FaceTime is a new service offered by Apple on their iPhone 4. It provides mobile video calling, mainly for consumers. From the moment it launched, we have seen a rise in requests coming from vendors to build similar solutions with their devices, which means that a hectic year is ahead of us. If FaceTime (or mobile video calling) interests you, then you might want to consider spending a bit of time on reading the list of resources I’ve collected from all over the web about FaceTime. And, even if you are not the reading type, you should definitely join our ...

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It seems like consumer video chat is set to grow – at least if you believe GigaOm’s research paper and Apple’s latest move with iPhone4 FaceTime service. There is though a huge install base that is being neglected here, which is the one that does mobile video telephony over 3G networks using 3G-324M. It has been around for years now, running across continents, operators and handset vendors. You can read more about its past and future at Vision Mobile. A few years ago, I was the project leader in RADVISION responsible to develop our own 3G-324M solution for developers. Our ...

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FaceTime is a really interesting move coming from Apple on their recently launched iPhone4. It is a mobile video telephony service which runs over IP, which by now probably have had more video calls done than mobile video calls done on all other existing handsets in the world in the same period of time. Instead of spending my time thinking of what else to write about this new service, here are a few interesting posts that I have found in the blogosphere about it. I hope they will interest you as much as they have interested me. Stuart Henshall’s FaceTime ...

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[Dilihtium Networks is restructuring. Amir Zmora outlines a transition plan that we now offer for customers who wish to migrate to RADVISION 3G-324M Technology.] I have joined RADVISION in 1999 and if you take out my 4 years detour at other places I’m around this industry for some time now. During these years we have had the pleasure to compete with rival companies. This has always been a great catalyst for us and the industry pushing everyone to innovation and differentiation. In many areas we have been first to market and innovative. Along the years we have seen companies enter ...

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Apple’s FaceTime is now a fact. And by the success Apple had with the iPod and in recent years the iPhone, it is bound to change the market – maybe not the end users one, but definitely the handset vendors, who by now are looking for their own solutions to this problem. I’ve seen a bunch of webinars, whitepapers and other articles about how FaceTime-like services can be integrated by other handset vendors. Usually, these resources focus on a single piece of the puzzle – the media codecs or some other important part of the solution. The problem is that ...

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Yes. Video calling is growing. Yes consumer video chat is upon us. Yes Apple’s FaceTime service will increase demand and usage. No. it will not be enough. We’re still talking about communication islands. If you look at the state of VoIP today, it is pretty safe to say that it is growing nicely. It might not be apparent at first sight, but the reason it does is the ubiquity of PSTN. And that is the heart of the matter – we don’t have the same ubiquity for video calling. Skype is a huge success. Why? Not because you can call ...

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Now that I have actually made a FaceTime call or two from iPhones of some of my colleagues, it is time to say the truth: Apple has done a great job when it comes to the experience FaceTime provides. The audio quality is great. The video is more than adequate for a mobile device. And that portrait/landscape shtick is cool in a geeky way. But, as always in this case, Apple can improve. Here are a few ideas for Apple to improve FaceTime in their next iOS: 1. Support for backdrops The iPhone is definitely a consumer device. As ...

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In our “hidden challenges in developing HD video telephony products” webinar there was a really active Q&A session. As I promised after the webinar, I will be covering a few of the questions that were asked here at a bit more length. The first group of questions I want to tackle are those concerning H.323 and SIP: How important is H.323 for video telephony vs. SIP? Which one should I use? Using SIP and H.323 is a matter of market segment, not a technical decision – correct? A short history of video telephony protocols When ...

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There’s a lot to criticize about the new video calling service from Apple, FaceTime – that it isn’t interoperable at the moment, that it works only over WiFi, that you must have an iPhone 4 to be able to use the service, and so on. But there is something that FaceTime does for Apple that all the rest of its innovations in the latest release don’t: it separates it from the pack of Android devices. Think back on Apple’s previous moves: With the iPod Apple changed the music players industry, but besides a cool device design they also ...

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In the past couple of months we’ve hosted several webinars with TMCnet. This last one before the summer break was about the hidden challenges of developing HD visual communication products – a topic that is dear to me. As it so happens, I presented this webinar alongside Sagee Ben-Zedeff, the writer of my sister blog here, Video Over Enterprise. The premise of this webinar was that once people start developing an HD video communication terminal, they will focus on their “comfort zone” – mainly the hardware design and the codecs, and that, to say bluntly, isn’t nearly enough. We took ...

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