Yawn? Surely you jest. Oh I know that multihead conferencing has been around. Most of it corporate using dedicated circuits and equipment. Or public services like WebEx. But what makes VuRoom is that is does not require a lot of specific gear. If your PC can run the latest version of Skype it can run VuRoom.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ViVu, Inc. (www.vivu.tv), an emerging leader in creating innovative and easy-to-use solutions for live video participation, today released VuRoom – a ViVu-powered plug-in for Skype, the popular software that enables the world’s conversations. VuRoom is built on the Skype platform to provide customers with instant multi-user video conferencing – an exciting new breakthrough previously unavailable to Skype users. Along with its presentation and desktop sharing functionalities, VuRoom is designed to help remote business users collaborate in real-time, while also saving valuable time and money.

“Having experienced the technology, I believe that ViVu is well positioned to deliver on the video collaboration needs of SMB and enterprise customers. In particular, I see strong potential for ViVu’s new Skype plug-in.”

“Our recent research studies predict a big year for global growth in the web conferencing market,” said Krithi Rao, an analyst in the Information & Communication Technologies Practice at Frost & Sullivan. “Now more than ever, enterprises are looking for cost-effective communication and collaboration solutions to help them succeed.”

Demo here.

Now why the tither Dog? The price. The problem with most of the other services is they run $30-40/month. That can run into some serious coin on a 10 person team every month. This is running $10/seat. A fourth the price. At that price point if using the software for the entire team replaced but one airline ticket a month it paid for itself and then some.

The fact that it is on Skype provides for a very ubiquitous platform. One could add external input sources as needed into the video conversations with little cost or set up charges. The real question is does it last in its current biz plan form. Skype with there latest release now provide P2P video on the three major OS platforms. That is probably 60% of all the Skype usage out there. Couple that with some geek will pull this off as a freebie somewhere as well. Time will tell.

But while it lasts VuRoom lowers the bar on multihead video.

Linky.

Yes Dear Reader a little TCO analysis can save you money. We have been saying for years that the shell game of free phone, payback is a b!@#$ thru the contract is a bear. It also hurts your wallet. –

He’s considering buying a data-only plan from T-Mobile and relying primarily on SkypeOut purchases, with a backup of free Gizmo5 calls through Google Voice, although new Gizmo5 sign-ups are currently suspended. That means little to no mobile calling (unless you used the free Guava app). Then again, Ben sees some significant savings by the end of what would be a two-year contract, and considers himself a “near-total” dependent on Google services. Could you imagine making the data-only jump?

Just go over to the lifehacker article and see for yourself. Keep in mind that the author is considering only going with a data only plan, 2yr contact. There are other considerations one can also employ. For instance, does your spouse have a phone with a carrier who does a Friend and Family deal? Why not punch the Google voice into the loop? Then the calls to her are free. And if perchance one has a small VoIP server then a VoIP app on the Nexus might avoid all the Gizmodo fiddling as well.

While we are on the subject. The Nexus Launch. A captured live blog feed is here with pics. Initial take — very iPhonish. But that seems to be where the jive is at the moment. The wise move being made? You can buy the phone separate and go with any vendor you wish. That’s a damn smart move, especially for the consumer.

I just hope the carriers are prepared for the bandwidth assault. This phone screams — Songbird App. But your data store staying on the home server and streamed to the Nexus as an audio terminal. Oh and anybody out there developing a multiparty audio remix app for the Nexus. It would sell.

We have projected for 2 years that it was time for unbundling the phone. We would have expected it to happen before the smartphones took hold. But I guess it takes the extra functionality of the smartphone to force the issue on the carriers. Hope I am right but wrong.

Nexus one analysis.

Kurzweil, is there anything this guy can’t do? His book the Singularity is Near has spawned a whole new way of thinking about the future. He is a prolific inventor past and present. So what’s he go an do? Well remedy the bland existence of eReaders that’s what! —

One of Blio’s major advantages over current e-book readers is that the software offers a full color experience. E Ink, which is the black-and-white display used currently in almost all e-readers, works best for text, and even then most e-books still look ugly, thanks to design limitations in the readers.

Blio actually lays out the “pages” as they would be seen on paper, with typography and illustrations copied across. It also supports video and animation. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of the interactive magazine applications (also meant for upcoming tablet devices) shown off by the likes of Time Warner, Popular Science publisher Bonnier and Wired’s parent company Conde Nast.

Add to that some nifty features such as text-to-speech and the ability to synchronize things (like bookmarks, highlights and the page you last read) across multiple devices, and it makes for an interesting e-reader.

“We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such that you can hear the audio book and see the words highlighted on the PDF at the same time,” says Peter Chapman, an executive at Kurzweil Technologies.

For publishers, says Kurzweil the advantage is that Blio preserves the original book’s format, including typsetting, layout, fonts and pagination.

Wired goes on to mention stiff competition, etc. My guess is maybe not. First this has the attributes that most any student or researcher keeps in the stachel — marker, highlighter, sticky notes, etc. Then it supports color. Of course that’s more a hardware restriction than anything. But still color will probably be what separates the have nots from the haves in the ebook market very quickly once power issues are corralled.

What’s not to like? Well format for one. Got too many right now. Many non-Amazon systems were starting to gravitate around the ePub format. This will delay that for awhile.

Now the hardware makers need to step up. The merge of tablet and eReader will continue. Somebody will come out with a 8.5×11 formatted screen and the rest will be history. Whoever does it will have the same impact that IBM did when they introduced their laptop line oh so many years ago.

Linky.

It what has to be a positive move the FCC has released a query for suppliers for a database platform and service that will be part of the whole infrastructure. —

On November 4, 2008, the Commission adopted a Second Report and Order and Memorandum Opinion and Order (Second Report and Order) in ET Docket 04-186 that established rules to allow new, sophisticated, unlicensed wireless devices to operate in broadcast television spectrum at locations where that spectrum is unused by licensed services.1 This unused TV spectrum is commonly referred to as television “white spaces.” The rules will allow for the use of unlicensed TV band devices in the unused spectrum to provide broadband data and other services for consumers and businesses.

To prevent interference to authorized users of the TV bands, TV band devices must include a geo-location capability and the capability to access a database that identifies incumbent users entitled to interference protection, including, for example, full power and low power TV stations, broadcast auxiliary point-to-point facilities, PLMRS/CMRS operations on channels 14-20, and the Offshore Radiotelephone Service. 2 The database will tell a TV band device which TV channels are vacant and can be used at its location. 3 The database also will be used to register the locations of fixed TV band devices and protected locations and channels of incumbent services that are not recorded in Commission databases.4 The Commission decided in the Second Report and Order to designate one or more database administrators from the private sector to create and operate TV band database(s), which will be a privately owned and operated service. Database administrators may charge fees to register fixed TV band devices and temporary broadcast auxiliary fixed links and to provide lists of available channels to TV band devices.

Why a database is needed for a broadband low power spread spectrum channel? Well multiuse. The band(s) in some cases will have public service users in some areas. So any smart device must be able to discern that they reside in the same locale with say a fire dept siting on the open band between formerly CH 10-11. With that knowledge a smart device can map around and use other channels.

Its good news though. It means that finally the FCC is looking to see that white space systems are brought online. Personally I hope the Hams get in the act. We could see some wonderfully weird devices using the airwaves that might show commercial usage.

Linky.

Carla Schroder writes in Linux Today —

As much as we warn about privacy, security, and reliability problems in cloud computing, it’s coming and we can’t stop it. So do we join the cloud party? Heck no.

…

Well here we are on the threshold of this very thing, and now the geeks are complaining and warning against it. Why? Because we like to be perverse? Well maybe that is part of it. But for me the biggest problem is trust. I don’t trust many tech vendors because they haven’t given me any reasons to trust them, and plenty of reasons to not trust them. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Why would I entrust them with my data when they do not respect my privacy or the privacy of my data? In the US personal privacy is not protected, and vendors who mangle and lose your personal or business data pay no penalty or recourse, other than bearing the brunt of your peeve. Marketers are all about privacy invasion, as much as they can get away with, and collecting, mining, and buying and selling us. Even worse, service providers roll over at the slightest “boo”, releasing customer records at toothless DMCA takedown requests, and caving in to law enforcement without even making them go through due process. Where are all those attack lawyers when they can do some good for a change?

Carla has a point, and many times I have the same sentiment. But we should not cloud the Cloud as a technology vs that of a business practice using the Cloud. If Skype or Google has an outage it is from this observers point of view little from technology loss as simple human error. Small consequence, but an important one overall.

Any company today has little excuse not to consider internalizing the Cloud. That is bring the Cloud in house. If you have a half dozen servers or more then the company can pull it off. Start with a simple virtualization effort sufficient to free up 2-3 servers. Then consider a Cloud service like Eucalyptus. (There are others as well.) Get those nodes working then port some of those virtualized services over to your own private Cloud.

Trust issues disappear. Or they should, otherwise you have personnel problems larger than your considerations of a Cloud provider. Your results on your level of Nines you require is limited by your pocketbook. Your ability to keep working is also limited to your local networking maintenance if you are in a single location.

But Clouds don’t stop at the company door. Dual core PC’s are generally the norm walking out the door even for individuals. We are almost on the cusp of that happening to the 4 core chips as the price curve continues to drop away on the Intel and AMD product lines. At that point a Cloud in a box is a reality for individuals as well. It won’t be quite as Nines capable as a couple of discrete machines due to single point of failure issues. But a micro Cloud would permit higher levels of service, SOA type backup/restore becomes possible, and harnessing 3-4 cpu’s to a single task is simpler.

So as always, there are means to the madness.

Linky.

Apple and AT&T have an agreement in principle that neither party would partake of supporting anything that injuries the other party in any material fashion. AT&T is concerned about users foregoing the voice components on iPhone and using the data component via VoIP. Google then shows up with an application for the iStore to do exactly what AT&T does not want. Is it rejected? Welllll, not exactly, but then you can’t download it either –

AT&T and Apple told the FCC that they did have an agreement that Apple would not help iPhone owners use VOIP calling services like Skype on the iPhone. VOIP calls use the data, rather than the voice plan, and would cut into the companies profits. Thus, Apple and AT&T agreed to cripple the Skype iPhone app so that it would only work when the iPhone used a WiFi connection.

The companies say they also agree not to let apps that stream live television, which AT&T says would strain its network.

As for Google and its app store?

Its FCC filing emphasizes that Android phone users can get apps from outside the store — unlike iPhone users. (Users can “jailbreak” their iPhones to do so, but this invalidates the warranty.)

It says only one percent of apps in its online marketplace have been rejected, mostly due to copyright or obscenity reasons.

Google did not, however, mention that it too crippled mobile apps at the request of a telecom.

T-Mobile asked Google to remove apps that let customers use their phone as a modem for a laptop, a practice known as tethering, and Google complied. T-Mobile, like all of the U.S.’s largest carriers, charges customers extra for that service. Google later re-allowed the app, but not for T-Mobile customers.

Is Google the unvarnished victim in this? The maiden for her prince to open the gates? Well not exactly either. Google is doing the same thing for T-Mobile on Android platforms. Google you can pucker up, but wash your shoes first, they reek of BS.

All this jockeying and “where’s the pea” is going for naught too. Wimax is continuing to rollout. The following cities are targeted this year — Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle. Wimax is already in Atlanta, NYC, Los Angeles and the outskirt of WashDC. So many of the mass market areas are in coverage. The upshot is the Wimax providers are not freaking out that VoIP will traverse their network. Fact some providers are offering bundles that include VoIP. So the cat’s already out of the bag. Fact some are considering using a “netbook-as-phone”.

By the way Who if on first and What is on second and Google is in the outfield. Google still has not understood how damaging their lack of 700mhz ownership means to them over the long haul.

Linky.

SoundCloud, is a twitter portal originally targeted as musical types as a means to share work. Sort of a delayed simulcast for music tracks. At its best it is sort of a TiVo for music production, each artist adding their contribution in turn. –

In a few short months SoundCloud has begun to give mighty MySpace a run for the hearts and minds of recording artists eager to interact more nimbly with fans than is possible on the giant social network which has, for the past five years, been the de facto online platform for musicians.

Sonic Youth used SoundCloud to stream their latest album via Twitter while Moby uses it to promote his latest tracks on his site rather than on MySpace. And when Beck decided to trash his so-five-years-ago Flash-based site and start over with simple pages heavy on high-quality content and light on everything else, he too turned to SoundCloud.

SoundCloud sounds like an obvious idea — like every good one does once somebody else has it. The necessity that was the mother to this particular invention was the absence of a truly collaborative online environment that could replicate the kind of back-and-forth spontaneity that musicians need to feed on and which proximity uniquely enables.

Twitter is used as the enabler for finding and following a particular effort. A backend is used to do the streaming proper. I am sure we will see other services that use Twitter as a workflow engine.

Linky.

Opportunistic Access to the Airwaves

As the FCC begins its year-long process to recommend a National Broadband Plan, one starting point is to unlock publicly-owned assets that can facilitate ubiquitous, affordable broadband access. Wireless spectrum remains the most cost-effective and rapid means to deliver broadband access to rural and unserved urban residents. But as mobile broadband use continues to increase exponentially, demand for spectrum will rapidly outpace availability under current spectrum management policies.

Public policy seems stymied by the myth that spectrum is scarce. In reality, only government permission to access the airwaves (licenses) is scarce – spectrum capacity itself is barely used in most locations and at most times. This underutilized spectrum represents enormous, untapped, public capacity for high-speed and pervasive broadband connectivity. It is vital to a national broadband plan to consider policies that will encourage more intensive and efficient use of the nation’s spectrum resources.

Not quite as far fetched as it sounds. Consider –

• The DoD already does a fair level of spectrum reuse/reallocation in their day to day operations. Bands not in use even in the same operational theater routinely are reallocated on the fly as the equipment has the smarts to look for an oper frequency and do the proper handshaking to permit a conversation of data stream to occur. Fact the military fosters such frequency hopping antics as it makes it harder for some opponent to intercept the information.
• Even for civilian use, bands are reallocated as needed in a static fashion. The former analog UHF, VHF bands were only good for line of sight. So, the FCC, by properly spacing frequency allocations based on distance can have 300 TV stations using the same band. Same with high power AM. But with spread spectrum (aka your WiFi router and 900mhz wireless phone) It would be literally possible to allocate all the bands that are not in use in a particular geographic area.

So imagine. Many TV stations even today, sign off at 2 or 3 in the morning and don’t come on again till 6 or 7am. So for roughly 5-6 hours we have several GBits of bandwidth available not being used. But what if WiFi towers polled the frequency and saw it open? They could hop on and up their backhaul capabilities for pennies. Fact I could see a very nice business for high speed backhaul for scheduled traffic. Not all data is interactive, but batched and this would match nicely.

The next step up which is what the presentation above was about is the development of CPE that is intelligent enough to query a very large swath of bandwidth and utilize an open frequency and bandwidth sufficient for the job at hand. Then hop off once the traffic is complete. Another words a MIMO Wifi like device that does frequency interrogation.

I would have love to have gone. Would have been interesting.

Linky.

A computer engineer has connected his home to social networking service Twitter, enabling it to Tweet him with updates about his residence’s electricity and water consumption.

Andy Stanford-Clark, 43, has fitted wireless sensors onto household items scattered around his 16th Century thatched cottage on the Isle of Wight, according to various online reports.

The sensors feed information to a central hub that, with the help of some specially written software, translates into words a sensor notification that, say, the bathroom heater has been turned on.

[source]

This is the best use I have seen for the Twitter service yet. Most readers know I think Twetters to humans turns all into Twits. Nor do I mean that in a flattering manner. But as a machine based protocol for sending/receiving queries it rocks.

I already have several client’s servers that send me critical messages as to they had to switch over battery power, cooling etc. So the question would be how hard is it to develop an API that handles the Twitter-X10 interface? If that was in place one could possibly build a remote control interface to the home right from a Twit enabled handheld. Possibly a two message format. First message with the intended action. Second with the security code to add that activates it to the hub’s queue.

Twitter really needs to up the message limit to say 2048 characters.

Well not to be left out of the Kiosk sweepstakes, WalMart is trialling the sale/resale of video games up in the Northeast US. –

Does it sounds so strange? Not really when you think about it, this is Wal-Mart after all. Most people are unaware at the moment, but Wal-Mart is now accepting used games to trade for credit.

Just a few hours ago, I went to the one near my house and was quite surprised at what I saw. Apparently they had a installed a new vending machine less than a day ago which allows you to trade in your used PS2, PS3, X-Box, Xbox 360, and Wii games.

The machine looks extremely similiar to the Redbox DVD rental machines. When I went to use the machine, however, it still had more than a few bugs that need fixing. The first issue occurs right after you login. When logging in, you are asked to scan your games. However once you do so, there is a glitch that logs you out immidiately entering your information. After you log back in, the issue seems to repeats itself.

Just another step in the self service economy.

Linky.