[This post is based on a post written by Romi Mikulinsky and me, published - in Hebrew - in the popular HolesInTheNet blog]
We live in crazy times, I tell you. Everywhere you go, someone tells you that you have to be more “social” – use social media, connect via social networks, have a social strategy, yada social yada. And it seems that the more “social” we get, the less social we actually are, as we spend most of our time in front of a screen (and I don’t care which of the four it is…).
But you can’t escape it – social networks have won us over. If you’re not there, you might as well not exist. And in case you’re a late adopter to all of this, here’s a short recap: early social networks, known then as “online communities”, started forming around 1994. Geocities (RIP) and Tripod were probably the best known community websites. Then, between 2002 and 2004, the “social networks” emerged, with Friendster leading the way, and MySpace, Bebo and Facebook following behind.
As social networks became popular, “specific” social networks started appearing, catering for specific, specialized “common grounds”: LinkedIn connects you to your professional “friends” (colleagues, fellow and former co-workers); Classmates connects you to your old classmates; Musicians and artists can be found on MySpace, etc. Even large organizations started creating their own social networks, for instance IBM.
The Pros and Cons of “Specific” Social Networks
The “specific” social networks offer us defined, bordered content. As Gal Mor, chief editor of HolesInTheNet, wisely notes [Hebrew. Sorry!], “specific” social networks are actually not competing, and shouldn’t compete, with other networks, “specific” and non-”specific”. They offer us clear and simple pros:
It is clear what data they hold and which people are members
It is therefore simple to find information, as the content and borders are well defined
On the other hand, as the content in each network is limited, we find ourselves using more and more social networks, and their numbers are increasing on a daily basis. Being a member of several social networks raises a whole new set of issues:
How one connects to people in each of the different networks?
How one manages their “split personalities” over different networks?
If I want to upload pictures, will I use flickr (a “specific” service), facebook or twitter?
If I am updating my status, should I update it across networks?
When I am looking for information, where do I begin?
a visualization of my personal Facebook network (via TouchGraph)
Social Networks, Meet Unified Communication
All this really reminds me of the “more is less” debate regarding our communication means, especially in the enterprise. We have many choices, each with its own set of characteristics and its place on the communication continuum. But after we learned to master each one, with its pros and cons, we realized that indeed more is less, unless they are unified.
Unified communications is aimed at reducing the “communication latency“, that negative effect on our effectiveness that is caused by having to deal with too many means of communications. By using one platform, with one interface, to access all those means, either explicitly or implicitly, that latency is reduced if not eliminated.
When I receive my incoming calls – video, voice, IM – using one application; When I can check my voice and video mail, chat history, e-mails from there; When I can reach someone – by e-mail, phone, whatever – from that same application, I can spend my time on real work instead of switching between applications and playing that old “cat and mouse” game.
And the same goes for social networks. The “secret” of connecting the interfaces, even if the connection is not “unified” but limited, is slowly but surely spreading around the social arena. You can update your status in Twitter, and automatically update your facebook and LinkedIn status as well. You can upload an image to flickr, and share it on facebook automatically. I am using the blip.fm integration with Twitter to “dedicate” songs to my friends using YouTube and other streaming services. This is not only cool, but effective and increases productivity. Not to mention helps you handle your social network fatigue.
Social Networks, meet Unified Communication
And it’s no coincidence I have mentioned Twitter in all of my examples above. It seems that in the present battlefield around the “one platform”, the “one interface” that will unite all those social networks, Twitter is winning on many fronts. Almost without trying Twitter has become, in a weird evolution that I think its creators didn’t predict, the center of information for many of us.
We have dumped our RSS readers, stopped forwarding e-mails, quit the forums and chat rooms, and are focusing on Twitter more and more for sharing information and links. Why follow a bunch of blogs, when you can follow the bloggers themselves? Why spend time in various social networks, when Twitter has the interesting links to them as well? You just follow your friends and interests on Twitter, and turn your timeline into that ultimate unified social network.
Ultimate? Well, not really. Information on Twitter gets lost too quickly. “Walled gardens” are still un-penetrable, even with links from Twitter into them. The massive amounts of information make us miss out on important things too often. And yet, until there’s a better service, or social network, that will offer a better integration – one network to rule them all – Twitter is the only sane option to stay social, or “social”, and still have a life.
2009 has been quite an interesting year – to the world in general, to the tech community, to the video conferencing market and to this blog specifically.
I thought that celebrating a new year is a great excuse to visit the posts I liked best in 2009, so here’s a recap:
January
If iPhone wants to be the future, I argued in January, it sure is lagging behind. And I was referring to the lack of a front facing camera in the iPhone 2.0.
A year later, nothing’s really changed, and although some creative minds are trying to bridge the gap, the result is still far from pleasing, and you can only blame Apple for that.
This year, with the recent acquisitions of LifeSize and Tandberg, proved that video conferencing endpoints are no longer nice to have, but here to stay.
March
In March I was trying to compare 2009 and 2003 in terms of the state of the economy and video conferencing. As I joined RADVISION in 2003, and as the Dot-com bubble burst just before, it was amazing to see how close 2009 was to 2003 in terms of the current status and the predictions we all make.
This lead to a post called “2009 Reality Check“, which I personally really liked, as it gave everyone some stuff to think about.
The bottom line was that although we can’t beat Moore’s law, we can still provide customers with a better experience, and the way to do it is to harvest the power given to us by the new and exciting multi-core platforms.
May
I love Seth Godin. And in May I got my chance to write about one of Seth’s posts in my blog. The post “Video Conferencing – The Kind of Meeting That Works” used Seth’s definition of the “three kinds of meetings” in corporate culture and explained why video conferencing can make most work better.
June
In June RADVISION announced many new exciting versions of its video conferencing products at InfoComm09. In the “InfoComm 09 Round-Up” Bob Romano, the NBU VP Marketing, reviewed them, along-side videos from the show.
I especially liked the quote from one of the senior analysts at the show: “it’s nice to see RADVISION regaining its technology leadership, where they belong”.
July
In July an Air Tran commercial really made me laugh. Bottom line was that even if video conferencing is not going to replace face-to-face meetings, air travel will change and everybody knows it.
So I wrote my post about “Business Travel Without Moving” to say, again, that I see no logic what so ever in the excessive amount of business travel done today. Not that it really helped.
August
On August a tweet by Roger Farnsworth got me travelling back through time to the mid 90s. When video conferencing started, and the user experience was, well, crappy (as Tsahi likes to say).
In my post “The Curious Incident With The Post I Read In The Night Time” I tried to explain how many myths regarding video conferencing are no longer true, and how the experience today can definitely replace any other means of personal communication.
My answer: who cares?! Just as long as it’s affordable, and can be massively adopted.
October
It’s been a year filled with telepresence, but in RADVISION we are already taking a glimpse towards the future. “If Telepresence is the Present, 3DPresence is the Future” I wrote in October, giving some details about an exciting project that RADVISION takes part in – 3D Video Conferencing.
November
2009 was the year of the cloud. Or at least the year of the “talk about the cloud”. I really liked Dave Michels’ “Cloud Series” and decided to discuss cloud technology in general and cloud-based video conferencing in particular.
2009 was also the year everything went multi-touch. Suddenly everyone understands that UI is very important. But are touch-based interfaces the only way to go?
Coming Soon: Free Video Conferencing From Google. This was the headline of a recent ZDNet story by Garrett Rogers. Garett based his prediction on an interview with Rishi Chandra, a Google Apps product manager, on SFGate. There, Mr. Chandra said that “launching a voice or video chat session should flow seamlessly within Gmail and mesh organically with the other Apps” and “should be embedded in the core experience across the application set”.
Google’s voice and video communication capabilities are limited to peer-to-peer communication, but Mr. Chandra says:
“This [current Gmail capability] is the first step in a much broader set of features we hope to roll out over the next six to 12 months around video [and voice] capabilities. It’s a great opportunity for us to push the space along.”
Google’s current video calling interface. Source: Google.
Today the Google video calling product is part of Gmail, meaning you need to have your browser open, pointing to the Gmail page, to make your presence available and receive incoming calls. You also have to specifically install the video chat capabilities. Furhtermore, Google has not launched the multi-party conferencing ability yet. The result is that although Google holds the promise to become a potential market disrupter, we will have to wait for that promise to happen.
Google Video Conferencing Is Not Evil
But why waste good posts on negativity? This is Tsahi’s job. Instead, I would rather discuss how Google’s plans for further investment in video conferencing are an opportunity for the whole market, a much-needed step even. And I’ll explain.
I’ve been writing here a lot about a need for a change of mind. For video conferencing to become a relevant, viable means of communication, it has to be regarded as such by the public. The public, not just the video conferencing industry, IT managers or early adopters and tech savvy geeks. Cisco has been doing the industry a lot of good by intensely marketing the video conferencing concept, but its focus is on the high-end Telepresence.
Like it or not, technology adoption is not rational. SMS messages (texting), intended for Service Providers’ personnel, were adopted by young teens and became the next big thing, both in terms of participation and monetization. Instant messaging was regarded as a pass-time activity a few years ago, but became so popular in our homes, that it was adopted by every organization as a legitimate communication means. And I can go on with such examples for hours.
Companies like Skype and Microsoft, with their video-enabled IM clients, Nokia or Samsung, with their video-enabled handsets, have brought video to the masses, but not the masses to video. If Google is successful in changing that, making everyone use video calling as a natural means of engagement, like chatting or e-mail, the adoption of video conferencing elsewhere, especially in the corporate world, is just a matter of time.
Just take a look at the huge BANG Google has pulled off with its Google Wave introduction (much ado about nothing?). Now replace “Wave” with “Video Conferencing” and everyone who is anybody in our industry will have his mouth running…
Conferencing Gadget in Google Wave. Source: Technorati.
And Technical Opportunities Too…
For the peer-to-peer video calling Google is said to be using the technology licensed from Vidyo. Two years ago Google acquired Marratech to “enable from-the-desktop participation… in videoconference meetings”.
When Google says “free”, they actually mean “free as long as we can monetize it alternatively”, and Google is the expert in analyzing our personal information and redirecting it to advertisers. So how would Google be using Video Conferencing for this purpose? One can only speculate.
A simple, yet not trivial, solution would be to transcribe the conference, and use this information to display relevant ads during or after the conference. Speech recognition technologies have really advanced in recent years, and this is not as fictional as it may seem – They have been doing it for Google Video for a long time.
And what about displaying those ads? Will Google invest in new technologies of embedding text and images into the video, or will they use the “simpler” ply model? They have been investing in this front with online non-real-time video, with no real success up until this day as far as I can see, but it would be very interesting to see if this will change with real-time visual communications.
And what about the traits that brought Google fame and fortune?
Archiving and Retrieval – Will they store our conferences like they do with our e-mails and chats? Will they revolutionize the way we use video conferencing in that sense?
Search – Will they use their search technologies for audio and video? Will they have to come up with new stuff?
UI Design – Google is known for their slick-yet-simple product design. Will that change the way users use video conferencing?
And so you see – I fear not Google’s play in “my” space or any Google death ray. On the contrary – If Sergey and Eric join John as leading promoters of visual communications, the industry as a whole will benefit tremendously. Sure, the competition may be more intense, but I prefer more competition over a giant market than a limited one over a niche domain.
So I will await the Google Multi-party Video Conferencing. I am sure it will do no evil.
In a previous post I argued against the “One Internet”. I claimed that for video conferencing to work all access options to the network must be supported and the network itself has to be media-aware.
That being said, one might get the impression that I believe that only a dedicated video conferencing network, one that connects (at least) the entire enterprise and offers a “clean” environment for our precious means of communication, can provide a worthy quality of experience.
And it’s not that I’m against that type of solution. Whether it is ISDN, IP or MPLS based, the benefits are clear: a video network is permanent and always ready, the quality of service (QoS) is guaranteed, it is easy to handle and maintain, etc.
But if we are heading towards mass deployment of video conferencing infrastructure, dedicated networks are going to give IT managers and corporations a great big headache, as a dedicated network:
is hard to scale
is another network to administrate (on top of the existing IP networks)
is expensive (double the network – at least double the expenses)
“The clear advantages of converged networks are improved costs and IT resource productivity”.
But can a video conference network reside alongside other IP traffic, without risking quality and experience? Is the “converged network” a futuristic dream, or can you base your video conferencing network on your existing IP infrastructure? I decided to consult the local expert – Yossi Bronstein, AVP Corporate IT & IS at RADVISION, to learn how it is done in a global organization such as ours, with extensive IP-based communication deployment, including video conferencing (as the shoe maker doesn’t go bare-footed…)
The 1st thing Yossi did was show me the corporate network topology (see above). The 2nd thing Yossi did was emphasis that this is the corporate video network as well. RADVISION, says Yossi, has chosen to base its IT infrastructures on a converged network, due to the obvious reasons: costs and IT resources. Therefore, although RADVISION employees are using video conferencing much more than the average worker, all the IP traffic in RADVISION, including video conferencing, runs on the same network.
Dos and Don’ts of a Converged Network
This, of course, does not mean that the video is treated like any IP data over the network. On the contrary – the secret to properly converge video with “other” IP data, says Yossi, is priorities. Priority should be given to any “important”, “sensitive” data that goes over the network, but with video this is crucial.
In RADVISION, for instance, as it can be seen from the network topology, every branch is connected through both the public Internet and dedicated MPLS lines. In general, the IP traffic uses the Internet, but at any given time, for any reason, it can be shifted to MPLS to guarantee proper transfer.
Same prioritization takes place in every aspect of the network. This can be achieved technically in many ways, such as:
ToS can be used to guarantee low delay, high throughput and high reliability across routers via IP precedence.
Differentiated services (diffserv) can be used to manage the traffic and provide different levels of QoS.
Traffic shaping can be used to optimize or guarantee performance, latency and bandwidth in the network.
These priorities are decided according to the traffic characteristics: port allocation, source and/or destination, data type, etc. As mail server synchronization is prioritized for bandwidth and reliability, so can – for instance – a video call originating from the CEO’s office. And video should get more bandwidth than audio. And video between branches (in a distributed MCU architecture) should get enough bandwidth for proper quality.
And so, while every employee in RADVISION is capable of making a video call (via their personal IP Phone or SCOPIA Desktop) or a video conference (using their virtual meeting room), and although video traffic is substantial during work hours, Yossi says that on average only 3% of the time any external interference is required. Maybe this can explain how for a big organization such as RADVISION one system administrator deals with the entire global network.
And there you have it – you can have one network, accessible to all, via different means, protocols and infrastructures, and still enjoy a great experience for your visual communications, if you know how to set your priorities and not treat every packet as equal. And that is true, I thought to myself after my meeting with Yossi was over, not just for the RADVISION network or any corporate network, but for the Internet as a whole.
In a recent post on his blog, Tsahi discussed how the iPhone “changed the game” when it comes to product design. The best and most obvious example he gives is touch technology, which has become “the most coveted input technology”. In the recently held World Innovation Summit, Amichai Ben-David, CEO of N-trig, Israeli manufacturer of revolutionary multi-point touch screens, admitted that the unprecedented success of the iPhone drove everyone to understand that touch is the most intuitive form of input for users.
Demo clip of N-trig’s Duo-Sense Technology
But if touch is so intuitive, what about the rest of the senses? Can they be used as user interfaces?! I decided to consult the expert, in this case Dr. Romi Mikulinsky, whose dissertation, at the University of Toronto’s English Department, dealt with the way memory is affected by the transition of photographic images from medium to medium.
The Future Interface: A Sensory Experience
If you look at the way user interfaces (UI) have evolved, Romi says, from the first GUIall the way to the Minority Report -like interfaces that totally dominate today’s UI, it’s easy to imagine how future interfaces will look: haptic-based (touch screens, multi-touch interface), visual-based (controlled by eye movement), sound-based, brain implanted, using contact lenses, controlled by gestures, mind-controlled – the sky is the limit. The future interface will involve all of our sensors, and will facilitate the way we engage with computers by creating a more intuitive, sensory experience.
These future interfaces will position us inside the data and will expand the way sensory experience is thought of today, as an inner, private experience. These interfaces will enable us to step into the data processing process/experience. Will they eventually help the digital world, or at least the Internet, become a prosthetic organ, an external device that alters, affects or supports our experiences of reality?
Sensory experiences allow us to create seamless interfaces that eliminate the distance between the “inside” and the “outside”, and close the gap between man and machine. Seamless interfaces bring us closer to artificial intelligence (AI) by using our intelligence and our senses to directly interact with machines. Nevertheless, these interfaces can become a mechanism that will enable us to learn more about ourselves and about other things in the world.
Playing Solitaire seamlessly
Sceptic about Haptic? Try To Listen!
Haptic interfaces are no longer science fiction, and it seems that users are willingly adopting them, possibly because they are very natural. In fact, operating a system by waving your hands, for instance, makes you forget you are using any interface, as it is almost totally seamless. No input/output, no clicking and typing, no necessary hardware or dedicated devices. After all, wouldn’t it be great if the digital post-it acts like a paper post-it?
But, as you know, we have more than just 2 senses. Our interaction with computers is already based on our eyes and our hands, seeing and touching. How about using other senses, not just sight and touch, as interfaces?
This will be especially beneficial for people with certain handicaps, who can’t use the existing interfaces. For instance, for a blind person, a hearing-based interface can make an otherwise unusable system easily accessible. This may sound complicated, but projects like Michal Rinott’s SonicTexing or the Tactile Explorer from Tactile World, allow the visually impaired to easily access computer-based applications, which usually require the use of sight.
Can You Smell the Interface? Taste It!
If I were to suggest using scent or taste as an interface, you may say that I, well, lost my senses. But Romi believes they may be the next new seamless interfaces. Last year SHOWstudio launched a groundbreaking initiative for fragrance over the Internet. I, personally, have seen a demonstration of a motion picture with “fragrance support”, where you not only see and hear, but also smell the movie scenes.
And the same goes for taste. Or, at least, our tongue. And if you think I went too far, take a look at The Brain Port, a neural tongue interface which uses 144 micro-electrodes to transmit information through sensitive nerve fibres in our lingua:
Combine all of those senses together, and you can see what a real seamless interface might look like in the near future – a total sensory experience. One that would be able to transmit and/or replicate an entire experience. Just imagine how a website like synesthecity would be like, if the sight, sound, smell, taste and touch were transmitted over the Internet.
And, of course, don’t forget that illusive, most promising “Sixth sense“, which some refer to as extra-sensory perception, and some as our future personal connection to “the cloud”. If you haven’t seen THAT TED demo, I strongly urge you to do so now. After seeing what can be done with natural, seamless, sensory-based interfaces, there’s really no need for additional words.
And Meanwhile In The Real World…
I started off with touch technology, and I want to end with touch technology, but this time with its application for Video Conferencing. I’ve already written here about the Teliris TouchTable, which is very impressive. But as touch technology is no longer expensive and can be found everywhere, it can be utilized to upgrade your video conferencing experience as well.
Here’s a short video showing the latest version of RADVISION’s SCOPIA Desktop, utilizing touch technology for a most intuitive and efficient user interface:
Seamless, intuitive, productive – I have a sense we will be seeing everyone and everything following suit in the near future.
[I've been asked in many occasions, both by colleagues and clients, regarding the Motion/Sharpness preference in many of today's video conferencing endpoints. To clarify this topic, I asked Amnon Cohen-Tidhar, a video architect in the Networking Business Unit (NBU), to write this guest post as part of our ongoing "Ask The EXPERT" series]
Although not a “to be or not to be” question, many video communication experts debate about the issue of motion vs. sharpness. More specifically, the debate is all about our preferences: do we prefer motion or sharpness for our visual communications systems?
What’s more important – a faster, more fluid sense of motion or a higher level of sharpness? It’s really in the eyes of the beholder (or should I say the be-watcher…). And so most video conferencing manufactures leave it for the customer to decide. Almost every endpoint on the market has this feature in the configuration menu. All you have to do is decide what your preference is.
That’s fair. But what does it actually mean?
Sharpness
Sharpness is, basically, the ability to separate between small objects or notice small details in the captured scene. In layman terms – is the image sharp enough? If your system works fine, you can use the resolution as a way to measure sharpness. After all, resolution means how many pixels (picture elements) you see. The more pixels, the smaller the objects you’ll be able to see.
But this is only if your system works fine, as pixels don’t tell the whole story. If the original image was captured poorly, due to a low quality system (optics, CCD sensor, etc.) more pixels won’t mean a better image. If your system runs over “noisy”, lossy network, or your bandwidth allocation is inadequate, a high resolution display won’t help.
In fact, if you’re watching SD broadcasts over fancy full HD display the important part is not the display’s resolution but the video scaler quality. You won’t get a bigger actual resolution than what the weakest “link” on your system can support. Poor scaling might even degrade the image quality, compared to the original low-res stream.
Hi res vs. Low res images at the same resolution.
Assuming the resolution is supported throughout the system, and sufficient bandwidth is allocated, higher resolution gives you sharper images, better details and a more realistic experience.
Motion
By “motion” we refer to the system’s ability to capture, process and display fast changes in a moving scene. This capability is measured in frames per second (FPS). The higher the FPS, the better the system handles fast action – you’ll be able to follow fast moving objects with less “blur” (as shown in the Fabrizio Lonzini picture at the top).
Motion is very important when you’re enjoying a fast action sporting event, but not that critical for video calling. In face to face communications, there’s usually minimal “action”. But the major benefit of a high FPS in video calling comes from a side effect – In many video communication systems the latency – the time it takes the system to process a frame from receiving an input to displaying an image – is a linear factor of the frame duration. By increasing the frame-rate you get shorter latency, which has huge impact on the quality of experience.
We’re all familiar with live TV interviews, where – due to high latency – the participants talk together or wait in awkward silence. Faster systems enable an uninterrupted communication flow.
Slow vs. fast capture
So – Motion or Sharpness?!
If motion and sharpness are so important, you probably wonder why you have to choose one over the other in the first place. After all, we want our system to have the best motion and the best sharpness we can get. We want to see all the tiny details even when the scene is dynamic, as we don’t want to miss a thing. Sadly however, as with most things in life, we can’t have it all.
When you buy a new car, you want it to be powerful yet economical. A huge engine gives it power but empties your pocket at the gas station; the economical ones don’t give you the thrill. What you usually do is compromise, and the same goes for your video conferencing system: Bigger resolution means more processing power needed, and a much harder task of keeping the motion; investing the processing power in motion means a smaller resolution supported. And as there’s no such thing as enough processing power, bandwidth and – of course – money, you choose your preferences and compromise.
The current high-end video conferencing systems let you choose between 1080p30 and 720p60 (first number is the resolution in pixel lines; second one is the FPS). While the first is 2.25 times bigger in pixels per frame, the latter has twice the number of frames per second. IMHO both are a great experience for video conferencing (at least for some).
If you’re in a small room, using a medium size display, the 720p60 is probably a better choice, not because of the better “motion”, as your peers probably don’t play tennis on the other side, but for the major improvement in round-trip delay. I’d consider the 1080p30 for large conferencing rooms, with big displays and many participants, where a more detailed image makes a lot of difference.
Bottom line – setting motion/sharpness preferences is easy, and available with most end-points. Now you just have to try it, and choose your side.
I’ve been writing about or simply mentioning High Definition in almost every post here, so excuse me for not telling (again) the HD story or explaining (again) why it’s worth your every cent. I have already discussed the definition of “high”, and reached the following lower limits:
Display resolution of 720p
25 frames per second
Bitrate of 1 Mbps
The evolutionary steps of video conferencing that introduced us to HD were quite dramatic: in two years, between 2005 (when LifeSize introduced the first 720p endpoint) and 2006 (when Cisco introduced their Telepresence product, with a 1080p resolution), the whole market leaped from CIF (4CIF for the privileged few) to high definition.
But since then, there hasn’t really been that much innovation. To quote my grumpy friend Tsahi:
Yeah, we talk about moving from 720p to 1080p, moving from 30 frames per second to 60 frames per second, adding another camera, adding more screens. But really – who cares?
Who Cares? You Care!
Yes, you care. Or at least should. As a customer, we are used to bigger and better (in terms of resolution and bandwidth) and smaller and more capable (in terms of size and price per performance). But do you ever wonder what is “big enough”, and whether that “better experience” they are talking about is just hype and marketing talk, to convince you to buy more – a more expensive product, more products, etc.
The difference between CIF and 720p is/was overwhelming. I remember seeing for the first time our CP layout on a 720p endpoint – it was amazing. The difference between 720p and 1080p, for instance “has to be explained”, as I heard some smart people note during this or that demo. And the same goes for 60fps, more cameras and all the other “magic” everyone is putting up on stage.
And it really makes you wonder: do we really need “more of the same”, as Tsahi nicely put it, and if so why? Does “bigger and better” really give you a higher quality of experience, or is the quality of experience simply automatically derived from the title “bigger and better”?!
I mean, you enter a $100K meeting room, with “state-of-the-art” video conferencing equipment, will you not be satisfied? Or if they put a $50K endpoint in your room, will you dare to say that you don’t see the difference or that it is not worth the extra bucks?! In a way, this reminds me of The Emperor’s New Clothes. And guess who’s the annoying kid shouting “the emperor has no clothes!”?
The emperor’s clothes
High Definition, Mr. Emporer?
In a very provocative and interesting paper, titled (surprise!) “The Emperor’s Clothes in High Resultion”, which I came across via Elizabeth Gough-Gordon, researchers from Utrecht and Twente Universities are sharing their conclusions from their witty experiment: Two groups of people were watching a DVD clip. One group was told they were watching a DVD quality clip (the truth), while the other was told they were watching an HDTV version of the clip. Surprisingly (is it?) the people framed to watch the “HDTV clip” were found to have a significantly more positive viewing experience.
What the researchers found out is what many of us suspect without having any proof: most people can’t differentiate digital and high definition signals, but are influenced by the settings. HDTV is associated with high-quality, and so if you’re watching “HDTV” it must be a great experience, doesn’t it?
What do I learn from this neat experiment? Well, a few worthy points – For starters, I am not that ashamed that I still don’t own a HDTV set. But in a more broad way, this proves that I may be right – when they call their endpoint “the biggest”, “the one with the most frames per second” or even “the most expensive”, are they actually trying to convince us it is better, even before we’ve laid our eyes on the screen?
This is, of course, not true for all situations and all endpoints. But like any good Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, the moral should be taken into consideration: the next time you compare a few alternatives, try to do so without the big adjectives and fancy feature list. You may find yourself surprised, Mr. Emperor.
I really liked Dave Michels’ “Cloud Series”, especially part 5, titled “Hosted Voice – Just Say No“. If you’re a novice to Cloud Computing, I strongly recommend the first 2 parts, but it’s the last part (so far) that got me thinking.
In this part, Dave discusses hosted voice services, such as Vonage, and shares his concerns. His conclusion, despite the flaming nature of his title, is that hosted voice services “can make sense in several situations for many organizations”, especially for small offices where “hosted solutions can create a virtual PBX across locations seamlessly”.
Dave concludes his post with a few sentences I really liked:
I think the cloud is going to change things dramatically…
Bottom line? Hosted voice is great – it has a little risk and solves a lot of problems. Of course, the same can be said about arsenic. The right answer depends on the question…
The best scenario of hosted voice is continuous increasing (for growth) payments for technology you will never own or control.
A Technology You Will Never Own
It’s funny that Dave discusses the ownership of technology, because just the other day my good friend Dan and I were discussing our music listening habits. In case you haven’t noticed it yet, I’m an avid music lover. As such, I have an extremely large collection of albums in CD format, occupying too much space (at least, according to my wife) in my apartment.
My album collection (partial view)
Dan, who is not only an avid music lover just like me, but also a very digital-friendly guy, converted his collection to digital format, and his collection is now occupying a lot of hard-drive space on his Popcorn Hour media tank.
Left: Dan’s Popcorn Hour (under the cats collection). Right: Dan’s “digital” album collection
Both Dan and I are holding on to our music, because that’s what we used to do in those old days, which the romantic would call “good” and the technology-savvy would call “dark”. If you wanted to listen to your music (and by “your” I mean the music you like, when you like, and as you like), you had to own the music. And it doesn’t really matter in which format, digital or analog.
But these days the reality of music listening is changing. Streaming services, such as blip.fm (which I personally LOVE), allow you to listen to your music for free from anywhere and at any time. Recently announced tuberadio.fm even supplies you with a slick interface to turn YouTube into iTunes. Yes, they don’t have ALL the music. Yes, like any cloud service, they have their down time. Yes, they require a reasonable amount of bandwidth. But other than that, they give me the music experience I require 99% of the time, up to a point where I – looking for a song to play while I write my posts – search blip.fm and not my local personal collection.
Which brings up the question of ownership – apart from a few romantics (Tsahi would say dinosaurs), who still enjoy holding on to such old relics as album covers and leaflets, do we really need to own the music? Wouldn’t it make much more sense to enjoy streaming services, assuming they would have everything available, at great quality and a reasonable price?
A Technology You Will Never Control
E-mail is another good example for a cloud service that gained huge success. I am using my Gmail mail address ever since I got the initial invite (back when Gmail, and not Wave, invites were the coolest thing ever…). It’s my primary e-mail address, and it serves me extremely well.
Again, I know all about the downfalls: security, down time, yada yada yada. The bottom line is that I don’t feel I need to own or control my e-mail account. And in return I get a free, very large, very accessible e-mail service, which simply gets the job done. And I guess no one can argue with the success of Gmail (or hosted e-mail services) any longer.
And Now For Video Conferencing…
So now add one and one, and take the whole discussion to my primary interest (other than music) – video conferencing. Today, organizations – be it small offices or very large enterprises – feel they should own and control the technology. Assuming endpoints are a necessity – either hardware or software, you need it on your desk(top) – they either buy the infrastructure necessary, or pass on the whole idea because of setup costs. And while it makes sense to own the technology for many, for small and medium businesses, hosted video conferencing services – which means that the infrastructure sits “on the cloud” – make a lot of sense.
Hosted Video Conferencing, just like any hosted services, offers several key benefits:
Endpoints can be deployed faster and simpler.
There are no upfront capital costs (for the infrastructure).
Cost is (basically) related to use, so small business will pay a rather small sum for their on-going use.
Users can use it between offices and with partners, clients, etc.
These benefits can definitely be the difference between adopting and using this technology and totally dismissing it. There is no doubt in my mind that a mass deployment of video conferencing depends on the adoption of it in the SMB market, and for those “cloud” video conferencing offers the best solution, just like other “cloud” services are the best solution for other communication and IT aspects.
The Cloud is Going to Change Things Dramatically
Of course, hosted video conferencing is not trivial. In fact, the current state of the technology is not really ready for “cloud video conferencing”. Dave Michels summed it well in his 3rd post, dedicated to “Cloud Computing for Telecom“:
Telecom though isn’t as clear [as "classic" cloud computing - SBZ]. Telecom is a real time application and that creates a challenge for virtualization. Telecom latency (host and/or network) can be mili-seconds away from being non suitable. Plus few telecom applications are available for the cloud, particularly since so many are tightly integrated to hardware…
Cloud computing will indeed profoundly impact telecom. Additionally, there will be plenty of mistakes made and reasons not to embrace the cloud. But voice is in the process of integrating with many other IT applications that may indeed be destined for the cloud – this includes email, presence, collaboration, and other many more.
Paraphrasing on Dave’s words, which originally made me write all this, I think the cloud is going to change things dramatically, video conferencing included. For many, hosted video conferencing would solve a lot of problems and provide little (if any) risk, thus enabling a mass deployment and usage, which we are all waiting for (and hoping for, and I’m not saying it at all as a video conferencing infrastructure manufacturer).
Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it before – for hosted video conferencing to work, we need great infrastructure and management products, to solve all the problems Dave complains about (and he’s talking Voice. Video is even more demanding…). But this is really a topic for another post.
A few weeks ago I attended the World Innovation Summit, a very interesting conference on innovation and technology, held right here in Tel-Aviv. Multi-national companies, emerging companies and promising start-ups presented their pieces of innovation in various fields, such as mobile communication, cloud computing, visual computing and more.
I have to admit that as interesting as the whole day was, the highlight for me was the closing keynote, given by video conference from Boston by Ray Kurzweil, Kurzweil, in case you missed him somehow, is an inventor and a futurist, involved in many technology fields and considered a brilliant presenter and author.
Accelerating Returns and Moore’s Law
I’ve come to know Kurzweil via his famous best-seller “The Singularity Is Near“. In this book, which continues the theme of two of his previous books (The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Age of Intelligent Machines”) Kurzweil attempts to predict the future. His reasoning lays basically on the Law of Accelerating Returns, which describes an exponential growth of technological progress.
Just like Moore’s law for integrated semiconductor circuits, Kurzweil predicts the same exponential growth for any form of technology. And whenever a technology approaches some kind of barrier, argues Kurzweil, a new technology is invented and allows us to cross it.
Moore’s Law – The exponential growth in Calculations per second per $1K (Wikipedia)
In his keynote Kurzweil talked about technology being the main obstacle in implementing great ideas. When the advances in the relevant technologies are complete, the task at hand becomes feasible, even probable. It is then, when the window of opportunity is truly open. He, of course, gave many examples, such as the Human Genome project, as well as several from his vast experience, but the bottom line was: you got to know (guess?) when the technology will be ready, and then (and only then) roll out your innovative product.
In his new book, “Reverse-engineering The Human Brain” Kurzweil predicts that by 2030 we will have full understanding of the human brain (the “software”) and processors powerful enough to run that “software” on a $1000 computer (the “hardware”). Then, he believes, we will be able to build “brain-like” machines that will dramatically change our lives. Sounds like science fiction? Well, he convinced me…
Reverse-engineering Video Conferencing?
But I couldn’t avoid thinking about our market and our technologies. Video conferencing has been around for more than a decade. But has the technological environment been ready for that long? Basically, video conferencing infrastructure is based on processing of video and audio and the transmission of the video and audio to multiple participants. So what do you need to accomplish that?
Affordable, high quality cameras and microphones to capture video and audio in high definition
Strong, sophisticated codecs that can compress high quality video and audio into reasonable amount of data, capable of compressing and transmitting in real-time
Affordable, flexible, low power processors that will be able to run the complicated number crunching algorithms known as “codecs”
Big fat pipes with enough bandwidth to transmit high quality video and audio across the Internet
Now let’s review the facts:
The first codec to fulfill the promise of high quality video compression is probably H.264, completed in the end of 2003.
The evolution in the enterprise LANs have only recently (last year?) allowed for each employee to use around 1Mbps of bandwidth for personal communication use.
And there you have it – RADVISION has been around more than 15 years, pushing this industry forward. I’ve been working here for 7 years, struggling with codecs, standards and processors,. But to be honest, and realistic, the technology has only recently become available. And only in the past 2 years has the video conferencing industry really stood a chance.
If you believe Kurzweil, if you believe his idea of exponential growth in technology – then in a year or two, we will be able to improve the experience we now know as video conferencing dramatically. And although I’m the first to say there’s no such thing as too much processing power or bandwidth, I believe that in the next couple of years video conferencing will become a true alternative, a true mass means of communication. I believe that the window of opportunity is finally open.
Last week Tsahi wrote a funny post on what Twitter would look like if Microsoft was behind it. Well, I thought to myself – I love Twitter, I love video conferencing – how about writing my own twist on Tsahi’s post, and try to imagine how video conferencing would look if it was built by the Twitter folks…
Video Conferencing would be given a much cooler name. Viddo? Confr?
Each speaker would be limited to 140 words. After 140 words, the active speaker token would automatically be given to someone else.
Interface
Talking too much would cause you to use your API limit. Again, this will force you to spend a few minutes in silence.
In order to answer someone, or refer to something they said, you would specifically have to say “Hey” and mention their name (“Hey Tsahi, I think you were wrong in your last sentence…”).
If you quote someone or repeat some of their words, you have to give them credit (“Repeating Tsahi, I’d say that…).
To save some words, you could use a 3rd party “word shortener”. You would just say out loud the shortener code, and participants would check what it means online in real-time.
You wouldn’t be able to trace back conversations between people. They will all be lost in the stream.
Characteristics
Video conferencing would have been free.
You could’ve accessed a video conference from virtually anywhere, using any device.
You could easily share images, videos, documents and web pages.
People would use video conferencing to let their friends and colleagues know what they are up to at any given point of time.
Currently: Sleeping.
You could use #Hashtags in a conference. Favorite hashtags would have been #lunch, #coffee, #boring and #home.
You could see the Trending Topics of today’s conferences. I wonder if Britney Spears would be trending there too…
Interface would have been simple and very limited. Millions of people would be working on video conferencing clients which basically look the same, feel the same and offer basically the same functionality.
You would change the background you use on your endpoint often. Usually you will place your beautiful face on it.
QoS
Video conferencing would be down every now and then. When down, a video of a big fat fail whale would be shown in loop.
Your rights to your conference recordings may not belong to you. Terms of service would be changing from time to time.
Video conferencing would have been used by technology-savvy, early adopters and devoted fans. They would be using it in odd hours and in the weirdest locations.
Proof of Success
Many people will drop video conferencing for good after a month of using it.
A very small percentage of the people will be responsible for most of the conferences on the Internet.
People won’t understand what exactly IS video conferencing. Or what you’re supposed to do with it.
You could update your Facebook account from a video conference by using the phrase “fb” at the end of a sentence. Facebook in return will start their own VideoConference-like service called Facebook Video.
A lot of celebrities will be using video conferencing. Ashton Kutcher would even tilt his HD video camera and show Demi ironing in her panties during a conference call…
In a previous post 
[I've been asked in many occasions, both by colleagues and clients, regarding the Motion/Sharpness preference in many of today's video conferencing endpoints. To clarify this topic, I asked 
Hi res vs. Low res images at the same resolution.
Again, I know all about the downfalls: security, down time, yada yada yada. The bottom line is that I don’t feel I need to own or control my e-mail account. And in return I get a free, very large, very accessible e-mail service, which simply gets the job done. And I guess no one can argue with the success of Gmail (or hosted e-mail services) any longer.
A few weeks ago I attended the 
