experience are very definitely a GOOD thing!
So I commend Cisco, Avaya and RIM for coming out with tablets.
I just still find myself wondering why I might want to pay to buy one of these tablets. I had this exchange yesterday with analyst Brian Riggs on Twitter:
As I said, I already have a SIP client on my iPad (and there…
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Phono – Your new, free tool for Rewiring the Real-time Web!
Continue Reading: Phono – Your new, free tool for Rewiring the Real-time Web!What if you could have customers call in to your call center from directly within your web browser? No “click to call” that calls them back on their cell phone… but literally just press a button on your web site and start talking? And get connected directly to the team appropriate to the web page rather than a generic inbox?
What if you could do this with more than just voice… but also video? screen sharing? with better audio quality than the legacy telephony network (the PSTN)?
What if you could also add in live chat sessions directly from your website? Giving you true multi-channel interaction with your customers?
And what if you could do this without any downloads by the customer?
Even better… what if this could be done with your branding? and connecting to ANY IP communications system?
Announcing Phono
Today at the JQuery Conference in Boston, the Voxeo Labs team is announcing Phono a new software development kit that lets you create apps just like the ones I mentioned. It’s free, it’s “skinnable” and it works with any systems that use SIP or XMPP (Jabber). More info here:
The Phono…