GoToMeeting
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Facebook adds Zoom video calls to Portal for TVs
Facebook's Portal TV now supports Zoom and GoToMeeting, bringing video calls to the biggest screen in your home.
VLC for Mac gets 4K support, dozens of new features including G2M4 playback
The VideoLan Organization has released a major update to the VLC media player for OS X and Windows. VLC 2.1 adds a number of significant updates to the popular open-source media player. For starters, VLC now supports "Ultra HD video," otherwise known as 4K. That means VLC is now capable of outputting video at more than twice the resolution of Blu-ray. This, of course, requires that you have source video files of 4K quality. In addition to 4K support, VLC 2.1 now also offers OpenGL ES, which will make outputting video to iOS and Android devices much easier. The update has also added support for more than a dozen other video codecs. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. VLC 2.1 offers dozens more new features in all areas including audio, formats, inputs, mobile and for developers. On top of all the new features, more than 1,000 bugs were also fixed. For one group of Mac users, the new VLC offers a potential solution to a longstanding pain point. Citrix's GoToMeeting web conferencing platform does a nice job of recording presentations for later review, but recordings made with the default settings in the company's Windows client use a proprietary codec (G2M4) to save space and bandwidth. With no way to play these encoded videos on a Mac, G2M users have resorted to elaborate re-encoding schemes to render the files accessible. There's now light at the end of the G2M4 tunnel; VLC 2.1 lists compatibility with the codec among its new features, so Mac users should be able to play the encoded files without a problem. VLC 2.1 is a free download.
Citrix GoToMeeting's MacBook Air video fix is available but wait if you've updated to OS X 10.8.3
In August, we reported on problems that owners of the mid-2013 Haswell MacBook Air were having getting Citrix GoToMeeting to recognize their webcams. Shortly after we published that story, Citrix contacted TUAW to announce a fix for the problem would be released on September 15. On September 13, commenters on a thread about the issue on Citrix's website were informed their issues would be fixed first. On September 13 an employee of Citrix posted: All, We have a fix for this issue ready for use. We will begin work to upgrade everyone on this thread now, but we require your GoToMeeting email address to do so and may miss a few of you if use a different email address for this forum. I will post again once we have upgraded everyone we can with the information we have. Thank you again for your patience. Chris Duncan Product Manager, GoToMeeting Later, the employee posted again: All, For those of you who do not have an account but would like to get the fix: we will deploy the upgrade to all of our customers gradually over the next 1-2 months. If you have particular GoToMeeting users you meet with regularly, please have them contact our Global Customer Support team to get upgraded: http://support.citrixonline.com/en_US... -Chris While this is different than the promise that the fix would be available for everyone on September 15, Citrix is in the process of fixing the issue. However this isn't the end of Citrix's Mac problems. Apparently MacBook Pro and MacBook Air users who have upgraded to OS X 10.8.3 are now having issues connecting to their webcams in various third party apps, including Skype. In a post on September 16 the Citrix employee who has been helping users in the thread posted the following update. For those of you who have received our upgrade and also updated to Mac OSX 10.8.5, you may have noticed your webcam is still not detected by GoToMeeting. This is affecting Skype as well. While we believe the issue is on Apple's side, we will investigate solutions and workarounds as well. In the meantime, we suggest holding off on upgrading to OS X 10.8.5 or downgrading to 10.8.4 if you have already updated. Instructions on how to do so have been posted to Skype's forum: http://community.skype.com/t5/Mac/OS-... If you have suddenly found your Skype or Citrix GoToMeeting programs no longer work following the update to OS X 10.8.3 please head over to this Skype support page for help in fixing the issue. Citrix is working on a fix for the problem on their end.
Fix for GoToMeeting issue with MacBook Air coming September 15
On August 23, we reported on issues Citrix GoToMeeting clients were having with the FaceTime HD webcam in the latest MacBook Air (mid 2013, Haswell). At the time, there was no firm timetable for getting the issue fixed. Today I spoke with Sampath Gomatam, the VP and GM of Real-Time Collaboration at Citrix; he's the exec responsible for the GoToMeeting software. He told me the issue was caused by a problem with how the video engine for the software worked with the video drivers of the new Macs. Citrix wasn't alone with these issues; even Apple's own Final Cut X had problems with the new MBA's camera at first. The good news is that Citrix has escalated work on the patch due to online feedback. Gomatam also informed me that an update will be available to fix the issue on September 15. Help is coming, GoToMeeting fans.
GoToMeeting issues with MacBook Air camera persist
Since the launch of the latest MacBook Air, Citrix GoToMeeting users on the new machines have not been able to use their onboard webcams. The latest edition of the MacBook Air was released on June 10, 2013. On June 11, Apple put up a support page addressing an issue with the FaceTime HD camera not working with some applications. This issue has been around for quite some time. Much to the chagrin of many GoToMeeting users, other video chat programs -- Skype, FaceTime and Google Hangouts -- have released updates or already worked with the new MacBook Air. But those services don't offer the same security and features that GoToMeeting offers. It's a good program for video conferencing, which is why some users are getting frustrated about the lack of any clear timeframe as to when the issue will be fixed. The only public information available about the issue is a thread on the GoToMeeting community page, which was started on June 25. On June 28, a GoToMeeting Community Leader made a post blaming a change in the MacBook Air's video driver and said there was no timeframe available for fixing the issue as it would require an update to the GoToMeeting endpoint. On July 16, a community member received an email response about the issue from Citrix. Hello Robert, Thank you for contacting Citrix Global Customer Support. At this time there has not been an announced ETA on when an updated version of GoToMeeting is to be released to address this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience with this. Your comments are valuable and have been forwarded on to our Development Team to be considered for a future enhancement. We encourage you to continue providing us information about your experiences using GoToMeeting as we are constantly seeking ways to enhance and improve our product. Thanks again for taking the time to write to us with your suggestion. Thank you, Adrian Iglesias | Coordinator, Global Customer Support Citrix | Online Services Division http://www.citrixonline.com On July 18, August 5 and August 22 the same Community Leader as before responded, each time with the same basic message. At this time, no ETA is available and developers are aware of the issue. We've reached out to Citrix for a comment as to the status of an update. In the meantime, you can follow the community thread about this issue here.
Citrix's GoToMeeting app now freely available for Android, comes pre-loaded on Droid Bionic
Motorola and Citrix have already teamed up to pre-load the latter company's GoToMeeting and Citrix Receiver apps on the Droid 3, and they're now back doing the same with the long-awaited Droid Bionic. The good news for everyone else this time around is that Citrix has also decided to release GoToMeeting as a free app on Android Market. Granted, GoToMeeting may not be quite as exciting as the latest augmented reality app or a mobile version of Minecraft, but it is a fairly significant piece of the enterprise puzzle, which Motorola in particular seems to be targeting heavily these days. Hit the link below to try it out for yourself (provided your phone makes the grade), and head on past the break for the full press release.
iPad apps: defining experiences from the first wave
There are now over 1,348 approved apps for the iPad. That's on top of the 150,000 iPad-compatible iPhone programs already available in the App Store. When Apple's tablet PC launches, just hours from now, it will have a software library greater than that of any handheld in history -- not counting the occasional UMPC. That said, the vast majority of even those 1,348 iPad apps are not original. They were designed for the iPhone, a device with a comparatively pokey processor and a tiny screen, and most have just been tweaked slightly, upped in price and given an "HD" suffix -- as if that somehow justified the increased cost. Besides, we've seen the amazing potential programs have on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and webOS when given access to a touchscreen, always-on data connection, GPS, cloud storage and WiFi -- but where are the apps that truly define iPad? What will take advantage of its extra headroom, new UI paradigms and multitouch real estate? Caught between netbook and smartphone, what does the iPad do that the iPhone cannot? After spending hours digging through the web and new iPad section of the App Store, we believe we have a number of reasonably compelling answers. Update: Now includes Wormhole Remote, TweetDeck, SkyGrid, Touchgrind HD, GoToMeeting, SplitBrowser, iDisplay, Geometry Wars and Drawing Pad.
