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.

A New Zealand high school running entirely on open source software has slashed its server requirements by a factor of almost 50, despite a government deal mandating the use of Microsoft software in all schools.

Albany Senior High School in the northern suburbs of Auckland has been running an entirely open source infrastructure since it opened in 2009. The 230-pupil school was set up to follow open learning principles, offering large “learning commons” areas where multiple classes interact rather than conventional classrooms and setting aside one day each week for pupils to work on self-driven research projects.

Albany SHS’ unorthodox approach is also reflected in its IT infrastructure. Deputy principal Mark Osborne was determined to use open source software throughout the school, even though planning for that process began less than two months before the school opened.

Totally open. Further in the article, it is revealed that a student can bring in other foreign platforms like a Mac and use them on the network as well. A good thing for the school? Sounds like it. Little early to tell. The school only started in 2009. Give it a year or so and lets hope there is a follow up article.

Linky.

… In Hungary? Yeah I know, Ole Tux is just an OS. That is what I thought too. Still do by the way. But in Hungary a political party — Jobbik — has sprung up.:

We are going to implement open standards in the public sector and will promote the spread of open source solutions among the general public and among businesses. Under these directives, government and public sector documents can be stored only, in open document formats, on systems running open standards applications.

We are going to develop open standard interfaces, in order to encourage municipalities, the tax department, the banking sector and public offices to use open source solutions.

We are going to supply government funded and developed applications for municipalities, nation wide, to eliminate parallel and wasteful developments.

When both proprietary and open source software will be available with the equal functionality to accomplish a particular task, we will make the use of open source solutions, mandatory.

We are going to implement open standards in the school system and will introduce open source computing as a subject in schools, under the discipline of computer sciences.

That ladies and gentlemen is the Jobbik party platform. Sound wild? Well I will just direct you to Sweden where the Pirate Party has a foothold in Parliment after raising petitions and funds on the Pirate Bay file sharing suit. They now have over a dozen affiliated Pirate parties in the world. So it would not be far fetched at all.

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.

My apologies to Ed Berridge its not our practice to just lift articles bodily from a publisher. But this is just too sweet not to —

LINUX VENDOR Red Hat hit a milestone yesterday when its share price rose above Microsoft’s.

True, Microsoft has a hell of a lot more shares out there in the marketplace and its own share price has not been that healthy over the past year, but this is being seen by analysts as a great day for the free software outfit.

Since 2001 Red Hat has experienced more than 600 per cent growth, while during the same period Microsoft has experienced negative growth in its share price.

Actually 2001 was a darn good time to invest in Red Hat. In those days its stock was worth a piddling $3 per share. Now Red Hat stock is priced at over $28 per share.

Analysts say that while Red Hat’s share price has been higher than today what is important is that actually it is worth the figure.

Red Hat’s profits come from server support subscriptions and it is a stable maker of earnings.

The only thing that could go wrong for Red Hat is if other Linux suppliers come along and offer lower subscription fees.

However to balance that, Red Hat is making a killing with virtualisation and its Java application server business in Jboss.

According to CIO Today, Red Hat could make out like a bandit on the craze for Cloud computing. µ

Ed, if you or your publisher have heartburn, please just send us a note. We will take this down. But this is just too sweet not to savor. Go Red Hat!

Linky.

Ever wanted to be a movie mogul? See your name up there in the credits. Wield power. Manage the casting couch. Well you can, well except for the last part —

Get your credit!

If you purchase and pay the DVD by september 15th latest, you can get your name mentioned on the official movie credit scroll! To make sure the crediting works fine, we will remind everyone via email a month before the movie goes to premiere.

As you can notice on the campaign “money meter”, we target at a pre-sale of 2000 this time. Very ambitious, but the targets for this project are ambitious too. Order now!

General donations are welcome too, check the Sponsor Prospectus for offerings, or use the Donate button there.

Thanks for the support!

The Durian Team

Yep its an Open Source project. Only this time it is going for Open Funding too. So all it takes is for you to preorder Durian by September 15th and your name will be added to the list of credits as a ‘producer’ I guess. Ego? Hey you bet. But where else can the average schmo like me get a crack at this? My point exactly.

Linky.

For those that are of a geeky sort and want to play with the code that is the base for the Palm it is now available. –

To comply with the GPL, Palm has released the source code packages for its Linux-based WebOS used by the new Palm Pre, which has been on sale in the US since the beginning of June. The company has also set up its own open source site.

For its WebOS, Palm uses version 2.6.24 of the Linux kernel with nearly 1,000 patches, most of which relate either to the Pre’s ARM processor architecture or to platform-specific drivers. Some Palm developed new drivers are also included in the source code, such as a driver for the acceleration sensor in the Pre.

The Pre is already in the stores and seems to have developed a decent following. With but a few exceptions (eg no X11) any linux developer would feel right at home with the Pre.

Linky.

Ever wondered which countries use Open Source? Well wonder no more. Head over here for a look at what is happening with Open Source.

Any surprises? Not really. If you looked at the individual Euro countries count as the EU they surprass the US in usage. Which I would have expected. That Russia is so far down on the list is a minor surprise. But their lesser population tends to drive them that way. Its an interesting read.

In the last two weeks there has been a lot of buzz on the RSS and Twitter feeds about the new Android Scripting Environment. If its a lot of volume, and this is, its usually one of two things — either this is a ‘Big Thing’ or its from Google. Well it is from Google. But it could also be a ‘Big Thing’ –

The Android Scripting Environment (ASE) brings scripting languages to Android by allowing you to edit and execute scripts and interactive interpreters directly on the Android device. These scripts have access to many of the APIs available to full-fledged Android applications, but with a greatly simplified interface that makes it easy to:

• Handle intents
• Start activities
• Make phone calls
• Send text messages
• Scan bar codes
• Poll location and sensor data
• Use text-to-speech (TTS)
• And more

Scripts can be run interactively in a terminal, started as a long running service, or started via Locale. Python, Lua and BeanShell are currently supported, and we’re planning to add Ruby and JavaScript support, as well.

Here’s the deal. If you wanted to do development on Android you set up a box to do the development on. Wrote your apps, did the integration, cloned it then put the result to your target platform. Not impossible stuff but involved and required more assets to do the job. With ASE you are liberated from that.

For an application developer that means they can write a python app in ASE. So long as they keep in mind the limitations of each of the intended target platforms (not all platforms are required to maintain the same suite of APIs) then their code can run on all of them! So the flash app you saw on the coke machine could be downloaded and be running on your ASE enabled HTC handheld or netbook of the future. That is the ‘Big Thing’ about ASE.

But it also brings the world of Legacy Python, LUA and BeanShell to the Android world. Were I Apple, this announcement (June 8 ) would make me extremely nervous. This is a platform environment with no lock-in. We know how that battle usually ends up don’t we?

Read the announcement here.

In the world of FOSS FSF has a track record of not losing. That track record stays intact with their only case to go to court. Upon getting their it appears Cisco had an epiphany of the first order –

The question we asked in January about whether Cisco would make it to court against a Free Software Foundation (FSF) GPL violation suit has been answered.

The answer was no.

The settlement announced Wednesday is everything open source could have wished. Cisco will ride herd on its Linksys subsidiary, where these violations have been taking place, it will notify customers of their rights, it will release the relevant source code, and it will make an unspecified “contribution” to the FSF.

A blog post on the settlement emphasized that compliance, not cash, was and remains the FSF’s goal in these suits.

This was the first time the FSF went to court over a GPL violation, the blog post noted, adding:

When the violator admits that there’s been a mistake and demonstrates they want to fix it, we take it as a sign that we can cooperative productively, instead of an opportunity to pounce.

“We’re not out to wreck businesses or make lots of money. We just want compliance,” the post concluded.

For Cisco this means something more than they (thru the Linksys sub) just goofed. It also means that there will be a flood of knockoffs coming both at the software level but at the hardware level as well. So to a point, the bottom is falling out of pricepoints for the consumer grade market at Linksys. All a geek has to know is that the outside of the box says “MRT54G” compatible and the rest is history.

There is one other aspect to this that is significant as well. Cisco as a company is in many ways like Google. They let you peek, but they don’t really give away the deep secrets. Been operating that way for years. So the question has to be asked how much of their enterprise grade equipment is also using FOSS software? That too will be exposed.

Can you imagine ‘Tomato’ on a Cisco 7301 router?

Linky.