meetings
Latest
Notion turns its Cron acquisition into an integrated calendar app
Notion launched a calendar app Wednesday, built and reskinned from Cron, the calendar startup the company bought in 2022. Tight platform-wide integration will be the appeal for Notion’s “tens of millions of users.”
Amazon spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants in 2021 alone
Amazon spent around $4.3 on consultants last year in an effort to prevent unionization of its warehouses, according to company filings.
Google Calendar's 'focus time' can auto-block meeting requests
Google Calendar now has a 'focus time' feature that can auto-block meeting requests to spare you from interruptions.
Google Calendar can show how much of your time is taken up by meetings
The Time Insights feature is rolling out to certain Google Workspace accounts.
Microsoft envisions 'scoring' meetings based on body language
Microsoft has applied for a patent on technology that would score meetings based on body language and facial expressions.
Microsoft Teams will add breakout rooms and automated meeting recaps
Updates also include automated meeting recaps and custom layouts.
Google Meet for Education will auto-block users who don't log in
G Suite for Education will block anonymous users from Google Meet video calls.
Microsoft's AI cone recognizes faces and voices during meetings
Microsoft has a new tool for making meetings easier. It recognizes speech patterns, automatically transcribing them for remote participants (capable of "multiple" simultaneous translations) in addition to visually recognizing meeting participants as they walk into the room. And because the black, conical speaker is always listening, it means meeting notes are transcribed automatically.
Microsoft's Slack rival gets translation and Surface Hub compatibility
Teams just turned one, and for its anniversary, Microsoft has unveiled new professional features for it that go well beyond what rivals like Slack offer. Probably the most important ones for enterprises are compatibility with their existing telephone systems, automatic in-line translation, Surface Hub support, and the ability for participants to dial in with regular telephones.
Google's video conferencing kit gets an AI camera and display
Google has been trying to get a seat in your board room this year, courtesy of its tools and products for meetings. In March, it pivoted its Hangouts app to businesses, following it up with a $5,000 interactive display with collaborative cloud features. Not content with the two-punch software and hardware combo, the big G is now taking another stab at video conferencing. Remember the Chromebox for meetings bundle the company dropped in 2014? Well, it's back, courtesy of some rebranding and a bunch of upgraded products.
Google unveils 'Meet,' a Hangouts app for businesses
Google has quietly unveiled Meet by Google Hangouts, a big part of its strategy to shuffle the Hangouts app towards businesses and away from consumers. While it hasn't made a formal announcement, it launched an iOS app and partially-functional website (spotted by Techcrunch), though it's not yet on Android, oddly enough. The app will likely become part of Google's Cloud-powered G Suite, though it's not yet listed there, either.
Microsoft's latest acquisition hints at AI scheduling in Office
Hate the song and dance involved in finding just the right time to hold a meeting? Microsoft does too. It's acquiring Genee, whose centerpiece is an AI-powered virtual assistant that helps you schedule events in sync with your itinerary. Email both a client and Genee while you're arranging a lunch meeting, for instance, and it'll let your contact know when you can make it. Just what Genee will do isn't clear, but it'll "accelerate intelligent experiences" in Office 365 -- as elsewhere, Microsoft wants to make AI a key part of your workday.
Intel wants you to stop hating meetings
The worst part about meetings isn't showing off your new presentation; it's how difficult it is to get your computer screen to show up on the TV. At Computex, Intel introduced its real-time collaboration solution Unite to remove some of the headaches associated with sharing presentations. The system uses a secure WiFi connection with a rotating PIN to connect to a Core vPro processor-powered mini PC connected to an office's display. Attendees download and install a lightweight client on their Mac or Windows machine and can share their desktop, annotate shared presentations and view up to four attendee's screens at once. It's a pretty straightforward solution. It makes meetings start quicker and gives attendees the ability to work together on a single presentation. But, it's the upcoming extensibility that could convince your IT department to drop your current solution for Unite.
Tim Cook meets Chinese Vice Premier in Beijing, talks IP law, worker rights
Tim Cook's visit to China this week marks his first as Apple's CEO, but what originally appeared to be a casual jaunt to Beijing with possible carrier meetings on the agenda, has turned out to be a carefully orchestrated visit, including appointments with top government officials to talk economic development and intellectual property rights. Xinhua, the country's official press agency (and therefore not the most objective of sources), reported that Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang stated that the country will "strengthen intellectual property rights protection" and "pay more attention to caring for workers." Typical of state-sponsored releases, the report failed to expand on either statement, but even if nothing comes of this particular meeting, Keqiang is in line to take over as Premier next year, making him a solid addition to Cook's rolodex. There's a Chinese-language video of the encounter waiting just past the break.
Doodle adds iCal connector for cloud scheduling
Mac users of the cloud-based scheduling service Doodle will be happy to learn that the company has released a beta of its iCal Connector software for Mac. Doodle is a service that lets users send out potential meeting dates to friends or clients. Those recipients see a poll with the meeting schedule options; they can vote on which date would be best for them. The tentative dates show up in that user's calendar client (Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.). Users can see what other dates people choose as well. When the original meeting organizer looks over all the dates and chooses the best one for the group, all the tentative dates are automatically wiped clean from everyone's calendar software with only the chosen one left. Until now Doodle's third-party calendar support was limited to Google Calendar or Microsoft's Exchange calendaring. With the iCal beta, now Mac users can take full advantage of the cloud-based meeting selection service, no matter what calendar service they use. If you want to learn more about Doodle, check out this short video. Doodle offers both free and premium accounts for users. The Doodle iCal Connector is a free download.
Nintendo won't be exhibiting at CES 2011 after all, will conduct meetings behind closed doors
Wait, put the cork back in the champagne, Nintendo isn't making its triumphant return to CES after all. The Consumer Electronics Association has just blasted out a new press release, presumably with a face red with embarrassment, to correct its erroneous note that Nintendo will be an exhibitor at the 2011 tech showcase. As it turns out, Satoru Iwata's crew have booked some meeting rooms during the show -- to discuss what, we don't know -- which somewhere along the line was misinterpreted to mean that the company will be exhibiting its wares. It won't. We'll be there anyway, this just means we'll have to be a little craftier about extracting our information. [Thanks, Curtis]
First look: Fuze Meeting extends remote presentation mojo to iPad
Modern meetings are a marvel. With strong competition in the remote presentation/conferencing product space, we now have plenty of capable and feature-rich platforms that offer affordable (sometimes free) remote meetings, most with a good Mac compatibility story to tell. The catch, of course, is that all these technologies depend on Java, Flash/AIR or a bespoke browser plugin to deliver the goods -- meaning that the iPad and iPhone are largely left out of the fun. Given the demand, it's clear why the Adobe Connect iPhone client and WebEx player for iPad deliver meeting attendance options for iDevices; who wouldn't want to attend a web meeting from the beach? Still, if you want to host a meeting from your iPad and show off the content stored there or in the cloud, there hasn't been a solid option [Commenters noted Mighty Meeting, which includes straightforward PPT sharing from the iPad to remote or local displays]. Now, with the introduction of Fuze Meeting HD for the iPad, there is a new contender. Callwave's new & free iPad client for Fuze, released today, gives you access to your Fuze Meeting account on the go. Want to host a meeting? Three taps and you're rolling, including any PPT or Keynote presentations on your device, photos, videos and more. You can include local content or tightly-synchronized media playback from files stored in your Fuze account, including HD media. Pinch to zoom in, point to show a 'laser pointer' indicator -- just like being there. Read on for the video demo & more features.
Seen@E3: The best business card ever
We got this business card LEGO person from LEGO Universe Creative Director Ryan Seabury yesterday, and every single person we have showed it to since agrees that it is indeed the best form of sharing contact information ever seen. Seabury's name and likeness are on the front, and his phone number and email are on the back of the little guy. We've placed him atop the pile of business cards that's been handed to us this week. We've met a lot of fun people on the show floor at E3, but if we need any LEGO-related advice, we'll know exactly who to call.
Microsoft demos panoramic cam for RoundTable
If you actually made it all the way through that rather dense post from the other day on what Microsoft is now calling its Unified Communications Platform, then you probably remember us mentioning a new software package called RoundTable that gives users a panoramic view of all the other participants at the remote end of a web-conference. Well now we've spied the first pics of that 360 degree camera which enables this immersive experience -- developed out of a Microsoft project called RingCam -- thanks to a recent demonstration featuring company employees and sitcom stars engaged in a scripted debate over what to order for lunch. As we saw at the mock meeting, users are able to toggle between viewing the entire remote group or just the active speaker, with RoundTable also allowing the speaker to broadcast documents or PowerPoint slides directly to participants' monitors. Like most of the other hardware and software elements that are part of the new platform, both RoundTable and the complementary cam will be available to business-types sometime during the second quarter of next year.
