Google+ Hangouts with extras combines multi-person video chat with screen sharing and collaboration in Google Docs

Last year after Google I/O 2010 I wrote "the most interesting development to watch, still a rumor, is Google Meetings: a multiuser videoconferencing application for the Google cloud. If Google Meetings is integrated with the other applications in the Google Apps suite, it could very rapidly become the favorite solution for desktop business videoconferencing and collaboration."

That was before Google+. The new Google+ Hangouts with Extras feature, recently announced, does just that: "Hangouts with extras, which combines multi-person video chat with screen sharing and collaboration in Google Docs, lets you work together on projects even when your team can't be in the same room. Whether you’re out of town, working on a project with a distributed group, or just don’t feel like walking to the next building for your meeting, Hangouts with extras can give your team the productivity boost it needs." Awesome.

DominoLife for Android

In the last few months I have been busy developing the Android application DominoLife for Terasem Movement Transreligion. After a couple of months of beta testing, version 1.5 has been uploaded to the Android Market.

DominoLife is a multimedia application for non-linear note taking, story telling, mind mapping and presentations. It permits easily organizing pictures, text notes, audio clips and freehand drawings in trees. A tree is composed of nodes, where each node is a bundle which can include text, pictures, audio and graphics. Each node has one parent and up to 3 children. This data structure called a ternary tree is very suitable for mobile devices, with horizontal and vertical scrolling. The 4 scrolling directions (back, forward, up and down) permit reaching the 4 links (one parent and 3 children) from a node, which defines a simple, intuitive and powerful user interface. DominoLife is very easy to use, and new users can start composing trees seconds after launching the application for the first time. See more...

DominoLife is a social application integrated with file sharing services and social networks. After composing a DominoLife tree, users can export it as a zipfile and share it via any sharing service. The internal QuickShare tool permits one-click social sharing by: 1) Storing the tree in the public folder of the user's Dropbox account; 2) Storing a viewable reference in our DominoLife web repository; and 3) Publishing a link on Facebook or Google+. See more...

DominoLife links to the DominoLife web repository where users can preview and rate trees, and download them to their phone for viewing and further editing. Take a look, for example, at my DominoLife multimedia album of a trip to Lake Balaton, with my wife and doggy and two friends. This is a simple example of using DominoLife to record impressions of a day trip with pictures, text and audio. You can preview it on the web (without audio). If you have the DominoLife app, you can download it to your Android phone for full viewing and editing. I will post other more interesting example of use cases soon.

DominoLife is available on the Android Market at a price of 1.95 US$ (less than a coffee).

Google+: First impressions and thoughts

I have been one of the lucky few to receive an invitation to Google+ on the first day it went public as a beta field test, and I have been playing with it a lot. Google+ is Google's new social network, very similar to Facebook with extra features similar to Twitter and Diaspora. Google+ is already interoperable with other Google services, e.g. Profiles and Picasa. In time, it may be seamlessly integrated with the rest of the Google ecosystem (Gmail, Groups, Docs, Calendar, Blogger, Maps, Latitude, Youtube, Apps...) and become something huge.

I have written a review of "Google+: First impressions and thoughts" on the Space Collective site. Excerpt: "I think selective sharing is both a strong and weak point. It is strong, because you can share a post with your friends without sharing it with your mother and your boss. It is weak, because sharing with everyone is simpler than categorizing your contacts in circles, and things must be made really very simple in these KISS days. Most of my own posts are shared with all my circles like on Facebook and also public (shared with everyone who chooses to follow me like on Twitter), but I can certainly see the advantages of selective sharing. Especially for young people who can now have different Family, Friends, School and Work circles, but strangely I think most young people may stay on Facebook and ignore Google+, leaving the latter to us grown-ups. Also, perhaps only persons with some degree of computer literacy will use Google+ frequently: if Wave is for computer geeks only, and Facebook is for everyone including your granddaughter and grandfather, Google+ may occupy the mid ground."

Read the rest on Space collective...

My presentation at TransVision 2010: Online conferences 2.0

My presentation at TransVision 2010: Online conferences 2.0

One problem with conferences is that participating costs money and time. Today many conferences offer live video streams of all talks and discussion, which is very important for those who cannot attend physically. Some recent conferences like the ASIM 2010 Conference in San Francisco (satellite to the Singularity Summit 2010) have offered fully interactive remote participation with multi-user video, audio, text and document sharing (“mixed-reality”).

Mixed-reality via modern telepresence technology permits opening conferences to remote participants by merging on-site and remote participants in one virtual group. The 2-way video and audio link enables each participant, on-site or remote, to be seen and heard by all other participants, on-site or remote. Remote speakers and attendees are able to actively participate, follow the talks via interactive video streaming, ask questions to the speakers, contribute to the discussion, and give talks themselves. Of course, modern telepresence technology permits also online-only “conferences 2.0″, and I think this is an important trend. Going back to “one problem with conferences is that participating costs money and time“, it is evident that online conferences 2.0 permit saving a lot of money and time, thus enabling more people to participate in cultural acceleration.

I will present our teleXLR8 project based on Teleplace, recently covered by Hypergrid Business, one of the best online magazines focused on professional applications of virtual reality, “as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience.” See also “teleXLR8 Project News – a telepresence community for cultural acceleration“, our mini-manifesto Telepresence Education for a Smarter World on the IEET site and the interview MIND and MAN: Getting Mental with Giulio Prisco, by Natasha Vita-More, on H+ Magazine.

New Teleplace release 3.5, with enhancements and new features

Teleplace has just released a new major upgrade, version 3.5.

The full 3.5 release notes are here:
http://www.teleplace.com/docs/userguide/release_notes/index.html

There are many improvements in both functions and implementation. The main new functions are:
- Echo cancellation and many VoIP improvements. Of course clear and easy to use VoIP is one of the main requirements for successful telepresence meetings.
- A secure room video broadcast feature (beta), useful for very large events like seminars and conferences. This feature permits distributing large crowds in different halls and delivering the same video and audio stream to all.
- Integration with Microsoft SharePoint.
- And many other new features and performance tuning fixes.

With this new release, Teleplace consolidates its leadership in the online collaborative 3D telepresence and videoconferencing space.

Simple videoconferencing in Second Life

A simple videoconferencing experiment in Second Life, using Gmail video chat.

In my previous post on Telepresence Education for a Smarter World I wrote about the importance of videoconferencing and how it can add to immersion in VR worlds. So I made this simple experiment using Gmail video chat.

The result is surprisingly good, vith very clear video and voice. Note that Google video conferencing may soon become multiuser (more than 2) and integrated with Google Apps (Gmail, Google Docs, calendars etc.), so this could be a very good solution for videoconferencing and collaboration in Second Life with some tweaks:

1) It should be possible to detatch the video screenlet (second image), or make it full prim. In this first test, pressing the full screen button displays the video full screen on the PC, but it should be full screen on the prim. The video screenlet cannot be detatched because of pop-up blockers. I made the video in the first image full screen by tweaking the texture parameters, but this is not an elegant solution.
2) It should be possible to access a password protected website and show it to other users without asking them to login. In this first test, other users see the Gmail login screen on the prim. If we can do something about this, Google Apps could become a VERY good solution for videoconferencing and collaboration in Second Life.

I am sure 1) and 2) can be solved with some tweaking and/or programming SL side and/or Google Apps side. Ideas?

Google I/O 2010

Today I have watched the YouTube webcast of Google I/O 2010.

There are many, many interesting news. One of the most interesting is the announcement of The WebM Project: an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web.WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. VP8 is a highly efficient video compression technology that was developed by On2 Technologies. Google acquired On2 in February, 2010. WebM and the codecs it supports (VP8 video and Vorbis audio) require no royalty payments of any kind.

More on WebM on TechCrunch, with many other interesting news from Google I/O 2010. For example, Google Launches Business Version Of App Engine; Collaborates With VMware: At Google I/O today, the search giant has announced that Google App Engine, a platform for building and hosting web applications in the cloud, will now include a Business version, catered towards enterprises. The new premium version allows customers to build their own business apps on Google’s cloud infrastructure. Google is also announcing a collaboration with VMware for deployment and development of apps on the new cloud infrastructure... Google is also announcing a collaboration with VMware for deployment and development of apps on the new cloud infrastructure.

Google Apps now includes Google Wave. It also includes Google Video: companies running their Intranet in the cloud using the business version of Google Apps can easily create their own internal YouTube. But the most interesting development to watch, still a rumor, is Google Meetings: a multiuser videoconferencing application for the Google cloud. If Google Meetings is integrated with the other applications in the Google Apps suite, it could very rapidly become the favorite solution for desktop business videoconferencing and collaboration.

Second day: Android and Google TV, very interesting. See Eric Schmidt Presides Over The Marriage Of The 50-Year-Old TV And The Teenage Web on TechCrunch. They gave a HTC Evo 4G Android phone to all participants, but said that we remote watchers from YouTube don't get any:-( Too bad, because it seems a great phone, especially for the large screen size.

Virtual worlds on phones

Well... this is actually a picture of a YouTube video recorded in a VR environment (Teleplace), playing on my Android phone. But I believe some kind of limited access to 3D VR worlds is coming to phones soon.

Due to the small screen size, I would not really enjoy VR telepresence on the phone. But the same applications will certainly be deployed to Ipads and similar Android devices with larger screens. Also, magic glasses able to turn a phone screen into a large screen are coming soon to consumer electronics stores.