Vidyo to Roll Out Low-cost Video Conferencing
Start-up Vidyo has unveiled a low-cost video-conferencing product on Wednesday that may give competitors a run for their money. Vidyo introduced Vidyo Panorama, a video conferencing system that currently delivers high-speed, high-definition video calls for nine people now but will do the same for up to 20 people at a time in the future.
According to Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ofer Shapiro in an interview with Reuters, Vidyo, which has raised $74 million from investors, including Menlo Ventures and Rho Ventures, hopes to go public before 2015. Vidyo’s software platform is used by Google Inc, Hitachi Ltd and Ricoh Co Ltd, and with this new product the company is boasting of dramatic cuts in the cost of video-conferencing. Vidyo said its systems incorporating up to nine screens would cost $44,000, compared with about $300,000 to $500,000 for three to four screens from other vendors. Users can also log into a wide variety of platforms, including 1080p 60 frames per second multi-screen telepresence rooms, video conferencing rooms, desktops, iOS and Android-based smartphones and tablets, (including the iPhone, iPad 2, Xoom, Galaxy, Nexus S and others).
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Microsoft to Launch own Windows 8 tablet?
Microsoft is reportedly preparing to launch an own-brand Windows 8 tablet by the end of 2012 with the help of component suppliers Texas Instruments and a number of Taiwan based vendors, according to Digitimes. According to the report, Microsoft may copy its branding strategy from product lines including its Xbox 360 and Zune products to help draw more consumer attention in a growing tablet market. The Microsoft Windows 8 slate is rumored to arrive sometime by the end of 2012, though it’s not confirmed that it will use ARM chipsets.
Microsoft has not commented on rumors.
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Twitter Now Has Own Link Shortener
Twitter has announced today that it has begun automatically shortening URLs pasted into tweets by its users.
The service, called t.co–is being rolled out incrementally and will wrap and abbreviate all links shared on the site in the same way other URL-shortening services, such as Bitly, do. When users compose a tweet and paste a link of any length into the Tweet box, Twitter will automatically abbreviate the link to 19 characters when users hit send.
User security played a major role in implementing the new service, according to Twitter.
“Since we show a shortened version of the original link, people will know which site the link points to,” Twitter said in a statement. “This service also increases security. If users click links that are reported as malicious, we direct them to a page that warns them.”
Twitter however assures in their blog that your favorite third-party shortening services will still work just fine.
