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April 26, 2007
Video mail 2 ways: Video and typed
Video Mail?
Let's give it a shot. This is a Mail to you Alan Cohen, and anyone else who might bother to check this blog out.
In case you've missed it, Alan Cohen and I have been having it out about the viability of video mail. I recently realized that bandwidth, as an excuse, is going away with regard to why we don't video email one another, but I couldn't figure out why we don't use it more. I wanted to send a video email to my girlfriend, but realized we just can't do it.
I thought about it and then asserted that video email won't happen for a few reasons.
First is cost - mobile operators generally want to charge money for a service that chews up their bandwidth. There is only so much money floating around out there and services, like video are costly when it comes to bandwidth. I had a comment from Japan talking about NTT doing video email already.
The second is application integration. I don't have video email in my Microsoft Outlook application, so that is generally an inhibitor. Since making this assertion, I realized that applications are becoming increasingly web centric, and less desktop centric. If we fuse You-tube with email - voila! this issue goes away - so I'll say I'm wrong (or potentially wrong) on this point.
Finally was sociology. I'm posting the words to this blog, I'll let the readers post which way they preferred to receive the information that I'm conveying.
Alan believes that etiquette is changing, which will also change people's philosophy with regard to sending and receiving video email. I can tell you that I'm probably more dressed up to give this talk than I normally am at work. So I'm not sure if appearance of the speaker is the issue. I also believe that with the emergence of Web 2.0, people are moving toward less formalized communications - as evidenced by Web 2.0.
I'll leave it up to our readers to decide what they like better.
Posted by Matt Glenn at 05:52 PM Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)
April 16, 2007
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen...but are felt in the heart....Helen Keller
Matt,
I think the big inhibitors here are probably more cultural, than technical.
Videomail is going to push a level of intimacy that the multi-tasking work may not love: we have to focus directly on those subjects we are communicating to/with. To me, this is the essence of why videomail will ultimately make it: in the cold, lonely reaches of cyberspace, people are looking for more intimate, direct connections with co-workers, friends and families (i.e., this is the heart of why we are moving to the human network, from the network of search and commerce). So for me, videomail, enabled with wireless networking is an act of faith; if you build it, they will come. http://www.fieldofdreamsmoviesite.com/
Let's tackle your issues, one at a time.
1. Cost: in the history of Moore's law, when has bandwidth costs not come down over time?
2. Application consistency: well the mash up world of the Internet is about living with inconsistencies. My cellphone "snaps, crackles and drops" every night as I hit the coverage hole on the road home. Do I drop the phone or redial?
3. Etiquette changes all the time, despite what Emily Post says http://www.emilypost.com/. The real is a matter of choice. Video when you can, email/voicemail when you must. It's the YOU decade, so communicate in the way you find most effective. Or in the words of the author of Peter Pan"
"Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves."
James M. Barrie
Posted by Alan Cohen at 02:15 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
April 12, 2007
The Beacons are lit - I can read them, but I can't see 'em!
Alan... Alan... Alan...
'I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space' with all of the wireless bandwidth options that I have.
Just because people can, does not mean that people will use it! Have you ever heard of the Neiman Marcus Kitchen Computer?
I just think about the movie Blade Runner. Harrison Ford had video mail, but I don't! That's what I'm looking for.
Yes! I have heard of Docomo's video mail service, but I don't know how much traction it has. In my original post I said that the infrastructure is definitely there to do video-mail.
In my mind there are a few issues:
1) Cost - I want my video mail to reach me via the cheapest route, not the most expensive (i.e. if my provider is charging me by the bit and my WIFI is free, then I want WIFI). This also makes me not want to be provider dependent.
2) Application - Docomo's solution is awesome... for Docomo and its subscribers, but what about for their non-subs? In my mind the application needs to be technology independent. I can receive email over a WIFI, CDMA, Ethernet, or (gasp) dial-up connection. I want my video mail to be the same. The application should be able to use any transport. See #1 above for how I want it to work. I'm not saying presence applications aren't useful - they just tend to be real-time and often protocol dependent.
3) Etiquette - I've begun to wonder whether 'it's about time' - meaning that you save time for your readers when you allow them to read your email rather than make them watch your email. As an experiment, I'm going to try to post a video blog and then write the same blog. We'll let people decide which one they prefer....
In 1979 the Buggles wrote the first song ever played on MTV: Video Killed the Radio Star.
I want video mail to kill the email star.
Posted by Matt Glenn at 09:40 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
April 07, 2007
Video Mail – The Beacons are Lit and Alan Will Answer
Matt, you must have been in a Wi-Fi Bubble these last few years. People have introduced all kinds of video mail in the last two years, including some of the Mobile Operators. As a colleague Hamada-san from Japan writes in, NTT DoCoMo introduced this capability with its FOMA phones over a year ago. :->
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/page/20060830a.html
So, let me throw down shot number 1….
The lack of available wireless broadband has been the biggest challenge for widespread adoption of mobile video applications. With the Municipal Wi-Fi avalanche picking up steam, for example, the large networks being built in Silicon Valley and Northern Singapore, as well as the continued build-out of HPSDA and 3G networks, we are going to see multiple, seamless carpets of inexpensive broadband in the airspace. Not complete, but coming.
Throwing down again…
As you noted, the wave of converged, dual-mode smart phones with high quality cameras (read, lots of pixels) will provide every mobile user with the change to quickly shoot off a quick vid. HAVEN’T you been on YouTube lately? If you want video mail, do not expect it all to come from PCs. When you are out and about, do you fire up your PC to leave someone a message?
Throwing down the third time (money shot)…
Unified Communications are just taking off and it is fair to say video is playing a large role. For the Hi-Def experience – and video, Matt, is about experience – we are rolling with Telepresence – but for the day-to-day localized video, we will see video mail starting to make its way into the mainstream over the next few years.
UC platforms will have the capability to allow you to communicate in a variety of methods. If you cannot play the video, a presence server, will in the future help strip out the audio piece and listen to it, using your phone or other mobile device, the way you would use an iPod. Voice/Text is here, already, and it’s pretty safe to suggest the total media rollout will be concommitent with UC deployments.
Video of all forms are moving from the realm of entertainment to business. And it’s not only bandwidth alone. Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) are now available to optimize the WAN (i.e., to improve video improvement), including technologies suchs as compression, redundancy elimination, transport optimizations, caching, and content distribution.
So you will get you vidmail. To paraphrase the great songwriter Mark Knopfler
We gotta install UC systems
IP phone deliveries
We gotta move TDM boat-anchors
We gotta move Wi-Fi to these color screens….
Posted by Alan Cohen at 02:44 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
April 05, 2007
Video Mail - Calling you out Alan Cohen
Last week I took a trip that went through my favorite airport in the United States, Denver International Airport. While we were taxiing I turned on my cell phone, and it immediately let me know I had messages. So I checked my voice mail and listened to messages from my co-workers, my boss, my tax guy, and my girlfriend. I also had a bunch of emails that needed my immediate attention.
So I booted up my laptop, and began to read them.
I was thinking about my girlfriend and wondering why I couldn't *see* her message to me. It seems that the following is in place:
1) We have faster and faster wireless links (WIFI, GSM, 1xRTT, 3G, 4G, etc.).
2) Camera technology is really cheap (how often do you see a phone without a camera in it)?
3) Storage is now relatively cheap - the cost to store 1 Mbps of data is much less than it used to be.
4) We can convert speech to text (My IBM
So why the heck isn't video-mail widely available? Why isn't it a mainstream app?
I want my
I want my
I want my Vid-Mail Please
Let's face the facts, wireless fuels both applications and mobility; the more applications and mobility that we have, it forces the need for even more wireless bandwidth. It is a beautiful circle isn't it?
But the most core application, email, was created when we had 0k CIR frame relay links and you were stoked if you even had an internet connection. My cell phone has more bandwidth and applications than most 1992 internet-enabled business.
My ideal video mail applicatoin would know which connection gave me the best bandwidth at the best price, and download my vid-mail. If I was in an area where the vid-mail didn't have adequate bandwidth, then it would convert the sender's speech to text, and I could get good old-fashioned email.
When I was a kid, if someone called you out, it meant that they were challenging you to a fight after school.
I'm "calling out" Alan Cohen on this. After thinking about it over I've come up with a caucaphony of reasons why it hasn't and probably hasn't and won't happen. I'm going to leave it up to Alan to tell me why it will happen.
... If he'll take me up on the challenge.
Posted by Matt Glenn at 12:11 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
