This mirror isn’t ashamed to watch TV

(Credit: Seura)

For some unfathomable reason, there are apparently more than a few influential product designers who seem to think people just must have mirrored TVs. They’ve used reflective surfaces to hide LCDs, combined them with computers, and even made them waterproof.

But all of these have assumed that we want the TV concealed when it’s not in use. Obviously, their focus groups have missed an important demographic–those of us who stay glued to the tube 24/7. The true addict would want something like the “Seura Television Mirror,” which proudly displays the screen at all times while providing the reflection around it.

For prices starting at $3,000, BornRich says, bathroom aficionados can have the option of a 15- or 20-inch Sharp LCD and a choice of finishes including oak, cherry, and maple. You can even decide whether you want the display to be recessed or surface-mounted. We recommend the latter, for easier cleaning.

via [crave]

Loews Regency Hotel gets outfitted with Powermat wireless power

 

The wireless power business sure seems to be getting crowded these days, with upstart Powermat Ltd. only the latest company promising to free your gadgets from yet another cord. Unlike some similar products, however, Powermat’s system looks to actually be ready to charge your devices, with the Loews Regency Hotel Business Center in New York City the first to put it to use. While the company eventually sees its technology being directly integrated into various electronic devices (like every other company), in the meantime you simply hook your device up to a so-called “puck,” which in turn wirelessly picks up the signals from the power mat it’s placed on. No word on when you’ll be able to get a Powermat for yourself, but the company does say the system will be “inexpensive.

via [engadget]

iPhone Humour that is right on!

This blog is about technology as it relates to the AV industry but I could just not help myself…..and had to post this.

via [boing boing]

Microsoft Roundtable reviewed by TMC

 

Microsoft RoundTable is a very cool videoconferencing system featuring 360° panoramic views powered by its 5 built-in cameras. Microsoft sent me a RoundTable system for review. I figured I may as well install it in one of TMC’s two conference rooms to have some “real world” testing scenarios. After plugging in the various cables, including a USB cable to the host PC, I then installed the Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 (LM 2007) beta software client, which was designed to handle the RoundTable’s 360° panoramic cameras. I should point out that Microsoft is offering both a hosted model for Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 as well as a CPE (customer premise equipment) solution, namely Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007). The RoundTable can work with either. However, I tested it with a Microsoft Office Live Meeting online beta account.

The RoundTable actually installs two USB camera devices. The first is the Active Speaker which uses the RoundTable’s 6 microphones to locate where in the room the active speaker is and then focus one of the 5 cameras onto that person. I suspect it may actually use 2 cameras to focus on a person, since it always appears that the speaker is “centered” which probably would require at least 2 camera images and then the images are “spliced” together, processed, and then transmitted over the USB cable. The second USB camera device is the panoramic camera which combines the 5 camera images into a single panoramic image.

Next, I initiated a Live Meeting session in the conference room and went back to my desk to join the meeting. Unbeknownst to me, by the time I got to my desk, some TMC sales team members walked into the conference room to start a meeting. When I launched my LM 2007 client I saw Anthony Graffeo, one of TMC’s sales staff staring right into one of the 5 triangular mirrors located just above the cameras. I headed over the conference room to tell them I could see and hear everything that was going on. After giving a brief demo, Anthony said, “that thing is awesome!”. I heard similar comments from other TMCers over the next few days – including “That thing is cool” and “Wow! What is that?”

During my tests with Office Live Meeting 2007, I was able to see the entire conference room in the panoramic view. The other video view is the “active speaker” and it would change to whoever was speaking. It was actually quite accurate and surprisingly fast. When I tested it with Rich Tehrani, Joe Fabiano, Mike Genaro, and Dave Rodriguez, we all took turns speaking and the camera view would almost instantly switch.

Overall, the video quality was excellent, Very smooth. Later on I did some more tests with just me in the conference room. I tried to trick the cameras by snapping my fingers above the microphone and the video wouldn’t switch. I figured it must be using a combination of audio and video cues to determine the active speaker. A quick glance in the manual reveals, “To avoid switching to a non-human sound source, the video functions to assist in determining whether the sound detected is coming from an attendee or some other source.” Answers that question!

Below is a Flash demo demonstrating the active speaker functionality. When I ran this test, I did it by myself and just walked around the conference room while continuing to speak. I will make a 2nd video with several fellow TMCers if I can get some volunteers. This would better demonstrate the active speaker feature. Also, the video I did record appears much jerkier than it actually was live. Part of that is because it was my first time using Camtasia Studio to capture the screen & audio, so I only had it set to 15fps (not 30fps). Secondly, the PC I was recording on isn’t the greatest, so I’m sure Camtasia skipped a few video frames since it the processor was taxed. Nevertheless, this video gives you a good feel for the active speaker functionality.

he base has an LCD touch-screen that serves as a dialpad and to configure various options. An external dialpad is available as well, but I didn’t get one with my unit, so not sure if that’s an extra option. The LCD touch-screen dialpad seems good enough to me. Physical buttons also exist to increase/decrease speaker volume, a mute audio / halt video button, Flash button, on/off hook, and an Information button. There is also a privacy cap that goes on top of the unit to block the cameras and prevent anyone from viewing the conference room.

Although the Microsoft RoundTable was designed for Office Live Meeting 2007 & OCS 2007, since it is simply 2 separate USB camera devices in the Device Manager, I figured it would most likely work with other videoconferencing, audioconferencing, or VoIP software. So I fired up Skype on the conference room PC and went into the video wizard. I tried the panoramic device first, but all that was displayed was a black screen. Then I changed it to the active speaker USB camera device and it worked. I made a test Skype call to the Microsoft Roundtable, again with some fellow TMC’ers and the active speaker functionality worked just as well in Skype. Obviously, it’s the RoundTable hardware performing the video switching and not LM 2007. Also, I was able to use Skype’s “full screen” video mode and it had extremely high-resolution video with very fast frame rates. Here’s a screenshot of Skype in action viewing the RoundTable video:

Microsoft designed RoundTable to equalize the varying light levels when one part of the conference room is darker than another. In fact, TMC’s conference room has sunlight coming in the window and I noticed the RoundTable was able to do a pretty good job equalizing the light across the entire room.

The Microsoft RoundTable features both an RJ11 (phone) and an RJ45 (network) jack. The RJ11 wire lets you connect to a PSTN line and use the RoundTable as a high-end conference room speakerphone. The RoundTable lets you place outgoing calls, answer an incoming call, conduct a video conference with audio from the microphones or a video-only session with no audio from the microphones. In the video-only mode you can use the PSTN line or even your cell phone for the audio portion.

I like the aesthetic design of the Microsoft RoundTable. It is one cool looking device. Reminds me of the alien spaceships in H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds movie (the original 1953 movie, not the Tom Cruise remake). Compare for yourself! Both have “eyes” and both have a long neck connected to the main base.

Interestingly, the RoundTable doesn’t aim its 5 cameras directly at you. As previously mentioned, it uses triangular mirrors. I’m not sure if this was done because people are more relaxed and natural if they don’t think a camera is staring right back at them or if it was simply for aesthetic design that Microsoft chose to use mirrors. I did some research on the history of the RoundTable and discovered it was previously called the Ringcam. During Microsoft’s research, they had some interesting “beta” versions before the final RoundTable, including these two below. Note how both models point cameras directly outward. I definitely prefer the less obtrusive “mirror” version in the production model. I tried to take apart the RoundTable to see the inner guts of the camera head, but the damn thing is glued on or something since I couldn’t find any screws.

Even more interesting in a Microsoft Research PDF article it talks about head-size spatial equalization. That is, making sure everyone’s head is equally big in the videoconference even if a person is further from the camera. The article has several diagrams and complex trigonometry formulas (sin & cos functions) that bring back high school. The article states the following:

In the past a few years, there has been a lot of interest in the use of omni-directional cameras for video conferencing and meeting recording. While a panoramic view is capable of capturing every participant’s face, one drawback is that the image sizes of the people around the meeting table are not uniform in size due to the varying distances to the camera. Figure 1 shows a 360 degree panorama image of a meeting room. The table size is 10×5 feet. The person in the middle of the image appears very small compared to the other two people because he is further away from the camera.

This has two consequences. First, it is difficult for the remote participants to see some faces, thus negatively affecting the video conferencing experience. Second, it is a waste of the screen space and network bandwidth because a lot of the pixels are used on the background instead of on the meeting participants. As image sensor technology rapidly advances, it is possible to design inexpensive high-resolution (more than 2000 horizontal pixels) omni-directional video cameras [1]. But due to network bandwidth and user’s screen space, only a smaller-sized image can be sent to the clients. Therefore how to effectively use the pixels has become a critical problem in improving the video conferencing experience.

Spatially-varying-uniform (SVU) scaling functions have been proposed [2] to address this problem. A SVU scaling function warps a panorama image to equalize people’s head sizes without creating discontinuities. Fig. 2 shows the result after head-size equalization.

Note how the guy in the white shirt is larger after head-size equalization. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the RoundTable I’m testing incorporates the head-size equalization, since none of the heads in the conference room appeared to be equalized. Guess my head (& ego) will have to continue to be the biggest. I read up on this some more and according to this Microsoft article, RoundTable “uses visual cues to pinpoint, enlarge and emphasize the face of the speaker”. So it sounds like it does have this feature. I’ll have to test this further.

Conclusion
All in all, I was pretty impressed with the Microsoft RoundTable. With its panoramic view and active speaker video switching functionality, you almost feel as though you are there in the conference room. I do wish the panoramic USB camera device worked in other applications besides LM 2007 and OCS 2007, but at least the active speaker video works. Although not released for general availability, the Microsoft RoundTable is expected to retail for around $3,000 putting this in the category of high-end videoconferencing systems. However, with fuel costs and other travel expenses, a high-quality, high-end videoconferencing system can pay for itself very quickly.

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/microsoft/microsoft-roundtable-review.asp

via [tmc]

3D Immersive Video Enviroment

In a device eerily akin to teleportation machines seen in major motion pictures, the Telexistence Wide-angle Immersive STEReoscope aims to “immerse viewers in a 3D video environment” sans those pesky goggles. Developed by a team at the University of Toyko, TWISTER is being hailed as the “world’s first full-color 360-degree 3D display that does not require viewers to wear special glasses,” and it’s finally coming together after a decade of work. Within the cylindrical, rotating device, you’ll find some 50,000 LEDs that give off the illusion of a three-dimensional object without any ocular aids. Moreover, the team is already looking into the possibility of adding 3D videophone technology to spruce up video telephony – watch out Cisco

[Via PinkTentacle]

Infocomm 2007 – Arrive arrives……..bring advanced ITC/AV Software Solutions

Arrive(TM) Corp., the leading provider of easy-to-use ICT/AV convergence solutions, today announced it will offer its highly advanced and proven suite of presentation meeting room management products in North America. The company made the announcement today at InfoComm 2007, the industry’s premier conference and exhibition for the AV Communications Industry.

Based in Dubai, Arrive is part of the transnational Visionaire Groupand brings to market more than 100 years of combined experience and knowledge equity vested in Information-Communication Technology (ICT) and Audio-Video Systems engineering, design and integration. The company has established affiliations and operations in more than 30 countries in North America, Europe, Middle-East, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim and has an enviable customer list comprised of leading technology companies, including Microsoft, IBM, Juniper Networks, Cisco, Nokia, Sony, Computer Associates as well as leading financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, American Express, UBS Group, Northern Trust Bank, Sumitomo Bank, and leading educational institutions such as the extended campuses of Wharton and Kellogg Business Schools, to name a few.

In line with its debut in North America, Arrive announced two new presentation room management offerings: Arrive Easy Conference(TM), designed for the enterprise and government market and Arrive Campus Manager(TM) for universities, colleges and schools (see release “Arrive Launches Advanced Presentation Room Management Solutions…” issued today).

Both products are a suite of presentation room network management tools adapted for specific use within enterprise and education markets.

Like many other companies located in Dubai and the surrounding United Arab Emirate (UAE), Arrive represents a new breed of company that has a strong focus on human capital development and invests heavily in the creation of innovative practices, technology, infrastructure and business markets and capital. This sophistication and market prowess are enabling companies, like Arrive, to capitalize upon their strengths and enter new markets, like the U.S. and Canada, with relative ease and quickly establish an immediate presence.

“Through our systems integration experience deploying some of the most sophisticated presentation room technologies, we realized the profound positive impact a single and centralized management platform could have in improving the productivity and value of advanced presentation and conferencing systems,” explained Aseem Gupta, founder, CEO and chief visionary of Arrive Corp. “Having developed both best practices and a truly innovative technology suite for managing the entire presentation room experience, we are excited to now offer this capability within the North American market.”

Long considered an industry visionary within the Middle East AV systems integrator industry, Gupta brings a strong pedigree of knowledge and direct experience in the area of ICT/AV convergence technologies. He is the entrepreneur behind the successful Visionaire Group, which has operations located across Asia and the Middle East with a staff of more than 500 people. His career spans more than 25 years serving as the founding Director of Imation ME, responsible for growing the Visual, Photo, Printing Systems and Data Storage Products Markets Group for 3M Corporation’s EMEA subsidiaries.

Arrive will leverage the current strong relationships it has created in North America with existing customers to quickly build a market presence and expand its network here, Gupta says. The company is planning to open an office on the East Coast initially with further expansion planned over the next year and currently is in process of recruiting solution consultants to help build out its channel in North America.

For more information about Arrive Corp., please visit the company’s Website at http://www.arrivecorp.com

via [press release]

 

Wireless Charging here from July 7th – Wildcharge

by Kelvin Ashby-King

One of the biggest issues in doing any AV design is how to handle the power required for laptops and other devices that must be placed on the table…… Where and how to locate the power points! Under the table, in a draw, popup, tilt up, net-turn……all somewhat messy with cables everywhere and just plain inconvenient. Then add to this which socket should we use and the mess increases.

Now Wildcharge seem to be about to resolve that issue with a universal induction pad charger. Any device that uses a Lithium Ion battery can be charged……Just place it on the pad, and you are charging with no physical connection. Yes… it needs to be have a special battery or an adaptor fitted but no cables.

If we can incorporate his technology into our table designs, and once all devices have the adaptor built in, then our cable worries are over…..place the laptop on the table and you are automatically charging…..Utopia for the AV designer….

So how does this all work?

Technology

WildCharge is the first–and as yet the only company–to provide a universal solution: a solution that actually works for virtually any mobile device. This is ideal for mobile professionals who can now trade in their multiple chargers and adapters for one streamlined package.

Our solution is comprised of the WildCharger™ pad, a charging pad that is less than 0.1″ thin and can be inexpensively produced using a variety of materials, rigid or flexible. It may be placed on any flat surface, such as a desk or airplane seat tray.

Its counterpart component, the WildCharger™ adapter, readily attaches to or is integrated into mobile electronic devices. A device that is enabled with our technology can be placed anywhere and at any orientation on the WildCharger™ pad and it will receive instantaneous, uninterrupted power.

Moreover, the WildCharge solution allows you to charge multiple devices with varying power needs–all at one time!

Our solution is built safe for consumers, equipment, and data. The unique WildCharge technology does not interfere with the operation of electronic equipment, has no impact on reception quality, and emits no harmful radiation.

Our solution is also efficient – power is delivered as if the devices were plugged directly into the wall.

What’s more, we do it at a cost manufacturers can afford to widely adopt and integrate – a cost that is competitive with standard charger costs.

for more information go to http://www.wildcharge.com/images/wc_faqs.pdf

Bob Hagarty, CEO of Polycom at Telepresence World

Bob Hagarty, CEO of Polycom, kicked off Telepresence World by explaining that leaders need to be connected more than ever in today’s business environment, yet face ever increasing communications challenges due to increasingly complex corporate structures.

Reflecting on his own travel schedule as a CEO, he said it felt pretty cool to become a million-mile flyer, but 2 million, then 3 million miles didn’t seem nearly as cool. It’s often the case that travel time can be better spent connecting with people in more places using telepresence solutions rather than traveling to fewer.

Hagarty explained that today’s business environment is more distributed than ever, with 90% of corporation’s employees working at locations other than the home office. Additional challenges on leadership communications include off-shoring, M&A, global supply chain’s mobility, distributed work teams, and strategic partnering. All create distance barriers that hurt operating productivity and slow business growth.

Telepresence allows leaders to lead in more places and be involved in more critical decisions. This substantially increases company alignment and executive visibility while lowering the bar of accessibility to current issues out in the field.

Unfortunately, most remote corporate communications to date have been one-sided mandates from headquarters rather than 2-way communications that give executives the real-world intelligence they need to make better decisions. Telepresence systems create a high performance workplace capable of generating faster decision making, increased agility and response times, de-serialized workflows, and collaborative decision making.

Communications are at their best when you have nods, facial expressions, etc., that let people know how people feel about what you’re saying and when they want to speak.

Polycom’s Immersive Telepresence systems are, “Not just a window into a remote room, but actually another room.”

Effective telepresence solutions have to play nice by sticking to accepted standards and integrate with company wide collaboration solutions and telecommuncations systems to increase compatibility.

via [technology evangelist]

Aaron McCormack, CEO of BT Conferencing at Telepresence World

Aaron McCormack, CEO of BT Conferencing took the stage at Telepresence World to explain how telepresence is, “Turning the Corner on Productivity.”

Effective telepresence solutions, according to McCormack, are systems that act as “human middle-ware” and are extraordinarily intuitive for end users.

An emerging trend in business today that will become commonplace over time is a globally dispersed work teams. Telepresence solutions allow distributed teams to communicate quickly and efficiently compared to previous forms of remote conferencing.

Aaron McCormack, CEO of BT Conferencing

McCormack believes that the time is finally right for telepresence due to the emerging business drivers discussed above, together with decreasing network bottlenecks and better technology to take advantage of improving networks.

However, McCormack admits that technology alone won’t solve business problems, mentioning this recent comment her heard from a CEO:

“Why is my video conferencing budget increasing at the same rate as my travel budget?”

McCormack blames poor implementations, a lack of quality training, and technology designed for IS departments rather than the true end users of the products for this scenario. Effective systems will do a better job of getting inside the mind of the end user. Put more succinctly, “Value is created when systems are used rather than just when they’re bought.”

The Green Angle

Demonstrating how telepresence solutions can have a significant impact on decreasing CO2 emissions, McCormack provided some insight into how CO2 emissions and travel costs have dramatically changed within BT:

• BT’s systems have eliminated 860,000 face to face meetings, reducing 97,000 metric tons of CO2.
• Saves an average of $587 in travel costs, accommodation fees and unproductive time, totally $469 million in savings to date.
  

Will it be the green angle, ease of use, or some other business driver that leads to increase uptake of telepresence systems? Stay tuned to find out.

via [technology evangelist]

Mark Trachtenberg, CEO Teliris at Telepresence World

The following article was written by John Serrao of Human Productivity Lab. Technology Evangelist and Human Productivity Lab are co-covering the happenings at Telepresence World.
TW2007 Speech: Mark Trachtenberg, CEO Teliris

One of the first speeches at Telepresence World 2007 Day 1 was Mark Trachtenberg, CEO of Teliris. Mark concentrated his speech on the fundamentals of how a new technology, like telepresence, becomes widely accepted into society.

Trachtenberg laid out technological development on a spectrum consisting of 3 distinct phases: Invention, Experimentation, and Standardization. He thinks we are currently somewhere near the experimentation phase, although his speech clouded this point. He suggested that the evolution of telepresence into the standardization phase will only take place with a killer app of telepresence. His vision of the killer app is an invisible telepresence system, meaning neither party would have any idea the system was even operating.

The speech went through the dynamics of how the printing press was developed and how each stage relates to the modern world of telepresence. With this lead, he concluded that the printing press’ complexity and size were whittled down, through the experimentation phase, into what he termed an, ‘inert technology’ – referring back to the original ‘invisible’ telepresence idea. Precise eye gaze, multipoint capability and line of sight were all part of this invisible package of the future.

He concluded by saying telepresence still has a ways to go but that will be overcome with advances in technology that help telepresence systems seamlessly integrate into their surroundings.

John’s Analysis:

In so many words, it appeared that Mark was making an indirect call for interoperable codec that would unite the industry, providing for greatly utility of all telepresence systems. Coupled with advances in technology, the network of these rooms would overcome the barriers of conferencing most people are all too familiar with. While this overtone was ever present in the speech, it was still never fully realized. The speech highlighted where the telepresence industry is at without breaking any new ground. It was a good high-level speech for the early time slot in the conference that it occupied. I was hoping for a little more meat but hopefully we can get a clearer vision of Teliris when we speak with Mark in the coming days.

via [technology evangelist]