Testing embed code

Testing

Qik SIM

QIK | Streaming video right from your phone

Cisco UC 7.0 Mobility Manager...sooo sweet

I upgraded my CUCM (Cisco Unified Call Manager) account to UC 7.0 and apart from enabling click to call from my Cisco WebEx Connect account, the next best thing is Mobility Manager.

So what's the big deal you may say. Well here we go

* Sweet part number 1 : Single Number Reach. I only have to publish my office number and CUCM will not only connect the call to my desk number, but to any other number that I have set in the system. This could be my cell phone, home number, vacation house, hotel room....you get the point. No matter where I am I can receive my office call. No more having to publish several numbers to my contacts. I can be reached at one single number, my office number. And my voice mail will always go to the same voice mail box. Easy for you and easy for me. And of course the nice thing is that I can set policies for when CUCM will call the other numbers, so if I really don't want people to reach me, I can set that as well... :-)

* Sweet part number 2: Mobility Extension. If I pick up the call on my cell phone and walk back to my desk, I simply hang up my cell phone, and the call will be transfered back to my desk phone allowing me to easily continue the discussion there. In the same way, if I need to leave my desk I can push the call to my cell phone, hang up my desk phone and walk away and nobody on the call will have noticed.

janster

Test

Using webcollaboration to avoid commute woes during NYC taxi strike

New York City is bracing for a 48-hour taxi strike due start on Wednesday Sept 5 at 5:00 AM. Earlier today; Mayor Bloomberg announced a taxi strike contingency plan. This contingency plan is focused on allow people to share rides in those taxis that are operating and is urging commuters to use public transport as much as possible. One other way of avoiding commuter woes would be to work from home and telecommute during the next two days.

Just like during the most recent transit strike; WebEx (my company) is offering New Yorkers free web conferencing services that will allow them to work from home. These services will allow commuters to telecommute from home rather than deal with a commute situation that is expected to be worse than normal. This free service is offered to all New Yorkers at www.webex.com/go/avoid_traffic

Making Real-Time Collaboration Mindnumbingly Simple

One of the programs that I run here at WebEx is "Samantha", the virtual meeting assistant. So what is a virtual meeting assistant and why do you need one?

For those of us who live and breathe collaboration every day, using on-demand collaboration tools is completely 2nd nature. Personally, I've been in this space for almost 5 years, first at PlaceWare and now WebEx and frankly, I could not imagine my life without real-time communication tools. I feel I would be back in the ice ages. Without my cellphone, blackberry, IM and WebEx, my life would be quite more complex. I can work where ever I have an Internet connection and phone reception. My team knows my presence info and how to contact me and frankly does not care where I am. I am available to answer questions, escalate issues and jump into a meeting, regardless if I am at work, working from home or on the road. And since I know where the off bottom is on my cellphone and my blackberry, my wife has only threatened to "do something big" to me a couple times. :-)

That's for those of us for whom web 2.0; office 2.0; mash-ups and collaborative applications actually means something. For everybody else, it may be fair to assume that they may be just a little bit uncomfortable with a web meeting. But as most of us know, once teach somebody to take their first steps, they will be running in no time.

So that's where Samantha comes in; a virtual meeting assistant who helps the user with their first web conferencing steps. I've developed several versions of Samantha and in the first 6 months of the program, we've seen some very impressive results. So feel free to let Samantha take you by the hand. We've even localized her for the Latin American and Spanish market; Bienvenidos Claudia!

and

If you believe Samantha has helped you become a better WebEx presenter, leave a comment to this blog

--jan

Steam Pipe Explosions and Real Time Collaborations ... Where Is the Link You May Wonder

Guess where I was on Wednesday July 18, 2007 at 6:00 PM....

I just came out of the Bryant Park and 42nd Street subway exit in Manhattan and I look to my right and see a sea of people running towards me and away from the Grand Central Station area. Behind them was a large white smoke cloud. The pictures here and here give you some idea what it was about. This is not from the same vantage point I was at though. What I did see where many people who were covered in mud and who looked panicked.

So, why is this relevant to Business Continutiy? Well, I was in NY where I just presented at the Business Continuity forum, a conference focused on business continuity and disaster recovery. I will post a recording of this presentation later. I gave a presentation on why real-time collaboration services are also a good telework solution.

I thought that it was a little ironic that right after this conference, a major incident happened that reminded many people of Sept 11. Many companies in Manhattan's Midtown area will be affected for a couple more days and can't let their employees back into their offices. I guess they all wished they have implemented WebEx as their telework solution. They allow you to transform any business disruption into business as usual.

Let me give you a less dramatic example: Let's assume that you're on your way to work and suddenly you hit a traffic jam. You turn your radio to a station that has traffic reports (in the San Francisco Bay Area that could be KQED or KGO) and low and behold, there is a traffic accident and they closed down 3 of the 4 lanes of the highway. You're stuck in traffic and at 5 miles / hr you're going to be late for your 9 AM meeting where you had to present the project status to your management team. (Did I say you burned the midnight oil to get the powerpoint to look just right). Rather than panic and call into the meeting from the car to give them the 5 minute cliff notes, you get off the next exit, drive 3 blocks to the nearest Starbucks, log on to the t-mobile wifi hotspot, start your WebEx meeting and it's as good as being there in person.

Anyways, if you were in NYC on Wednesday and you were in Midtown and want to share your experiences, post a reply to this blog entry....

--jan

Is Skype losing its simplicity?

Recently came across the Analyst Day presentation by Ebay. This raises questions whether Skype is getting polluted and going down the path of being yet another IM which is merely all about being an onramp to monetizable services by Ebay by providing Ebay tab, money transfer through Paypal, etc. (check slide 281 - 290). Also, recently they signed a co-marketing agreement to promote Symantec products to their user base. All signs seem to be that Skype is becoming yet another Yahoo or AOL. The difference is that Skype has better voice and worse presence/chat.

Google Apps Premium Edition - Me Too or Differentiated ??

Well as anticipated Google now enters the collaboration market with a fee-based offer to challenge Microsoft Office Live,WebOffice from WebEx, and Yahoo'sSMB services.

At a high level everything looks similar and “me too” solutions, but there are significant differences in the packages offered by the providers. A brief comparison is provided below.

John Chambers Keynote at Oracle OpenWorld

Had the opportunity today to see and hear John Chambers at Oracle OpenWorld (recording and presentation available here - may need to scroll down a bit). It was great to hear him talk about Unified Communications / Telepresence and how that will impact business users and consumers.

This is the first time I had the opportunity to hear John Chambers live and I must say that he is a phenomenal speaker, engages his audience very very well and very inspiring. Even though he did raise a bunch of questions around how communications would change with Telepresence, Unified Communications...what I found fascinating was his concept around Enteprise 2.0 - which is Web 2.0 coming into the business world. This is simply great - as it goes beyond blurring functional department boundaries in enterprises to actually blurring the lines between a consumer and business user. This can have a great impact on adoption of tools, especially communication / collaboration tools, and also how these products are marketed and sold.

I am tempted to believe that consumer adoption of Web 2.0 collaboration/communication tools will fuel enterprise adoption as well...as I see the analogy of this in the IM world and how Enterprise IM never took off and got to the level of usage of business users using consumer IM products in their business.

Even though the presentation and demonstrations around the use of Telepresence, etc. in consumer markets was compelling - the skeptic in me wonders....if the consumer products reach a level of quality and reliability that is "good enough", will the costly Telepresence and UC systems see the fate similar to video conferencing systems, i.e. lie around in corners of large enterprises with no real usage?

Sony Mylo - concept seems to be cool

Has anyone tried the Sony Mylo? A phone that is not a phone...as it connects to the IP-network. The concept is pretty cool. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/technology/19pogue.html?ref=technology

Are we seeing the signs already....that only the Internet and IP-Networks will survive.

PC Magazine review of Video Chat tools

Recently, someone forward this article on PC Magazine on real-world testing of the various video chat tools. I am amazed by the quality of testing (or lack there of) done by this publisher. This was such a marketing baloney - that it was not even funny! It further bolsters my belief that these casual video chat tools have yet to evolve to deliver to the real-time video experience.

I tried their best rated tool - SightSpeed...and in my humble opinion it SUCKED!! While reading through the PCMag article the following caught my attention: "SightSpeed worked pretty well, though we saw several "network congestion" errors, and dropped frames were fairly common, too. That's Comcast's service, however, not SightSpeed. " Now...now....since when does a reviewer make excuses for the tool and point the finger to someone else for not being able to deliver a high quality experience. Shouldn't SightSpeed be able to adapt to the changing network conditions? It is always easy to blame the ISP or Internet in general for providing a degraded quality of experience.

This theme seemed to follow everywhere in the review. For Skype it mentions "the quality of the video wasn't ideal, and there was some lag time in the transmission of the video signal, but this is to be expected when calling overseas, where broadband quality and Internet connections can be spotty."

I expect better from reviewers!

Opensource Web Conferencing...hmmmm....

Recently came across dimdim.com an OpenSource Web Conferencing product. The skeptic in me makes me question whether this really makes sense. I understand there's significant benefit around TCO for Opensource products...but I question if that really makes sense for Web conferencing.

As, an Opensource expert we met with the other day said...there are only 2 proven models with opensource:
(a) A popular commodity product (like operating system, database, app server) where the enterprises are looking to reduce TCO. Business model is based on providing high-touch support.
(b) Proliferate a billion copies and somehow hope that a % of them would want a supportable copy.

Somehow for Web conferencing the above theories do not seem to hold true:
1) The only model that has been successful with Web Conf. is an on-demand service model. So, I am skeptical how well an OpenSource product will be adopted.
2) Web conf. - even after 10 years - is a departmental solution with IT typically not getting involved in the purchase decision. Hence, I am skeptical if IT will really install and play around with an Opensource solution to see if it will work.

I guess time will tell what happens with this.

Also, wondering if there's really an opensource model for on-demand service...hmmmm.....

Real Time Communication Reality Check!

Real-time communication should be all about enabling people to communicate naturally both in the work environment and at home. However, the world of RTC as we know today has numerous roadblocks requiring consumers to significantly adjust their communication style based on which technology they are using, which device they are using, and who they are communicating with - especially if you need to communicate with someone outside your firewall.

The RTC technologies as we know it today is definitely not enabling people to communicate naturally. Why is that? Why are technology providers not focusing on providing a high quality of user experience? Why is this not embedded as a part of everyone's daily activities? Why does one have to use phrases like - "can you hear me now", "can you see me now", "can you see the next slide now"?

Broadband is pervasive nowadays. Capturing devices, like Webcams and cell phones, are now pervasive. Then why are the RTC technologies still far from providing a rich, natural communication experience?