conferencing
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Google countersues BT over alleged IP networking patent violations
Google isn't letting BT's Android patent lawsuit go unanswered, even if it's taking its sweet time. Over a year after BT struck first, Google has filed a countersuit against BT that claims the provider is infringing four patents relating to IP-based conferencing and quality of service delivery. The search firm makes clear that its lawsuit is leverage for a possible truce: it's using the action as a "last resort" to fend off both BT and the patent holding companies that BT uses as proxies, according to a Google spokesperson. BT hasn't had a chance to respond -- or to be formally served, as of this writing -- but we can't imagine that a company which once sued over hyperlinks will simply agree to a stalemate.
Rabbit aims to lift the limits on video chat, Mac beta coming next year
Considering how long it took for the videophone to truly reach the mass market -- the first public video telephony service was launched in Germany more than 75 years ago -- it's pretty remarkable how many video chat options we have today. From FaceTime to Microsoft's Skype to Cisco's WebEx, Fuze Meeting to Biscotti to Google Hangouts, there's a video chat approach for every preference and budget. Adding another video chatting option might seem to be gilding the lily, but the four-person founding team behind the upcoming Rabbit service isn't daunted. These tech execs all come from the gaming world, specifically massively multiplayer online games; CTO Philippe Clavel was the Technical Director at Sony Online, wrangling millions of players at once on the company's back end. With that mindset, they approached the video challenge with the tools of online gaming. "[We saw an] opportunity to do something more compelling around video chat," says Rabbit co-founder and ngmoco veteran Stephanie Morgan. "While video chat tools enable live interaction, they aren't social. Social networks give us new connections, conversations and discoveries, but they're not live," she says. Rabbit, which is launching a Mac-only private beta early in 2013, plans to take the shared video experience from a one-on-one or few-to-few scenario and scale it up to MMOG levels. The chat landscape will feature unlimited customizable rooms (public or private), and each room is designed to host unlimited numbers of participants. Users can "listen in" on a public room to preview the participants, social interests and ongoing conversation before jumping in. Once inside, the video focus shifts to the current speaker (similar to Hangouts) and the audio profile changes subtly to reflect the "room tone" adjusted to the number of participants. With hooks to the Facebook social graph, you'll be able to easily spot your friends (or friends-to-be with similar interests) who are active on Rabbit. The platform is designed for persistent, hours-long open rooms, so there's an element of companionship and "drop in" interactivity in play. The top-level room avatars are actually live video themselves, so it's easy to see at a glance if a room is active or not. When you're hanging out with your friends, you might want to share an activity or some media. Rabbit will make this as easy as a single click; you can include your own screen content and audio, narrowing focus to a particular application or screen region. For content from the wider world, you can simulcast streaming movies, music or video in sync to watch as a group. Rather than muting the participant audio completely while the movie plays, though, the service does smart ducking to allow you to keep chatting (politely and discreetly) during your flick. Of course, the coolest video chat application on the planet doesn't do much if nobody's there to chat with. The Rabbit private beta launch will be Mac-only during the initial phases, but the company fully intends to work toward a ubiquitous client portfolio including Windows, tablets and smartphones. You can follow along with the product's progress via the @LetsRabbit Twitter feed.
Fuze Meeting delivers multiparty video conferencing to iPad 2
The latest updates to Callwave's distributed conferencing platform, Fuze Meeting, have added a rather dramatic new feature that's perfect for iPad 2 owners (not to mention Android 'Honeycomb' tablets like the Motorola Xoom and older 'Froyo' devices): multi-party video conferencing. Meeting hosts who subscribe to the company's Pro plan (US$69 per month for unlimited meetings with up to 100 attendees) get the new face-to-screen capability. Video conferences support up to 10 simultaneous participants on the browser-based client (fewer simultaneous streams on mobile devices), and the quality tops out at 720p HD while adjusting down as needed for bandwidth limitations. We've covered Fuze before, and the core iPad app has kept its full feature set moving forward into the video conferencing realm. You can still share content directly from the iPad app (in fact, it's gotten easier, now that iOS 4.x multitasking means you don't have to relaunch the app if you switch into Dropbox to grab files). If you want to launch your camera, it's one tap to start the video conference, then a second tap to turn your direct view on. Image quality is comparable to FaceTime, although the default video window is much smaller. You can also use VoIP directly on the iPad to join Fuze conference calls, saving you from juggling phone and pad as you participate in the meeting. You can use the Fuze app's laser pointer tool to highlight elements within PPT, image/PDF, or video content as the meeting rolls along. Of course, the desktop/browser Fuze client has evolved along with the new features, and it also supports the 10-party video chat feature.
join.me introduces mobile viewer for iPad
Today, join.me introduced their free iOS viewer, allowing users to participate in online meetings and screen sharing from their iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. A bunch of us TUAWians spent time yesterday afternoon exploring join.me in its browser-based form. join.me is a new conferencing/screen-sharing website from the makers of LogMeIn, a popular remote screen solution. What makes join.me so compelling for us is that it takes about 5 seconds to set up, and it doesn't require registration for casual use. If you need more, it costs US$29/month or $299/year for pro-level support. With join.me, you don't have to plan out a conference. When you decide that you need to meet, the tools are all there and ready for you. Just send around the connection URL, and you're good to go. We were able to move our normal back-channel discussions from IRC to join.me in just a couple of minutes, including the step where it downloaded a small app to our Macs.
MantaroBot telepresence robot works via Skype, offends our aesthetic sensibilities
We don't see much in this space from Mantaro, an engineering and development company that usually works on things like network management systems and switches for telecoms. That's why we were pleasantly surprised when the company announced an affordable telepresence robot. How affordable, you ask? Well, in a marketplace where these things can easily cost well over ten grand, MantaroBot can be yours for a cut-rate $3,500. Unfortunately, in a marketplace where these things can easily cost over ten grand, MantaroBot also looks like it cost a cut-rate $3,500. But you know what? Sometimes one must choose function over form. And what you get here is pretty straightforward: the remote operator steers the robot and communicates using a Skype plug-in (PC only) that also allows 180 degree panning and tilting of the onboard HD camera. This bad boy also features infrared sensors for obstacle detection, communication link monitoring (if you go offline, MantaroBot stops in its place) and more. Available now. PR after the break.
Apple wins two new patents including tablet proximity detector
Expectations and excitement are at a fever pitch for the hoped-for tablet announcement, but that hasn't stopped Apple's lawyers from earning their keep. Just in the past few days, they've nailed down two more patents, one of which has to do with tablet-style technology. That's a "proximity detector," which is supposed to track when an object is near but not touching a tablet's screen. Unfortunately, the legalese is a little shadowy, so I'm not quite sure what a setup would be used for, but it appears that they're talking about controlling something on screen when you move your fingers close to it -- i.e., a keyboard that pops up when you are about to put your hands on the tablet itself. I'm sure there are other uses for that as well, though, and of course just because Apple is pursuing a patent doesn't mean we'll see that technology in the announcement. The other patent has to do with video conferencing, and automatically determining bandwidth available in a connection and then making adjustments based on the range of that bandwidth. That simply sounds like a more reliable way of adjusting video quality in an application like iChat, and again, just because Apple has applied for a patent doesn't mean we'll see it running in the next version or at all. But even so soon before a big announcement like this one, we're still seeing Apple go after some of their more original ideas.
