From The Wall Street Journal:
Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing business is taking on Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. in videoconferencing, pushing deeper into in the productivity-application market to broaden its appeal to business customers.
The new service, called Chime, lets users host video meetings and share content on computer and mobile-phone screens. It is available on the web as well as apps for Apple Inc.’s iOS and Alphabet Inc.’s Android mobile operating systems.
Chime competes with Microsoft’s Skype for Business, Cisco’s WebEx and a host of other similar services.
. . . .
“This is a competitive market that’s mature,” Mr. Elliot said. “It’s a market that has established vendors and some of them are mega-vendors.”
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire)
https://www.zoom.us/
Is another popular service
I suspect that Jeff Bezos experienced a problem in a video conference. That spurred him to supply his own video hook-up.
It has happened before. FedEx failed Amazon one Christmas, and Bezos ate a big loss. His response was to build his own shipping company.
Bezos is not a man you want to disappoint. His response is, “F*ck you, Jobu. I do it myself.”
I just received and email from AWS about this. As I do a lot of video conferencing, I’m going to check it out.
Veronica, I would love to know more about how/whyyou use video conferencing. Is it clear and faithful in image and audio? How far a distance can one do this? For how long. Is it expensive? Do you buy equipment on your end to be able to braodcast? Thanks
Hello,
My primary interaction with my community is via webcast. I then take that material and make books eventually. So I’m an author second (non-fiction) which I suspect is rather unusual around here.
I’ve used a variety of setups over the years. I have lots of equipment and right now I’m trying to reduce the amount I use. I have a friend who knows a lot about it and he’s getting it all down to what can fit into a backpack (for when I travel to events). In the meantime, when I’m home and have access to my desktop computer, I use http://www.freeconferencecall.com.
It’s free for me and for my callers. I can share my screen or share my webcam. It has built-in chat. Callers can use their telephone or computer to join in. It records the session and has the recording available for immediate download. I believe you can go six hours per session. I typically use it for two hours at a time so I’m not 100% sure about that aspect.
On the somewhat confusing side, they tend to change things around quite often and I frequently feel like I’m learning how to work the system over and over again. Not huge changes; enough to generate a bit of a scramble as I’m getting set up each time.
I’m not sure what you mean when you ask “How far a distance can one do this? can you clarify?
I hope this helps!
Veronica
Veronica thank you. That was so pragmatic and helpful. I hope you will let us know what tech/equip you wind up with both for home and on the road>
What kind of works/books do you teach? Im always amazed when I hear people like you have been mastering these ways and means for years, and we just heart of them yesterday! Keep going
Thanks! I teach tools for noticing and changing habitual behaviors, navigating triggers, and improving relationships.
I will post when I have the new system sorted. It should be in the new few weeks.
thank you Veronica for the time you’ve given here. I wonder if there is a site kind of like the passive voice, but for tech talk about communicating with others across the miles. I know there are podcaster sites, both paid and free, but wonder if there are say, video conference or long distance video communicaþion blogs/groups.
Look forward to hearing your update. Let us know. I sense more than just me is following your and Felix’s intelligence on this matter here.
I don’t know of a site like that.
What sort of video conferencing needs do you have?
Some questions to answer:
Anticipated group size, do you need to hear the voices or see video of the participants, do they only need to hear you or see you also, do you need recording, do you want them to text chat with each other during your presentation, does your broadcast need to be private or are you ok with a public (seen by anyone) stream, do you want the events to be live or do you plan on prerecording?
Once I have an idea of your needs, I can make clearer suggestions for you.
thanks Veronica for your time. Im not skilled in this area so only guessing having only done a few video/satellite at universities, which seems like the studio was teeming with equipment I didnt grasp.
you asked: Anticipated group size, [I think 100+]
do you need to hear the voices [yes for q and a]
or see video of the participants [yes would be nice to gain that touchpoint]
, do they only need to hear you or see you also [also yes, hear and see us]
, do you need recording, [yes]
do you want them to text chat with each other during
your presentation [not with ea other, I dont think, but yes with us]
, does your broadcast need to be private or are you ok with a public (seen by anyone) stream, [ private]
do you want the events to be live [yes]
or do you plan on prerecording? [interesting idea, hadnt thought of it, do you do that? what are the benefits?]
You are kind, again, to take the time. As I said, I sense others here may find your intel valuable too. Thank you.
I would suggest you give http://www.freeconferencecall.com a try. It hits all the things you need.
I use it this way:
I have Logitech web cam that I bought for my desktop computer years ago. It was around $25 then. I load the FCC software onto my computer (pretty clear how to do that once you have an account with them), then click on the start live event button.
This gives me access to the web controls such as recording, changing the call from lecture to Q&A and back as needed, seeing who is on the call, knowing how many callers would like to ask a question, choosing which caller to make live and moving to the next caller in the queue, etc.
Additionally, I phone in using my host code so that my audio goes into the headset microphone on my home phone rather than my audio going into the webcam. This works better for me.
Prerecording is used when you want the option to edit the file before making it public. When I do interviews, sometimes the call is prerecorded simply because the host and I can’t get together at a time that would work for the general public or the host wants to have all their shows ready for the coming month. Things like that.
FCC lets you allow folks to show their images. I never use this feature though. When I have tried to do this with other systems, it has required me to do a lot of tech support for the callers who don’t know how to use their webcams and/or the software confuses them, or or or.
I’ve found that helping the callers get going is one of the biggest hassles of ALL the systems I’ve used. There will be tech support. FCC has a help line for folks, although I’m not sure any of my people use it. They ask me!
I would suggest that you open an account with FCC and play around with it. They will give you an access phone number, an access code, and a host code. You can open calls anytime you want. Open a call, give the phone number and access code to a friend, and then have them call in so you can practice!
Once you are comfortable with the telephone only use of FCC, you can try adding in the software I described above.
Also, I would help you with this EVEN if you are the only one who is interested. No need to reinvent the wheel. I’ve received so much support and insights from this community, I’m happy to have the opportunity to give back.
awww, y ou are really helpful. Thank you Veronica. I will try your suggestions.
All you need is a PC.
A laptop is the most common tool because by now they all come with cameras so all you need is the software. Tablets and phones work, too.
You probably already have all the gear for basic videophone already.
I should add that when I broadcast I typically have an in-person group and an online group at the same time. So have I have had (in previous set ups) multiple microphones and the need for online chat and the desire for video recordings and you get the drift.
So it’s not a basic use of something like Skype. However, Freeconferencecall is much like Skype with lots of additional features.
Unavoidable.
AWS may be top dog in Cloud infrastructure hosting but the real money is in the stack atop the commodity infrastructure.
Not going to be easy going for Amazon in that space but they have to play to remain relevant.
Keep an eye out for a cloud office suite from Amazon. Probably a fork of OpenOffice or one of its variants. Probably as an option for Workspaces. They already have the relational database…
They have to find ways to spend all that retail income to avoid paying it out as taxes. 🙂
Felix? Is this something the average person could do, to say broadcast in reali time without stutters in transmission say from usa to ireland, or?
Or am I in sci fi land?
Distance is no issue. Quality of connection is.
US troops on deployment use Skype to talk back home all the time.
http://armymomstrong.com/deployed-soldiers-use-skype-to-phone-home/
But, broadcast? Not sure what you mean there.
The videophone service connects specific individuals.
The teleconference service sets up a virtual conference room (typically a web page address) that authorized people can sign in to.
Neither is like a youtube livestream or podcast that anybody at random can connect to. These are two way private links, fully authenticated.
Skype works very well. I’ve personally seen it work from Califonia to PR. Nice and smooth booth through Skype and through XBOX KINECT.
At work we used to regularly attend WebEx conference meetings connecting California, Ohio, DC, Virginia, all smooth and easy. You can talk, see faces, Watch PowerPoint presentations and exchange documents. Saves a lot of travel and jetlag.
Skype is very big globally.
Microsoft paid a ton of money to bring it into its Office family of products. It still runs mostly on its own from its native Estonia.
Amazon has a challenge ahead: the tech side is easy by now but ramping up the installed base against the entrenched players is going to he hard. Skype is everywhere, from phones and tablets to PCs to gaming consoles.
Here’s some Skype stats for context:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/skype-statistics/
The big ones are 74M active users and 560M people who have at least tried it out.
There’s room for more players but Skype is well dug in.
Skype is fine for one-on-one or small groups (I think, last time I checked you could), however for large events you need something else. Free Conference Call which I talk about below goes up to 1000 participants I believe.
Yup.
Skype is not a broadcast system.
It’s intended for interactive meetings, not lectures or conferences. At least not yet. It started out as a consumer product and it has expanded into the corporate space for collaboration and telecommuting.
Fits beautifully into the MS corporate portfolio which is why they overpaid for it. (Plus it’s biggest in Europe so it helps move Sharepoint and the rest of the suite over there.)
I’ve been looking at various solutions for this need for quite a few years and tried a lot of them. For much of that time there was a significant difference in cost between being able to broadcast publicly and being able to broadcast behind a paywall (embedding the broadcast on a URL of my choice).
Last time I looked it was something like $15 a month for public and $333 a month to password protect the stream.
I don’t want my sessions broadcast publicly for free and $333 a month felt excessive, so it was tricky to find a solution. We ended up building an in-house solution which relied on components that we recently learned weren’t going to be supported going forward. It worked for many years which I’m grateful for.
These days with Facebook Go Live, etc it’s very easy to broadcast publicly so the entire field is shifting. Just in time for me as I’m hunting for a new option.
A friend has found one that he likes. I don’t have the details yet. Chime might be another option.
thank you Felix, you are such a font of information on tech …it is appreiecaited as I’m trying to learn, and your explanations are always so clear.
By broadcast, I meant, send from here [at my place] to across the world by digital/ communications wires. Dont laugh. i dont really know how it all works. I’m still back at thinking there are people inside the old tubes tvs doing skits. lol
Not laughing.
Nobody is born knowing anything and questions is how we learn. Stop asking questions and you stop learning.
thank you re laughing. Youre very kind. I hope you are a teacher of others in lots of ways. You have the gift Felix.
thank you Felix again.