Videophones Revisited

amitupadhyay7 writes "The NYTimes is running a story on Video Phones. ...more than 30 percent of American homes now have much faster 'pipes' coming into their homes: broadband Internet. Apple exploited this situation, for example, with its $140 iSight camera, a pocketcam that clips onto a Macintosh screen for free, high-quality Internet video calls. Now a company called Viseon has taken the next step by creating an actual video telephone called the VisiFone... in a related news Cisco is adding video to their IP phones. Telcos' response so far seems constructive."

Comments

A new etiquitte

[maggard]

We've all heard the jokes about working from home in the nude, and then wearing a shirt or using hand puppets or inserting fake backgrounds into video calls to the office. However the reality is that most folks really don't appreciate having to look presentable on what is essentially an audio call.

Indeed it's already hard enough for many folks with audio only. I can't count the number of times I've had to ask conference callers to stop eating, or in a few cases that perhaps they could try to pee quieter and have waited 'til after the call to flush.

Videophones themselves have had numerous fals starts. The Bell demos are classics from the 60's (particularly memorable in the film 2001.) Then in the late 80's and early 90's home video phone models briefly became somewhat popular. Rarely successfully interoperable they seemed to sell mostly to gadget folks wanting distant grandkids and grandparents to see each other.

Then came the broadband/instant messaging explosion in the late 90's and along with it lots of webcams. Offering small blurry jerky windows the PC-tethered cams allowed a few families and travelers to wave at each other. It also sparked an entire new market of slo-mo sexual voyeurism.

Now broadband has fairly wide market penetration, the camera sensors have improved, new codecs stream well, and hardware connections have moved from serial to USB 1 to USB 2 or FireWire/IEEE 1394. We even have ubiquitous clients like AOL Instant Messenger, MS Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger, all including video chat in their free clients.

Cellphones have also gotten into the game with still cameras now standard on many models and live cameras starting to hit the market. "MMS" is being ballyhooed as the next text-messaging. However what appears to be lagging is the new video-etiquette.

It used to be tourists busily video documenting their vacations that got on everyone's nerves. Then it was instant messaging folks who often annoying with trying to strike up light chat when one was deep in thought or a meeting, or vice versa. Or being offended at others who were accessible but not immediately available.

then came the invasion of cheap digital cameras. It's thankfully dying down now but for a few years one couldn't turn around at a party or conference without a flash going off in one's eyes and knowledge that like it or not, welcome or not, your stunned countenance was going to show up on a photo album or web page somewhere.

Of course today's universal complaint is cellphone users. Yakking away in previously quiet places, blithely wandering from road lane to road lane, standing in aisles oblivious to folks trying to pass. Obtrusively sharing their no-longer-private lives with everyone around whether we care to hear them or not.

So how will we stay out of the picture? It's bad enough with stills being taken, overtly and surreptiously, with phonecams. Now they're gonna be making mini-movies. Instead of having to take a series of shots phonecam wielders will be able to pan a room and document everyone without any opportunity for thanks-but-no.

"Why won't you turn your cam on?" "Are you really where you say you are?" "Johnson, starting next week we want you to sit in front of these lights and put some powder on that shine, you'll be taking video calls. Oh, and go shopping, tests show our clients respond well to blue shirts." "What do you mean you left your cam on the whole time we were ... ?!!!"

Plus audio conference calls and endless PowerPoint presentations are bad enough, now we'll have to see every schmoo who dreampt of being a TV newsman share their talents at every opportunity. Indeed no longer will sending out a report be enough, we'll have to "present" them too. Today's video conference rooms will bloom into tomorow's full in-office studios.

Of course there are upsides too. Now we'll be able to see our loved ones when we miss them. Also walk folks through things remotely "Let me see it - yep, that's it." And the idea of s