Category: Video
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Video: Jon Stewart gets excited about the Verizon iPhone!
Continue Reading: Video: Jon Stewart gets excited about the Verizon iPhone!Yes, I admit to laughing along with this one, found via Engadget. Enjoy: The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon – Thurs 11p / 10cThe Daily Show on Facebook
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Skype Buys Qik To Add Real-Time Video Recording, Sharing
Continue Reading: Skype Buys Qik To Add Real-Time Video Recording, SharingThe rumors started flying this morning… and continued for quite some time… and then were finally confirmed by a Skype blog post:Skype to acquire Qik
Qik has been around since 2006 and first came on my radar a few years back when Robert Scoble was using it heavily (he hasn’t recently). At the time, though, I still had an iPhone 3G and wasn’t able to use the streaming video (it worked only with the 3GS and now of course the 4) so I didn’t do much myself with Qik. I was, however, very impressed with what Steve Garfield was doing with it. In particular, I remember him bringing it to some Obama events in the Boston area in the run-up to the last US Presidential election and streaming them live from his phone.
The power of live streaming from a mobile device struck me then (and still does now) as quite a powerful content creation tool.
The acquisition of Qik by Skype is somewhat curious because of course Skype already has its own video technology, but the key seems to be in this part of their blog post:
… the acquisition of Qik will help to accelerate our leadership…
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Video: My CNN UK Interview about Skype Supernodes
Continue Reading: Video: My CNN UK Interview about Skype SupernodesThe reaction to my last post explaining how Skype’s supernodes work has been both amazing and amusing. Largely the reaction points out to me that Skype really needs to do a better job explaining their architecture… but in their absence, others of us will do so.Anyway, one of the more fun outcomes was that I was asked to appear on a CNN UK show “Quest on Business” with host Richard Quest. Unfortunately the show was not streamed live nor was it available for viewing online later. Quite a FAIL on CNN’s part, in my opinion, because the segment certainly would have been linked to by some of us. In any event, my friend James Enck in the UK captured the segment by the super high tech method of pointing his cell phone at the TV and recording the video. 🙂
The irony, of course, is that we recorded the show entirely using Skype 😉
For those who wish to view the segment, here it is:
It was fun to do and hopefully helped some more folks out there understand a bit more about Skype. (And thanks, James, for capturing it.)
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Kudos to Mitel on starting to post customer case study videos
Continue Reading: Kudos to Mitel on starting to post customer case study videosKudos to my friends up at Mitel for posting a customer profile to YouTube, this one of Starwood Hotels & Resorts:Sure, it’s a very professionally-produced video that focuses on marketing messages… and yes, many other companies are already doing this… but having spent six years at Mitel (2001-2007) and having been a strong advocate of the company moving into social media, I just admit that I’m personally pleased to see them doing this.
Looking forward to seeing more…
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Now We Know What Happens When The Skype Group Video Free Trial Expires…
Continue Reading: Now We Know What Happens When The Skype Group Video Free Trial Expires…When Skype released Group Video Calling with Skype for Mac 5.0 Beta (see my earlier written review and video review), one of the major questions was:What will happen to group video calling when the free trial ends?
Skype representatives didn’t provide a clear answer at the time.
Now we know the answer…
You get another free trial.
And judging from the email sent by Skype, I’m guessing this means “you will keep getting free trials until we figure out precisely what business model works and/or that the technology is all set”:
We’ll see how long this continues…
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Video: AstriCon Keynote Demonstrating Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework (SCF)
Continue Reading: Video: AstriCon Keynote Demonstrating Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework (SCF)Want to learn more about the Asterisk Scalable Communications Framework (SCF)? While I wrote about Asterisk SCF last week, Digium has now posted the video of the keynote session. It starts with Digium CEO Danny Windham and then at about the 5:45 mark Kevin Fleming takes the stage. At about 10 minutes Kevin starts bringing some community members on stage to tell some stories… all building up to the actual SCF announcement about 33 minutes in 🙂
Regardless of the long buildup, it’s worth watching if you want to understand where Asterisk is going… the demo is pretty cool, too!
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VIDEO: Review of Skype 5.0 Beta for MacOS X, including Group Video
Continue Reading: VIDEO: Review of Skype 5.0 Beta for MacOS X, including Group VideoWant to SEE the new Skype 5.0 Beta for MacOS X in action? Over on the Voxeo blog for my Emerging Tech Talk video podcast, I posted a video review of the Skype 5.0 Beta for MacOS X. You can see the new UI and see the Group Video calling capabilities:
I’m using the Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac on my personal iMac, where screen real estate isn’t a problem at all and so far it’s interesting… it definitely takes a good bit of time to get used to. Over on my work MacBook Pro, I’m still using Skype 2.8.x until I’m really sure I want to make the switch. 🙂
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UPDATE: Apple’s FaceTime for Mac – and shutting the video off
Continue Reading: UPDATE: Apple’s FaceTime for Mac – and shutting the video offSilly me… I had forgotten Apple’s über-minimalist design philosophy. Moments after hitting “Publish” on my hands-on review of FaceTime for the Mac, my friend Stuart Henshall pointed out that the “problem” I listed of not being able to shut off the video was NOT a problem. The answer is simple:
JUST QUIT THE FACETIME APPLICATION!
But, said I… how do I receive calls if the app isn’t open?
Well, as Stuart pointed out to me, followed by multiple comments to the blog, in the background Apple is using their Push Notification framework to listen for incoming calls. And sure enough… after quitting the application I still was able to receive calls fine. When a call comes in the FaceTime application opens up and asks you if you want to accept the call. Simple. Easy.
And yes, “apsd-ft” is sitting there running as a background process:
In fact it seems that the only way to truly sign out of FaceTime is to go into the Preferences of the FaceTime app.
Leave it to Apple to change the way we are used to working (with other video apps) and go for what is a simpler method.…
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Using Apple FaceTime to connect from a Mac to a… TRAIN?
Continue Reading: Using Apple FaceTime to connect from a Mac to a… TRAIN?Received a FaceTime call on my Mac from a +44 number (U.K.) and the first time it didn’t connect… but a little bit later the call came through… and it turned out to be James Body on a train somewhere in the UK!
Apparently James had a 3G MIFI near the window and had his iPhone connected to that via WiFi. James’ audio came across quite well and the video was clear… if choppy from time to time. James said he was experiencing latency around 5 seconds or so.
Still, it was rather cool that it worked as well as it did!
Fun times…
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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…