Check out this video of GIPS CMO, Joyce Kim presenting on mobile video at eComm in April.

Some of you may have read the news already but for those of you who have not please visit Google’s press center for further information.

Home field advantage can help propel a team to victory in just about any sport. In American football, a noisy crowd can make it difficult for opposing teams to effectively communicate, leading to false start penalties, and allowing defenders to get quicker jumps on the ball. In an effort to gain a greater home field advantage by increasing crowd noise, Penn State University will be rearranging the seating at Beaver Stadium, where the school’s football team plays. The university made the decision after graduate student Andrew Barnard performed a study in which he played recordings of simulated crowd noise at various points of an empty Beaver Stadium, and measured the resulting decibel levels on the field. He found that the southern end zone amplifies sound more effectively than any other part of the stadium. As a result, the student section, largely considered to be filled with the most raucous fans, will be located behind the southern end zone for the 2011 season.

This got me thinking- what is it about the architecture of certain stadiums that make them louder than others? For instance, Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks, is widely regarded to be one of the loudest venues in the NFL, despite the fact that it is an open air stadium. After reading the Wikipedia article, I discovered that Qwest Field can achieve this distinction by combining steep seating decks and an overhanging roof with metal bleachers to help reflect noise back onto the field in an effective manner.

While architects of sports stadiums may want to increase crowd noise, a loud, echo-filled environment can make conference calls truly unbearable. GIPS specializes in designing software to improve the user experience in all forms of voice and video communication. However, even the best software can be ineffective if environmental factors conspire to create a poor conference call. That is why anyone setting up a conference room should learn from places like Qwest Field, and heed the following tips to minimize echo and noise:

1. Acoustic echo is created when a microphone picks up the speech of the person on the other end of the phone call coming through the receiving side speaker. As obvious as it may sound, the best way to avoid echo is by making sure the speaker and microphone are a sufficient distance apart, and if possible, pointed away from each other.
2. Unlike in football stadiums, hard surfaces should be avoided in a conference setting. Carpeted floors and curtains over windows can actually go a long way toward reducing the amount of echo in a room, thus improving the user experience in a conference call.
3. Similarly, flat, parallel surfaces can cause sound to bounce back and forth, making echo more dramatic. If at all possible, avoid placing the speaker and microphone close to a wall or other large, flat object. This can be difficult since speaker phones are commonly placed on a large table in most conference rooms. However, echo can still be reduced by making sure the ceiling is not too low, and is not uniformly flat. A tall ceiling with overhanging lights or sound dampening panels can go a long way toward creating a good setup for conference calls.

The FCC’s latest proposal to regulate the Internet just got a little more interesting. The agency announced its “third way” approach to classifying broadband services.

First, a little background: Back in 2002, the FCC decided to classify internet access as an “information service” under Title I, rather than as a “telecommunications service” under Title II of the Communications Act.  

This meant that the FCC would not have specific and direct authority to regulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but would reply upon its “ancillary authority.” This essentially says that the agency is allowed to do anything reasonable to accomplish the goals that Congress prescribes, but will not regulate the ISPs with the broad sweeping powers that it exercises under Title II.

Fast forward to the recent decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in April in the case of Comcast v. FCC. The court ruled that the FCC’s “ancillary authority” wasn’t strong enough to impose restrictions on ISPs. Both the FCC and proponents of net neutrality viewed this decision as a huge blow to the cause.

Conventional wisdom saw two possible results:

1)       The FCC would withdraw and ISPs would prevail as beneficiaries of Title I “ancillary authority”, or,

2)       The FCC would move to reclassify broadband access as a Title II “telecommunications service.” If successful, ISPs would suddenly find themselves subject to the regulatory scrutiny of the FCC.

Although that would insure that the FCC would win the battle against Comcast to preserve net neutrality, almost everybody agrees that Title II classification would be far too heavy-handed. Even FCC chairman Genachowski said “prescriptive regulation can chill investment and innovation, and a do-nothing approach can leave consumers unprotected and competition unpromoted, which itself would ultimately lead to reduced investment and innovation.”

So what has the FCC proposed? “The Third Way.” It’s what might be called a hybrid approach: the FCC will say that broadband transmissions — the flow of data — are subject to Title II regulations, while broadband “computing functionality” — the data itself — remains under Title I oversight.

Furthermore, the FCC says it will excuse broadband transmissions from many Title II regulations and only impose a few specific provisions of Title II. Together, these provisions generally include the following:

1)       A collection of provisions to “forbid unreasonable denials of service and other unjust or unreasonable practices.” It is important to comment that AT&T, Comcast, Sprint and Verizon have all voiced support of these provisions in the past.

2)       The Universal Service provision that provide “access to advanced telecommunications and information services in all regions of the Nation.” The FCC would promote universal broadband access under this provision. Again, both AT&T and the cable industry have argued in favor of this provision in just the past few months.

3)       A provision that requires service providers to protect confidential information they receive while providing service. Who would argue against this provision?

4)       A provision that requires that service providers must make their services and equipment accessible to people with disabilities, unless it’s not “reasonably achievable.” Seems like a good idea to me.

It seems clear that the FCC is pursuing its mandate from Congress and remaining true to its goal: Impose as little regulation as possible while still trying to achieve the basics of net neutrality.

Smartphones are the current ‘poster child’ of the converged mobile devices market and represent the fastest-growing segment of the global market. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), vendors shipped more than 174 million units in 2009 worldwide, an increase of 15 percent from the previous year.

In Asia, and in China in particular, the segment is booming. Apart from the well-documented resilient performance of China’s economy following the success of its government’s mega-stimulus package, other factors are contributing to this boom. A number of reports from market researchers and analysts and have been released recently, which along with input from leading industry players, shed some light on why Asia is leading the charge in the rapidly-growing smartphone segment.

On the revenue stream side, leading investment bank, Credit Suisse, released a report that showed that the increasing affordability of smartphones, with richer features such as larger screens and faster processors is encouraging owners in Asia (and around the world) to use their handsets for web browsing and instant messaging more. As a result, it predicts that non-SMS wireless broadband data revenues in Asia (ex-Japan) will grow from US$1.3 billion at the end of 2009 to US$14.5 billion at end of 2015. Importantly, Credit Suisse expects higher smartphone revenues to “lead directly to higher cash flows.”

In its report, Credit Suisse, forecasts the number of smartphone users in Asia will reach 347 million by 2015. With potential for huge sales growth such as this it’s hardly surprisingly that both global and local vendors, as well as brand new players, are climbing over each other as they rush to clamber aboard Asia’s smartphone bandwagon.

As market competition intensifies in the smartphone segment, communications service providers will increasingly seek compelling, high quality multimedia applications for end-users and enterprises. Making the careful selection of world-class solutions providers that can enable service providers as well as applications developers and hardware manufacturers to differentiate their products to reduce churn and increase customer satisfaction will become even more important for market success.

It’s kind of scary seeing my mug on John’s post from the 27^th about GIPS mobile offerings.  However, as has been widely published in sources like Engadget, Gizmodo and the New York Times, there has been a crack in Apple’s normally impenetrable veil of secrecy around new product developments with the exposure of a prototype of Apple’s next generation iPhone.  The fact that the device has a front facing camera is the best response to the piece covered in John’s post.

A frequent criticism of Apple is that they don’t do anything that revolutionary.  It is that claim that makes Apple’s success all the more spectacular and game-changing.  Portable .mp3 players existed long before the iPod, but Apple’s entry changed not only the company, but the entire industry.  Similarly, the iPhone and the iPad were neither the first smart phone nor the first tablet PC on the market, but their introduction and resulting success have changed their markets significantly.  With the iPhone, hundreds of thousands of applications have proliferated, creating a whole new market for applications developers (historically a weakness for Apple).  Adding voice and video to some of these applications will enrich the experience for the end user.  To be sure, mobile video conferencing is again not a new category, as AT&T introduced video share about three years ago.  However, the service was not very usable and the device support was not where it needed to be.  However, with the introduction of frame-by-frame access to the camera which is included in iPhone OS 4 and the front facing camera which appears to be part of the 4G design, Apple will be poised once again to change the game with mobile video conferencing.

Now, no discussion of the leak would be complete without mention of the heavy handed response of Apple and the local authorities against Gizmodo and the individual who found the lost device.  However, coverage of that topic should be left to the professionals…or at least the fake professions at The Daily Show: 

Over the weekend, GIPS was featured on NBC’s San Francisco affiliate KRON 4 Evening News. The piece, which was part of Gabriel Slate’s regular technology segment, highlighted GIPS’ VideoEngine Mobile product, and discussed the future of real-time mobile video communication. Slate was right to focus on the lack of front facing cameras being a real barrier to adoption. It will be interesting to see how the public responds once the new iPhone and Android platforms start to eliminate this barrier, and as tablets become more popular and blur the lines between mobile and desktop computing. At the very least, the fact that mainstream media outlets are covering the trend can only be seen as a promising indication of market potential.

If you have trouble playing the video, you can view it on the KRON 4 website here.

There was quite a bit of discussion during last week’s eComm show about net neutrality and the National Broadband Plan. You can find my summary here. The discussion couldn’t have been timelier, as FCC commissioner Michael J. Copps also addressed the topic on this week’s Bill Moyers Journal, a show which is quickly becoming part of my weekend morning routine. I can’t embed the video, but I highly recommend watching the interview here. I won’t summarize the whole segment, but Copps made it pretty clear that he thinks the FCC should define the Internet as a type of communication service, and should thus regulate it in a similar way to the rest of the telecommunications industry.

Day 2 of eComm promises to be quite engaging, with a focus on voice and mobile. Perhaps one of the most interesting turn of events has been  how people have dealt with the travel problems that the Icelandic volcano has presented. Quite a few presentations have been cancelled because the speakers were not able to make it to the show. However, a couple have gone forward by presenting remotely via Skype. Martin Geddes is currently discussing cloud communications from his living room in London. The calls have been dropped a couple times, but overall the presentations have been very effective, and provided a good argument for video conferencing in lieu of in person meetings, as well as the value video can bring to a call. Martin’s video dropped out about 5 minutes into his presentation, and it became much less engaging and more difficult to follow the talk with only the audio. But I find it interesting that it took an act of god to get a conference about emerging communication technology to embrace video conferencing as a presentation vehicle.

More after the morning break.

Afternoon Update

The main theme of the late morning/ early afternoon talks was telecom policy, culminating in a panel on the National Broadband Plan. There seemed to be a consensus that it was a good move for the plan to focus on allocating more spectrum (500 MHz worth), as the future of the Internet will be mobile. However, there was quite a bit of disagreement, and spirited discussion, on how to ensure equal access to content, and how that might be regulated. Panelists seemed to be split on if there are adequate tools to measure service, with Richard Bennet from ITIF indicating that websites like Speedtest.net were adequate, while Susan Estrada from FirstMile maintained that there is a lack of standards for service measurement, and that it is difficult to ascertain where in the series of networks which comprise the Internet possible bottlenecks and disruptions of service may occur.

 Perhaps the most contentious issue (no surprise) was net neutrality. There were a lot of great points made, some of which I had never considered. Tracy Rosenberg from Media Alliance was a strong advocate for structural separation and protection for independent voices. Susan countered that the topic of net neutrality is premature and confuses the discussion, which should really focus on internet access, and not content. Richard agreed, pointing out that a third of Americans do not have access to the Internet, and furthermore many Americans do not want to pay for a high speed connection. My first reaction was to also agree with Susan and Richard. It made sense that we should try to get everyone Internet before we worry about regulating it. However, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why the issues had to be tackled sequentially. If we wait too long to figure out net neutrality, won’t it be harder to enact some sort of reform once we establish an acceptable level of broadband penetration? And aren’t the issues somewhat related anyway? Paul Brigner from Verizon asserted, to no one’s surprise, that Verizon has no interest in blocking service to its subscribers. But, as the panel began to discuss right before they were cut off, access in rural areas is one of the biggest issues in the Broadband Plan. So while Verizon may claim they have no interest in limiting service, they may not have an incentive to provide service to some consumers if the cost of doing so is too high. At that point  there needs to be either regulation to mandate coverage, or a way to subsidize network expansion. Basically, there need to be rules for how service gets provided, and who is responsible for management, which evokes net neutrality in my mind.

There was also a good open discussion around many issues, including the video conferencing ecosystem. From the attendees, it seems like there are still some concerns about quality. But the main issue remains interoperability. I claimed that consumer networks will probably continue to be separate, but enterprises will have to be able to connect. H.264 SVC should hopefully accelerate that. 

 My favorite talk was again something that was a little off the beaten path. Marc Smith evoked my inner social science nerd by introducing us to NodeXL’s analytic abilities for social networks. Really cool stuff.

Time for some coffee.

Late Afternoon Update

The afternoon sessions seem like they are leading up to tomorrow’s sessions pretty nicely. Tomorrow is all about augmented reality, and we have been getting a taste of what is possible with that. For instance, Jason Kolb from Cisco discussed how Google Wave and XMPP can enable social communication apps that help people interact with other folks in their immediate environment, in a very elegant, user-friendly way.

Now, before yesterday, I had no idea what augmented reality was. But over the last 24 hours I have been able to get a bit of a handle on it. Similar to virtual reality, augmented reality uses information from outside one’s current physical environment to enhance their experience. When I first heard this, I thought of people running around with clunky helmets in a lame sci-fi version of the future. But the more I learn about it, the more I can see a practical purpose for AR apps.                                                                                     

One of the most promising areas is mobile communications. If you are already using GPS or navigation services on your phone, wouldn’t you also like to hold the phone up to get even more information in real time about your surroundings, such as when landmarks were founded, or sales at stores in the neighborhood? AR apps give you that by overlaying additional information on top of a more traditional cell phone or camera view.

I am sure I am just scratching the surface, but John G. should be able to dive a little deeper tomorrow.

Hey folks. Many of us from the GIPS team are at the lovely San Francisco Airport Marriot this week for the Emerging Communication Conference (eComm). eComm is a great show not only because it brings together so many people from the communications industry, but also because the format allows speakers to present a variety of topics, and encourages dialog among participants. We are in a break between speakers, so I thought I would take this chance to give a brief overview from the morning.

I missed the first couple speakers because I arrived a little late due to Google Maps giving me an incorrect address for the hotel. I usually trust Google with my life, but this is the second time in 3 days that the company has messed up in a pretty major way for me (the previous being not being able to read an email after I replied to it on my phone. Shouldn’t Gmail run like butter on Android?). Anywho, the two talks I managed to see were pretty interesting. Carlos Kirjner from the FCC gave an overview of the National Broadband Plan. For me the takeaway was that, though broadband access is crucial for increased connectivity, it is meaningless without proper resource allocation and regulation which ensures competition and consumer choice. After that, JP Rangaswami from BT/ Ribbit spoke about the rise of the open network, and the need for cross platform and network openness in the face of vertical integration and control. He made two very interesting points. One is that sometimes technological followers are just as, if not more, important than followers, but obviously could not exist without the innovative companies first breaking into the market. He illustrated this point by claiming that Android couldn’t exist without iPhone, but that the open model Android espouses could prove to be more revolutionary in the long run. The second point he made was that, though people think of content as king, a lot of content is highly commoditized. For instance, the price of music indicates that people aren’t necessarily paying for content, but rather the convenience of being able to purchase and access music from anywhere.

The strange Pink Floyd/ reggae mashup that has been playing during intermission is dimming, which means we are about to start again. It’s been a fun morning. Expect another update shortly.

Early Afternoon Update

Ok, back at it.

Jonathan Rosenberg from Skype spoke about publishing and ecommerce. Though this seems like a surprising topic for them to discuss, his point was very relevant. He believed that the kind of rich interaction that real-time communication enables can drive more involvement with publishing and commerce. He displayed a slide which showed a correlation between call quality and call duration. Skype asked participants to rate the quality of their calls, and found that calls using HD voice lasted 50% longer than those using G.729. The same principle should apply throughout the Internet. If people can interact in a meaningful way, they should be more likely to stay longer on social networking sites and would be more likely to buy more content from an online publisher. 

Cullen Jennings from Cisco followed by introducing ViPR, which utilizes the PSTN, SIP and distributed hash tables to validated phone numbers in order to connect islands of similar technology. So, instead of relying on the PSTN for a phone call, users in different companies can now call each other over IP networks and get the benefits of HD voice and video.

Dawn Nafus from Intel then brought an anthropologist’s point of view to claim that the paradigm of emerging vs. emerged countries is no longer relevant, and that there are plenty of countries who are ready for new technology, but are not being targeted as consumers by technology producers.

Michael Zirngibl from Ringio announced the launch of Ringio’s rich calling service, which integrates CRM functionality with telephony. The idea is that by including social information with a call, the service will improve customer service and sales performance. I can definitely see this going a long way.

Counterpath also launched their Nomadic PBX which connects users through their mobile numbers to provide UC and FMC functionality across platforms.

Great morning, but I am hungry, so it is off to lunch.

Early Afternoon Update

With a full belly, here are some of the afternoon highlights:

Since I am a map geek, Assaf Binderman’s talk has to be my favorite so far. He showed how data can be used to make cities more efficient and deliver better service. For instance, he showed a map of Florence during rush hour, with an overlay of cell phone activity and bus routes. From the map, it became clear that there were hotbeds of pedestrian activity that were not adequately serviced by the bus system. His group at MIT has also worked on the super cool Copenhagen Wheel project, which not only provides regenerative braking power to a bike, but also collects and emits data based on a the activity of a city’s users. So users have a clean, fast mode of transportation, as well as receive maps and directions, and cities can get information about traffic patterns and pollution.

After the keynote from Ge Wang, which included many musical demos of apps from Smule, our very own Joyce Kim gave a kick ass presentation on the future of mobile video calling, and the differences between the Android and iPhone platforms. In short, H.264 SVC is going to open up a lot of possibilities, but it is still unclear how much demand there is for real time video on small devices, though tablets may change that. The iPhone has some advantages for developers (predictable hardware) but users may prefer the openness and variety that comes with Android. I think you can probably expect a more technical follow up post from one of our engineers on that topic.

Overall, it has been a very entertaining and informative day. Now off to the reception for a cocktail.