KHAS-TV - A network aimed at extending health care resources to those in need is getting a federal boost. Nebraska is slated to receive a $95,000 cut of a package approved by President Obama earlier this month will benefit the Nebraska Statewide Telehealth Network.
The network can connect rural patients to clinicians through videoconferencing, for example, or allow professionals across the state to collaborate.
It also serves as an additional communication source in the event of a public health emergency or disaster.
A start-up founded by veteran entrepreneur Steve Perlman is launching an on-demand service it says will let users play fast-action games without having to buy game consoles or high-end PCs.
Mr. Perlman, best known as the founder of WebTV, said he has developed technology that allows advanced games to be run remotely on servers and played over the Internet.
The technology can quickly compress and decompress large amounts of data for transmission over standard home broadband networks, helping entry-level personal computers and specially equipped televisions play the sophisticated software.
The technology, which has been in development for seven years, will be rolled out in a videogame service that Mr. Perlman expects to launch later this year through a new company called OnLive Inc.
OnLive says it has signed up nine software publishers, including Electronic Arts Inc., Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and THQ Inc., which have agreed to offer their newest game titles through the service. Mr. Perlman declined to comment on specifics about the service such as pricing.
Game software now runs on PCs and game consoles that have special graphics circuitry to create fast action and realistic settings. But games on OnLive will be run on high-end servers hosted by the company that can provide the instantaneous two-way response time that previously wasn’t possible, Mr. Perlman said.
“For the first time, you can get any game, any time, anywhere,” Mr. Perlman said in an interview in which he demonstrated the technology with the game Crysis, published by EA. “Getting the latest games won’t mean getting the latest PC or console.”
For consumers, the advantage would be that they could play advanced games without having to buy consoles such as Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 or a PC with a powerful graphics chip. Television sets are expected to be able to access the service by connecting to a small Internet-capable device dubbed the OnLive MicroConsole.
Publishers could benefit because they would be spared the cost of distributing physical software and it could eliminate software piracy since users wouldn’t own the games. It could also cut down on sales of used games for the same reason.
Michael Pachter, a videogame-industry analyst with Wedbush Morgan, said he was “excited” by the implications of the new technology, which he said could be used for other services requiring interactive video, such as multisite videoconferencing.
But he said OnLive’s biggest challenge will be to make sure it keeps its first-mover advantage as other companies try to come up with similar technologies. “If [Steve] can do it, so can Apple, so can Amazon,” Mr. Pachter said. He added that the service’s success will depend on its price.
Mr. Perlman started the set-top box company WebTV Networks Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft in the 1990s. OnLive was spun out of his San Francisco-based incubator Rearden LLC, which has a small team of engineers. Other OnLive investors include Warner Bros., Maverick Capital Ltd. and Autodesk Inc.
Two years ago, Rearden developed technology that can create digital reproductions of the human body that are as accurate as photographs. That technology was used in the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” about a man who ages in reverse.
Some of the planned features of the OnLive service include an ability for many people to remotely watch someone else play a game. Players can also hit a button to record the last 15 seconds of game play.
US telecoms equipment vendor Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) expects the Latin American telepresence market to grow 70% in 2009 to US$17.8mn, Polycom’s VP for the CALA region, Armando Trivellato told BNamericas.
Studies have estimated that the global market potential for all video solutions will be US$30bn in 2011, 10 times the level today, Trivellato added.
According to the executive, the biggest demand for telepresence and other video solutions comes from education in the broad sense of the word, meaning not only university campuses but training in general being carried out in a range of industries from banking to healthcare.
In Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, for example, Polycom is working with municipal authorities to train officials in some 200 remote municipalities.
Trivellato believes that the time for telepresence in Latin America could not be better with companies obsessed with cost reduction and increasing productivity, while also being concerned about reducing their carbon footprint in flights.
Polycom estimates that one person’s share of carbon emissions from taking a transatlantic flight is greater than the global emission of an automobile for a year. And the company says that on average productivity can increase by 30% as less time is spent traveling.
As regards cost saving, Trivellato estimates that a company that invests in a medium-priced solution at around US$6,000 can see a return on investment (ROI) within one to six months. Clearly the level of ROI depends on how much a company’s employees normally travel.
“It doesn’t mean that this is going to replace physical presence meetings, but you can cut out some of them. We used to have four core business reviews per year, all physical presence. Today we do two physical presence meetings and two meetings using video. We hold team meetings once a week using video… and they are quick meetings to discuss day to day things,” Trivellato said.
According to Trivellato, with telepresence CEOs of multinationals can find the time to meet lower level managers, something that was difficult before.
DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS
Telepresence solutions do not all have to be major investments in special rooms equipped with multiple screens. A simple solution can be used on a personal computer screen.
The so-called immersive solution - which involves building a specialized room - can have up to 28 seats and come complete with ceiling microphones for directional sound to make it easy to identify which of the participants is speaking.
Trivellato sees the ease of use of controls, standardized meeting room layout, with the same chairs and background screen, as well as the hands free experience as essential to ensure that the technology is almost imperceptible to the meeting attendees.
“It is easier to speak on the phone when one is using hands free, when one can hear well what the other person is saying, when technology is not an obstacle for holding a meeting, ” Trivellato said.
One hurdle that Polycom has encountered is that the quality of the meeting can depend a lot on the quality of the network. A split second of down time on a network can be annoying and distracting.
For that reason Polycom implements what is called lost package recovery, in which the technology adapts to any delays that occur to smooth out any interruptions. Their equipment is designed for high resolution video, which falls between standard and high definition, thereby ensuring that the quality of the image is good but does not use excessive bandwidth.
Nortel Networks on Wednesday unveiled the latest release of its enterprise voice and unified communications platform, the Communication Server 1000 (CS 1000).
With CS 1000 Release 6.0, Nortel said it added in a host of new capabilities, including new functionality to enable simplicity, resiliency, security and openness. CS 1000 is a software-based, full-featured IP PBX and the cornerstone of Nortel’s enterprise unified communications solutions. It offers a fully converged network, advanced applications and more than 750 telephony features. The CS 1000 is fully distributed over IP LAN and WAN infrastructure with built-in reliability and survivability, while supporting business-critical applications like unified messaging, customer contact center, IVR, wireless VoIP and IP telephony.
Release 6.0 is Linux-based and lets users select their hardware platform, whether it’s Dell (NSDQ:Dell), Hewlett-Packard (HP) or IBM, Nortel said.
The updates also add in a new high-density services gateway (NYSE:GTW), dubbed the MG 1010, to centralize the provisioning of communications services and applications, and enhanced SIP support to increase scalability and functionality, including support for Nortel’s IP Softphone 3456 and several other, third-party SIP devices.
To compliment the new release, Nortel also unveiled new IP telephone handsets, including the Nortel IP Phone 1165E, which offers wideband audio technology to boost voice quality, a high-resolution color display, eight new softkey features, and the ability to create and display custom applications. The new system also integrates with a new unified messaging solution, the CallPilot 202i, which is offered in a simplified form-factor to reside on a server blade.
Nortel also enhanced its conferencing solution with Nortel Multimedia Conferencing 6.0 software, a platform-independent solution that adds new conferencing capabilities, including announcements, voicemail detection, a Web management tool and reporting.
In addition, Mobility MC 3100 enhancements let any Web-enabled mobile phone, including the iPhone, T-Mobile G1 and netbook devices, be integrated into the network. Release 6.0 also integrates with Nortel’s new Contact Center 7.0 solution, offering additional control over quality assurance and remote monitoring capabilities.
Communication Server 1000 6.0 also adds in specialized support for the financial industry with a SIP-based Turret Solution for phone banks on trading floors. Located in “turrets,” those phones require a direct connect with the office for real-time order placement, barge-in where callers can interrupt an existing conversation and recording.
On the management side, the system is managed by Nortel’s Unified Communications Management Solution to control all converged network elements.
Sometimes a company’s share price is seemingly very high because it is on the verge of being taken over by one of the major players in its sector. And sometimes those major players are crazy for video.
That, in many people’s opinion, is what happened last week to Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), when it bought privately-held Pure Digital Technologies for $590 million in Cisco shares.
Pure Digital was founded several years ago by Jonathan Kaplan from San Francisco, based on the brilliant idea of developing a small and simple digital video camera the size of a box of cigarettes. The device is called Flip, it retails for about $150, and it is based on 2 gigabytes of flash memory. That is enough to record, transfer to computer, and erase short movies at reasonable quality.
Exactly parallel with the first launch of the device, about two years ago, came the YouTube phenomenon, which propelled sales of the Flip to 2 million devices as of today.
It turns out that there is nothing more simple and easy to do than to pull out a Flip from your pocket, record a short clip, and transfer it to the Internet with a standard USB cable.
But analysts and investors asked why the heck Cisco needed this toy. They claim it is a somewhat strange, to say the least, way to spend $90 million.
Personally, I was quite surprised, because about a year ago, a rich uncle brought together our whole extended family at a Tel Aviv hotel, where he proceeded to give out Flips to each of the dozens of youngsters there. At first, I was happy that there is another flash application on the market which will pay royalties to SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq:SNDK), but only after several months I realized something else important.
Essentially, in every home, alongside the big professional video camera, there can be a simple Flip, for recording quick and short clips of family and social events.
Sources at Cisco said last week that for the past year, CEO John Chambers has had several of the devices in his home, and that senior executives at Cisco used the Flip to upload professional videos through YouTube, as a part of intra-company communication.
Bank of America analyst Tal Liani was correct when he wrote recently that Cisco’s next acquisition would surprise the market, and will be in the consumer sector, but even he did not believe that Cisco would begin its way into the consumer sector by becoming a video camera producer.
Liani, who rates Cisco a “Buy”, with a target price of $20, related to the acquisition recently. In his estimation, the purchase stems first of all from Cisco’s desire to widen as much as possible the usage of video on the Internet, because Cisco’s bread and butter is the routers and switches for broadband infrastructure. With the Flip, Cisco has done that in the consumer arena, after achieving the same thing in the enterprise sector through the major acquisitions of Scientific Atlanta and WebEx in recent years, and with the launch of its TelePresence platform for video conference calls.
Additionally, Liani believes that with the Flip, Cisco has extended its footprint in the house, where it already had a presence with its home network division Linksys. Liani sees the acquisition as the first, small step in a long journey of 5-10 years, at the end of which Cisco wants to be, like Apple (a consumer brand of several gadgets, and it is interesting to see what its next step in this direction will be.
In contrast to Liani, Credit Suisse analysts give Cisco a “Neutral” rating, and say they don’t have any idea what Cisco is seeking with the acquisition, just as they had no idea what Cisco intended in January when it announced it was entering the consumer market. It seems to them like a wasteful way to achieve growth at any price, even in a sector which is not synergetic with its products. They believe that Cisco apparently has concluded that sales of routers and switches will not return, even after the current crisis, to the high growth rates of the past.
![[Bloglines]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Google]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Newsvine]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/newsvine.png)
![[Reddit]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Technorati]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.videoconferencing-review.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
