Posts Tagged 'instant messaging'

It’s (same)time for High Definition

Published February 22, 2009 Uncategorized Closed
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IBM and Radvision has a long-lasting partnership in the IM space, with IBM’s Lotus Sametime and Radvision’s Scopia Desktop solution. In Lotusphere 2009 a month ago, Radvision introduced a new plug-in for Lotus Sametime, which adds high definition video conferencing to Sametime environment. The following post was written by guest blogger Sagee Ben Zedeff from Radvision.

I am a big fan of desktop video conferencing, and of RADVISION’s High Definition Scopia Desktop in particular. The ability to communicate with others directly from my laptop wherever I am in High Definition (REAL High Definition @ 720p) is priceless. Add to this the fact that it supports desktop, room system and mobile handset endpoints, and you can truly video conference from anywhere with anyone.

And now Lotus Sametime users can enhance their collaboration and communication experience using Scopia Desktop in Lotusphere 2009. Among the recent exciting announcements, RADVISION unveiled a unique plug-in for Sametime, based on Scopia Desktop, which seamlessly adds high definition video conferencing to Sametime’s environment.

RADVISION’s conferencing platform, SCOPIA, has been supporting IBM’s unified communication and collaboration platform for a long time now. However, using the new Sametime plug-in, Sametime users can now enjoy multi-point HD video conferencing in their IM or web conferencing sessions easily and seamlessly.

The plug-in is simple and fully integrated into Sametime, centrally managed and deployed without any complex installation issues or licensing fees. You just click on the video icon in Lotus Sametime or Web Conferencing and you are ready to go.

In fact, Sametime users don’t need to change anything in their hardware or software. They can still use the same PC and webcam, yet enjoy the new HD services. The plug-in uses PC resources (processor power, network bandwidth) efficiently, allowing for H.264 video with highest quality, sending and receiving HD @ 720p resolution. It will even automatically detect CPU and bandwidth availability, and determine optimal parameters to guarantee the best experience for your setup.

If this sounds too good to be true, you can actually give Scopia Desktop a (free) test right now and see for yourself.


High definition video conferencing is happening everywhere, now is the time to start enjoying it on Sametime.



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Sagee Ben-Zedeff is a technology researcher in the CTO’s office at RADVISION. He has been developing video technologies and video related products for the past decade. He also writes the Video Over Enterprise blog, which deals with video and video applications “with an enterprise slant”.

Lotus mobile solutions

Published December 17, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Alan found this great 90 sec video outlining the various mobile solutions Lotus offers today – messaging for iPhone, messaging for Symbian and WM5/6, social software for Blackberry, rich application access for mobile and instant messaging for mobile. The product/solution names could have been mentioned more, but still – very cool video.
Update: Ed also linked this – the birth of a viral video has began.. 😉

Collaboration solutions for a start up company

Published November 30, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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One of IBM’s BP invited me this morning to lecture about our collaboration solutions, at a briefing they held to start ups and SMB companies, under the PC title of ‘building a smarter infrastructure’. Those 30min were an excellent opportunity to expose small and medium business leaders (CEOs, CTOs and CIOs) to what Lotus has to offer, under our Express solutions.

I decided to keep my presentation short and simple (21 slides), showing why collaboration is a factor, even at small companies (<50 people), what the employees are looking for nowadays, how Lotus can help and our strategic position at the market. It was refreshing to see CEOs and CIOs actually taking notes, writing down the prices, doing cost comparison and asking questions. The presentation is available at my slideshare space, and embedded hereunder.
Comments and feedback are always welcome.

Lotus collaboration solutions for Start Up Companies

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: costs up)

Now’s the time to deploy IM

Published November 15, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Now’s the time to deploy IM? really? you must think I’m joking – what about the crisis, the economy, the layoffs, the roi, the recession, the stock market? why should anyone make the decision to invest in IT? Well, simply put – because we must !
Businesses are still working, offering solutions, products and services – outcomes that will benefits the economy, save jobs (and creating new ones), healing the market, bouncing the stocks up. We’re facing harsh times, but we can’t close shop and go home. Furthermore, businesses are looking for ways to be more productive, getting more work done faster, while keeping a watchful eye on expenses. And they’re looking for easy to deploy and manage solutions, that can show real benefit in 2-4 weeks, not 6-12 months.

Some facts about IBM Lotus Sametime, the leading corporate instant messaging solution:

There are many reasons to freeze any IT related expense, and just wait. But there’s also the demand to grow your business, be more productive, more collaborative, save money – IM has transformed the way IBM works. Want to reap some of those benefits as well?

Related articles:
CIO.com – how to make unified communications and collaboration work for you
networkworld.com – UC can help you through hard times
Sametime blog – the official US Army chat room software
IBM CIO Office – Lotus Sametime saves money
Sametime blog – global Hyatt signs for Lotus Sametime UC
IBM Lotus Sametime at ibm.com
Jon Mell – instant messaging ROI

To twit or not to twit

Published May 13, 2008 Uncategorized 4 Comments
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I wasn’t a twitter fan to begin with. In every customer/analyst/colleagues meeting I spoke, twitter was always my example of ‘too much information’, ‘too much sharing’.
The reason I sighed up to twitter was really to update my facebook status, using the Twitter application in FB – made my life easier, telling the world where I am and what I’m doing (sometimes too much information.. ;-).
I often met friends after hours and they were like ‘how was the meeting in Tel Aviv?’, or ‘enjoyed that lunch?’ – and I didn’t know where they got their info from.

Working with Twitter was difficult at first – how do you explain yourself in 140 symbols or less? what should I twit about? when to update? what application to use?
Sam Lawrence provided some insights on different twitter services, Ouriel talked about email vs. twitter and my friend Alan compared twitter to IM. And there are many more twits out there, discussing how twitter changed the way we communicate. Even in a time of disaster.

Most of the day I use twhirl – simple desktop application for twitter. Easy to use, follow, reply, direct and add friends. I also use TwitNotes in my Lotus Notes 8.0.1 client from time to time. When I’m offline (strange – I’m never offline, only ‘laptop-less’) I use twibble on my Nokia N95, or text message instead. Twibble provides a fair alternative for twhirl, but there’s no way to add urls or photos like it twhirl. There’s also Fring on my N95, mostly for VoIP and chats, but I can also update twitter from there (chatting via Google Talk).

For me, the main question is choosing the right sharing tool:
Should I twit about it? maybe write a post like this one? or post to my facebook profile? why not IM? IBMers are no strangers to technology and innovation and some of my good friends are twitting – sometime I find it easier to communicate with them using twitter, because it’s more instant than IM. Especially if they’re ‘offline’.

My thumb rule for choosing which tool is the content. You can’t twit about everything.

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.