Cisco suggests WiFi Flip Video camera by Christmas, wants to integrate products with Apple's FaceTime
By Thomas Ricker 
posted July 1st 2010 5:36AM
posted July 1st 2010 5:36AM
A rambling Computerworld report from Cisco's Live! event is bringing us news of even more goodies, beyond the business and home tablets already revealed. In an interview with Marthin De Beer, Senior VP of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Group, De Beer strongly hints at a WiFi enabled Flip Video camera by the end of 2010. While he didn't say it in so many words, he did say, "We didn't buy Flip to have it be only a video recorder," adding, "I look forward to Christmas," when asked about a possible timeline. That seems clear enough. The conversation then gets muddied when De Beer begins discussing video as a "pervasive play" for Cisco, something that will "ultimately span across everything we do." And in a bid to interoperate with all devices, including Apple's new handset and certainly future iOS devices, De Beer said, "We would absolutely love to integrate with FaceTime." When, is the question left unanswered. Until then Cisco plans to introduce a mobile Movi iPhone app to the App Store that ties back into Cisco's Tandberg SIP-based video conferencing solution. Now, maybe it's a stretch, but with Cisco slowly creeping into the consumer space, it's hard not to take away a sense that it will be introducing software and devices interoperable with its Silicon Valley neighbor's FaceTime solution in the not too distant future. Hit the source to read the interview in full.
Oh cisco. How you've fallen since your "thong song" days.
@DTJ *Sigh* FacePalm
@DTJ good hardware but failing with the apple.... yea the key thing is wifi and they put it out there qik lol
blah i want a phone that can do that not an extra device
@sedo I'm not sure I want either. I have no real desire to see the people I'm chatting to on the phone, and most of the time I don't want them to be able to see me either. Maybe if I was away from home and wanted to see my kids - but as far as other conversations go, I dislike having to maintain concentration on a screen when I could be getting on with other things whilst chatting.
@sedo Thousands of devices will adopt FaceTime not just phones.
@RincewindWiz Then don't use it. It's not like you're forced to use videocalling, just like you're not forced to use your laptops built in webcam when chatting.
Without iMovie it seems lame. And facetime? Oh yeah every slut need to get this flip inorder to do live hd sex chat. And u can hold it anyway u like.
I'd love for Cisco to adopt the FaceTime standard. The quality for both Audio and Video is so much better than what has been achieved in the past on handheld devices.
hmm .. interesting .. Cisco leveraging on Apple's use of iOS ?
Apple got the iOS trademark from Cisco or something like that... U scratch my back and I'll scratch yours!
Is Facetime an open standard? I mean, can any manufacturer start using it without paying Apple money?
@rollocla Steve said during the keynote that it would be an open standard so I'm pretty sure that's the case. There will most likely be another company or two who tries to and thinks they do it better so we'll be left with it all broken up where you can still only call with other people on your protocol. Hopefully not but you know how it goes with these companies. It's an open standard guys, just use it and work on it together with Apple and each other! Don't make 20 more of them.
@PeterM11 Open, yes. Standard? No. Facetime puts together H.264 with AAC using a SIP wrapper, but that doesn't mean it will talk to anything else as the video industry doesn't use AAC.
@DazzlingD Not really true, Tandberg (55% market share in enterprise video conferencing) use AAC-LD, Tandberg have now been bought by Cisco. Facetime is open and standard, so it is likely to interwork with standard video conferencing, but there are no gaurantees, probably depends on the server level more than anything and a bit or engineering in the future.
Live streaming of video to sites like usteam or livestream are what I'd say would be appealing about this phone from my perspective.
"video as a 'pervasive play' for Cisco, something that will 'ultimately span across everything we do.'"
They're going to put video cameras into their backbone routers?
What is it with these cameras and their giant lens circles? Do they believe folks will fall for it and think the camera has a high quality lens? Or does that piece of plastic actually improve the image quality?
Nah, the wifi would be great for over the air syncing with your flip videos, just like WiFi sync for music on the iDevices (which apple is now going to supposedly incorporate, magically).