The Kind You Stream

The streaming kind is uni-directional - the video in this case flows from a single source to one or more destinations. As the delay between sending and receiving is not relevant, real-time in this case is a matter of seconds or even minutes between send and receive.

In some cases, you’d like something better than a matter of seconds, but mostly seconds would do just fine.

The Kind You Use For Visual Communication

Visual communication is bi-directional - the video in this case flows in both directions and can be considered “synchronized” - the video stream from one side responds and interacts with the video stream from the other side. In this case, real-time means hundreds of milliseconds difference between send and receive at most.

It’s the Latency That Counts

Latency is the term used for the time it takes for live video to be captured, encoded, sent across the network, decoded on the other side and displayed. This variance in “real-timeness” between streaming and visual communication is the cause for a lot of “disconnects” between codec vendors and their customers from the visual communication industry.

I’ve been involved in several different projects that required various codecs for video telephony. Our customers who develop the end products are usually the ones choosing the codec vendor, and usually they do that prior to selecting a vendor for the signaling, call control and application parts (that’s us). While this is all fair play, time and again we bumped into codec vendors with a great brand name for their products, excellent video quality in off-line testing, a great deal of knowledge in optimization.  Yet, they were not suitable for use in a video telephony system - they referred to real-time video as the kind you stream, not the kind you use for visual communication.

This is not a big surprise. Up until now, video streaming and playback were the majority of the industry. Codec vendors focused on those markets and neglected the visual communication requirements and needs. The end result? Delays in product deliveries, bad vibes between parties, replacement of codec vendors in the middle of projects, etc.

What to do?

If you are working on a video telephony project and need to deal with codec vendors, try to make sure they fit your needs. This must include a set of requirements the codec vendor has to follow. On this list of requirements you should put the following items (at least):

• The encoder should be able to generate slices (parts of a video frame) in any arbitrary size. This allows better management of packet sending over the network, and also improves packet loss resiliency and reduces latency.
• The encoder should work well in an IPPP structure, where the key frame (I) is sent only upon request and not at a fixed frame interval (as in video streaming).
• The decoder should be able to receive packets of any given size (not just full frames), to allow faster decoding (and lower latency).
• The decoder should be prone to network errors, such as packet loss, and should not crash on any input what-so-ever.
• As the encoder and decoder work in parallel in video telephony, it should be possible to control the encoder at frame level. For instance, to request a key frame (a procedure known as “Video Fast Update request” or “VFU request”).
• Make sure the rate control mechanism built into the encoder you plan to use works in a constant bit rate (CBR) mode. Anything else just isn’t suitable for video telephony.

Up until recently, video telephony was a niche market, and a small one at that. This is why most codec vendors still don’t really grok telephony. The good news is that video is going mainstream. With Skype and Google both having solid video telephony solutions, it will be everywhere soon enough, which means codec vendors will have to do their homework.

So head on there to see what’s going on this week with the mobile market.

Friend: “What exactly it is that you’re doing?”

Me: “I am a Product Manager”

Friend: “Yes, but of what products?”

Me: “Well, we cater for VoIP developers”

Friend: “VoIP?”

Me: “You know, when you use Skype to call people over the internet? That’s VoIP”

Friend: “Oh, so you do Skype?”

Me: “No. Not exactly. We enable companies who want to develop products like Skype to do so. But not Skype. Skype is proprietary.”

Friend: “So what do you do again?”

You get my drift.

The TBU (Technology Business Unit) develops standard compliant VoIP protocol stacks and SDKs for developers, who then develop their own products.

That’s a mouthful.

And now that we have a new video clip, it should make it a lot easier to explain what I do to my friends:

Hope you’ll like it as much as I do.

Below you can see the news item. Sorry for the Hebrew.

First ever trial of mobile phones use during surgery for remote “second opinion”

This is part of a new trial done in Israel hospitals of using 3G technology to send either still images or video (that is video calls using 3G-324M) during surgery. It is used by physicians to consult with medical specialists who are not located on premises, and improve the decisions they make. The initial trial shows that in almost 43% (yes - no mistake there) of cases, the medical specialist suggested a different treatment than the physician on site.

A pessimist would say this only proves that the medical system in Israel is failing. An optimist would say this shows telemedicine improves healthcare, and here’s yet another proof that technology can make our lives better.

Sagee from the neighboring blog is such an optimist. I am willing to admit that mobile video telephony, in its current state (that is: low frame rate - 15 max, low resolution - QCIF), may be sufficient for several niche markets:

1. Telemedicine, where it bridges the gaps between doctors, and allows them to communicate with peers and specialists wherever they are.
2. Banking.
3. Interactive video response and visual call centers.

If you once wrote a PBX, now you call it UC. If you developed IP Phones, now you brand them as UC. The only problem I see with all the hype around this is that UC is targeted at the enterprise. It’s not that I don’t like enterprises - I work for one, but I think people are missing the consumers on this one.

Presence and the Enterprise

About three years ago I talked to a VP in one of the larger companies in the UC industry and he told me that for a technology to become an enterprise, it first needs to be used by the consumers. People need to use it at home, understand its value and then push for its use in their office.

A good example of this is presence (and instant messaging). It started with ICQ for consumers, IT managers tried to block it, and now it is touted as the cornerstone of UC.

The Promise of Video

RADVISION started as a video company and now we are developing and selling video communication infrastructure products. We’ve been told time and again that video is “just around the corner”. In just a few days/months/years, everyone will embrace video and we all will be doing video calls at work, interacting with people and traveling less.

Hasn’t happened.

Yet.

Video is starting to happen. Especially now, when Skype stated that 28% of the calls in their network are video calls. Again - starting with consumers,  it will then move towards the enterprise.

What would UC for consumers look like?

So, why UC? Why target the enterprise? Wouldn’t it be easier to find some alternative with similar promise that fits consumers?

I found the beginning of an answer to this on TechCrunch’s cover of VoxOx, which got me thinking on UC for the home.

VoxOx does voice calls, video calls, instant messaging, presence, SMS, social networking, email and file sharing. I would say it sounds a bit like unified communications, and I like it.

I still haven’t tried their service but I intend to do so in the near future.

We ended up with this list of improvements:

• We changed host
• Upgraded platform and plug-ins
• Refreshed the theme used
• Placed different widgets on the sidebar
• Updated the look & feel of our homepage
• New “About” pages with easier contact forms

There are several more things we plan on doing, like polishing up the commenting section of the blogs, and maybe some additional renovation work. So don’t hesitate to comment on anything that might require fixing and to give your opinion about what you think of our renovation or what else needs a change over here.

I hope you’ll like the changes we’ve made so far.

Last week, I hosted the Carnival of the Mobilists here on my blog for the first time. It has been an interesting experience - one I will surely repeat in the future. Prior to writing it, I found many resources on the web, suggesting to host carnivals, but none actually got down to the mechanics of how to go about it, so here’s my very own how-to guide on writing carnival posts.

At the Carnival of the Mobilists, “hosting-and-posting” is quite organized, so I won’t get into these details. I’ll start my guide from the moment of having the posts available.

1. Start Early

If you have a carnival hosting post to write, don’t wait for the last moment. Even if you don’t have all posts available yet, you should start working. To do that, make sure you start doing your homework from the moment you get the first post and continue until you received the last one.

Writing a carnival hosting post takes time. Make sure you have the availability to make it the most effective.

2. Do Your Homework

To write an engaging post, you first need to find the main “theme”. As you’ll have a number of candidate posts coming from different bloggers, their tone and topic will vary, this means you will be in charge of putting some order into them.

To do that, take the time to read each one, writing down a short description for yourself on each. If you already have a position about the post, write it down as well. The best way would be to place it all in a table with the following columns: link to the post, post title, blog name, writer’s name and post description.

This will assist you remembering later the topics of your own post.

3. Group Posts into Topics

They say lists make good posts. So does order. Take the posts you have, look at the description you gave them, and start grouping them into various topics.

On my carnival post, I saw no topics when I tried reading the posts. Only when I sat down and described them to myself did they started making sense and I ended up with three “large” topics: developers, advertising and metaphors.

4. Add to the Conversation, But Not on the Expense of the Submitters

Blogging is all about conversation. Although you are giving away a list of useful links to your readers, do not summarize each of these posts for them - make them enter these posts, read them and engage with the other bloggers.

Make sure that even when you do that - you add your own voice to the conversation. On my carnival post, I tried explaining in short what the topic each blog post is related to, and what I think in general about it. This gives an incentive for readers to read the post and then understand my view of it.

5. Double-check for Spelling Mistakes and Broken Links

Before hitting the Publish button, make sure to go over the following issues:

• The link to the blog and post of each participant isn’t broken
• The name of the writer in each post is correct and not misspelled
• The blog name for each post is correct, with relevant spaces and uppercase/lowercase used correctly

I made the mistake of misspelling a writer’s name there - not the best way to go when you’re trying to give credit to a person.

6. Use a Good Visual

This is true for every post, but on a carnival post, you can have a carnival image to begin with.

On the carnival post I wrote, I started by searching Flickr for a carnival image, but then remembered that I took some nice pictures of a Columbus day parade in New York, so I started searching for a good one there. Other good search words besides carnival can be Halloween, Purim or any other “visual holyday” out there.

7. Notify the Writers

Once you publish your post, there’s one last thing to do, and that would be to notify the writers that their posts have been added to your carnival post.

Make sure to send a personalized email to each, thanking him/her for their contribution and providing them the link to your post. While at it, be sure to provide a comment on their post or writing - what you liked about it, what would you like to read in their blog in the future, etc. Show him that you care.

Your Turn

If you wrote carnival hosting posts already, I’d be very interested to hear from you about it. This is only my first time, and definitely not the last, so I plan to get better at it the next time around.

I say this because I started at RADVISION (long ago) as a developer, grew to be a team leader, then a project manager and from there I moved on to a product manager position.

I know most of our business unit’s developers personally and I managed some of them for long periods of time. Therefore I have my own opinions on most of them and the funny thing is, in some instances, I regard engineers more than other product managers

When I read the excerpt of the podcast with Steve Yegge, I understood why other product managers regard the same engineers differently, engineers who know how to market themselves (and their work), will usually be highly regarded by the non-engineering crowd, product managers included. It gives them more power in the organization and places them in a better position to be part of the decision making processes.

I value engineers for their technical competencies - I’ve been there, and I still long for writing code once in a while. My advice to them therefore, is yes - you should learn how to market, especially if you want to be heard by your product manager.

Where do you start?

As a programmer, you probably read Joel Spolsky already and you need to add to your reading list Seth Godin as well - he is definitely one of the best there is to begin your comprehension of how to successfully market.

I don’t know if self marketing resources work or not, but if you spend the time learning marketing principles, it will be worthwhile.

This was quite a varied week, so there’s no single theme here for what happened in the blogosphere when it comes to mobile. As it is, I’ve divided this week’s catch into three groups:

1. Posts relevant for those developing for mobile.
2. Advertising related, as we have a nice catch of ad related posts.
3. Readings built around metaphors and associations.

So what did we have this past week at the Carnival?

Developing for Mobile

Now that Google’s first Android phone is out and the operating system has become open source, MobileMammoth provides a list of resources available on Android developers, even from Google itself.

VisionMobile is also continuing with their analysis of the mobile platforms market. Along with their evaluation of operating systems, they now also go through the different mobile application runtimes available.. In the coming months, seeing these mobile application runtimes “fight for the money” will be very interesting.

Applications that I am a fan of are consumer electronics related. Martin Sauter from WirelessMoves discusses the possibilities that lie in femtocells - specifically how to connect mobile handsets to home services through femtocells. There’s also a link to a video that shows a demo of such services.

Michael Mace from Mobile Opportunity brings a study about online community behavior of people. Although it is not strictly a mobile related post, he does make a point for the mobile market. If you find this information useful, you might want to check the book Groundswell - the best on the subject I have read so far.

Advertising

Advertising in mobile doesn’t quite cut it yet. For a good explanation of why mobile advertising is broken and ways to fix it, Andrew Grill at London Calling provides a nice summary. Although advertising is not my cup of tea, I really liked this piece, so I bet you will as well.

Tomas Zeman from Wirenode believes the problem with mobile advertising is its fragmentation. This makes a lot of sense to me, and Tomas’ solution is straight forward and simple.

Speaking of mobile advertising, another problem that needs to be taken into account is the different screen sizes of mobile handsets, especially now that we’re moving to larger screens. Barbara Ballard from Little Springs Design tries to analyze screen sizes of mobile handsets and advertising metrics. Due to this, there is a call for action there as well for coming up with a database of handsets and their dimensions.

You also may be wondering why certain products like the iPhone have lame advertising numbers despite their exceptional web browser. Ram Krishnan from Mobile Broadband gives the reasons why AdMob’s advertising numbers for the iPhone are skewed. Statistics should not always be trusted.

Metaphors and Associations

The changes in the mobile handsets market is something we are all seeing in the past year. Antoine RJ Wright tries to look at the changes going on inside Nokia and compare them to China in the 15^th century. This allows for a very interesting read and a connection that not everyone would think of.

While we’re at it, Ajit Jaokar from OpenGardens decided to compare mobile broadband operators and pipes - not pipes as in plumbing, but pipes as in smoking. He looks at how operators should add value to their customers.

From my own blog, VoIP Survivor, I’m looking at SMS, Mobile IM and Twitter - these fascinate me when it comes to mobile service usage. I decided to model these services and then see how interchangeable they are.

My Post of the Week

My post of the week is Michael Mace’s study on online community behavior. It fell right into the subjects I am dealing with right now. An interesting read which I am sure you’ll like.

Next Week

That’s all for this week’s carnival. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Next week’s carnival will be hosted by MOpocket.

See you all there!

This year’s theme is Products and Applications Development for Next Generation Networks and Services.

When and Where?

November 13, 2008

Prime Blue, Israel Trade Fairs & Convention Center, Tel-Aviv

How to join? Just send an email to the following address: jonni@radvision.com.

What’s on the Agenda?

• Trends and Challenges in Application Development for IMS/NGN
• Unified Communication Development Challenges and Solutions
• Developing V²oIP Clients
• High Definition Terminals
• The Future of Video Communication
• Signaling and Media Protocols Solutions
• Case Studies for IMS Application Development
• Testing, Analysis and Media Quality Measurement for SIP and IMS Development
• Developer Communities, Blogs and e-Service

I’ll be speaking in some of these sessions, and I’ll try to publish some of the presentations along with my own experiences at the event.

See you there.