This week I got the opportunity to try out the preview of Google Wave (I resisted the urge to sell my invitation on Ebay). It’s definitely an ambitious project since it’s aiming at replacing both email and IM – two quite popular Internet services. Without going into detail about exactly what it does, I can say that it’s definitely a neat tool that combines real time communication and asynchronous communication (a’ la email) very well. Since Google Wave is an open architecture, we should see many more services being deployed on the platform. Of course, and we at GIPS would like to see voice and video being integrated as well. 

However, the short-term success of this tool will depend a lot on how well it integrates into the PC environment (for most of us this means Windows). One thing that drives me crazy with all the web based communication tools I’ve tried it that it’s so hard to notice when you get a new IM/call/Wave/email. Before I got a new laptop I stilled used the old googletalk client that’s installed like a regular application on the desktop. Using that you would get a popup message whenever you got an IM, call, or gmail. With a web-based app you really need to pay attention to notice that one of the tabs on your browser has changed its headline – which is all the notification you get. Since I use many other applications than my browser, and have multiple browser tabs open, I miss IMs and calls all the time. 

I don’t think I am only one who has struggled with this issue, so it would be great if anyone knows of 3rd party applications that help out with notifications.

Back in December, Andrew wrote a blog post about the hi-fi industry’s lack of scientific scrutiny. I can’t help bringing it up again, because, with Andrew visiting our Stockholm office, it has been our favorite topic of discussion this week. It started when another colleague of ours brought in a review from a Swedish hi-fi magazine of the Nordost Odin cables. If you want a full set of these (power, signal and speaker cables) it’ll set you back about $50,000, depending upon the length of the cables. And yes, that is just for the cables; no speakers or amplifier included. 

The review did not contain any blind testing or technical data justifying such an outrageous price tag. But that did not stop the reviewer, who instead – with excitement – concluded that these cables made an enormous difference in audio quality. Most surprisingly, the reviewer claimed the biggest difference was made by the power cable. 

Below are some valuable lessons I learned from reading the article: 

-          Even though the power to your amplifier has travelled 200 miles from a power plant, then through cheap wiring in your house (including a fuse that is designed to only let a certain current through), apparently having perfect conditions for the last meter makes a big difference for audio quality.

-          Cables have to be “worn in” over several hours to really obtain optimal performance. It’s unclear what physical phenomenon that causes this, but it’s seems to be a well know fact in the hi-fi world.  Unfortunately it makes blind testing really hard…

-          Not all scams come from Nigeria.

The Windows 7 feature set has been known for quite a while, but since it will roll out quite soon I think it is worth mentioning what’s in there that will affect the way you use your regular VoIP client:  

Audio device routing and muting

In all previous Windows versions, if you had more than one audio device, you had to select a default device in the Control Panel. In Windows 7, you can select both a default sound device and a default “communications device”. This means that you can select your sound card with speakers as the default device, and your USB headset as the default communication device. Your music and movie sound will be played on the speakers, but a VoIP call will automatically go to your headset. And the coolest part is if you’re playing music on your speakers and answer a VoIP call the music will be muted automatically. All this is independent of the VoIP client you use, as long as it can select the “default communications device”. 

Web plug-ins

Several improvements have been made to the web plug-in support in both Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7. First of all, ActiveX plug-ins can now be installed without administrative privileges on a user by user basis (is this the end of Flash’ world domination?).  In addition, “Windows Web Services” will make it easier to extend existing native applications into a web service. What does this all mean for regular VoIP users? You will see more and more VoIP clients that are completely web based. 

Improved Bluetooth Audio support?

The Windows 7 Beta contained a generic bluetooth audio driver that made many of us hope that it would become easier to install and run a wireless headset. However this driver was removed in the release candidate, probably because it caused more problems than it solved. I guess we can always hope it reappears in a service pack later on.

You have heard it before on this blog, and I’m sure you’ll hear it again: The mobile device manufacturers are doing more and more to control possible VoIP deployments on their hardware. Below are 2 very recent examples that I’ve stumbled upon this week: 

Example 1: The Nokia E-series phones have had very good VoIP support, with essentially a built-in SIP client. The latest E-series phone (E75) still has this capability, but seriously cripples the way you can configure the SIP parameters. On other phones you can set the SIP parameters yourself, and hence connect to any SIP voice provider you’d like to use. On the E75, the parameters can only be configured “over the air” by your service provider, or be registering as a developer to get access to SIP controls. Nokia denies this change has anything to do with pressure from service providers… 

Example 2: As Jan mentioned in an earlier post, Apple is finally rolling out support for push notifications, which will make it easier to build applications for IM and VoIP on the iPhone. However, I only recently had a chance to see how this is implemented. It turns out that all notifications will have to go through Apple’s servers, which will only allow approved applications, sending out notifications at an approved rate, for approved services. What this means in practice is hard to say, but VoIP is currently not allowed on 3G networks by the current developer agreement. With Apple in full control over push notifications, software developers will be very careful not to violate the agreement in any way, since their service can be shut down at any time.

Every time I take a walk to our office kitchen to get some coffee, I walk by our test lab. In that lab we have PCs that run all different kinds of Windows versions, Linux distributions, Macs, test servers and so on. The last couple of weeks the same guy has been sitting there every time I walk by. He is responsible for improving VoiceEngine‘s support for the PulseAudio sound API on Linux, something that looked like a small task on paper but turned out to be a much tougher task when we started testing on different machines.                                                                                                                                                         

The open source development system seems to work very well in some cases, and not so well in others. One place where it does not work well is for the Linux sound APIs. Regardless if it’s OSS, ALSA or PulseAudio being used, the software quality is way below similar APIs on Windows or OSX. A quick search in our bug tracking database reveals that, although less than 1% of our voice client users are running Linux, 50% of the sound card related issues we see come from a Linux system.  Our own code that handles the sound card interface on Linux is full of workarounds to handle cases where the APIs do not behave as documented. 

Why is this the case? I’m not sure, but I can imagine a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s not a very “sexy” area to work on. Secondly, it’s damn hard. You need to be a good programmer, but also know signal processing, real time processing, and driver level interaction. Lastly, PC sound cards come in many flavours and their feature set is evolving quickly with multi-channel output, digital connectors, and more than one microphone. Keeping drivers and middleware up to date is a tough task that not many people are prepared to do for free.

With offices all over the world, we at GIPS use our own video solutions as much as possible for internal meetings. If you have tried the Cisco Telepresence solution, you know that video conferencing can be great. But with the enormous cost to set up such meeting rooms, many of us are still hesitating. Our focus at GIPS is video processing software, but it is important to realize that hardware plays a big role in the end-user experience. After testing all kinds of equipment at a variety of price points, we have settled on a hardware solution that we think is good enough to make video conferencing an amazing experience. By running our VideoEngine demo software with the following setup, we are able to approximate a telepresence experience at a much lower cost.

The GIPS San Francisco Video Conference Room

PC
Any standard PC with a decent quad core processor will do. With that kind of processing power, you can go all the way up to full-HD video coding. The key is to keep this PC dedicated to the meeting software only. It’s easy to think that you can re-use a lab/demo/test/presentation machine – but that means that the PC will never be ready when you need it. Trust me, we have tried
Cost: $1000

Camera

USB web cams are getting better and better, but they are still not sophisticated enough to be able to shoot a whole meeting room with several participants. One big problem is that the frame rate drops as soon as the lighting is not ideal. In addition, it is nice to have a true optical zoom function, and the ability to fit the camera on a real tripod. We have found that a standard consumer grade HDV camera gives you the best result for limited money. Have a look at for example Canon HV30 or Sony HDR-HC9.

Cost: $800

Displaying the video

Here you have two options: either re-use the projector that you probably already have in your meeting room, or buy a dedicated LCD-TV. Bigger is better. For the projector option, make sure you can find a lighting level in the room that’s OK for both the camera and looking at the screen.

Cost: 0-$2000

Additional items

HDMI capture card $250

High quality conference microphone $500

Monitor speaker: $200

Your total bill will end up at $3000-$5000 per meeting room. Feel like spending more? Have a look at the Sony EVI-HD1 camera. The camera alone will set you back 5K, but the video quality is amazing – and you get a nifty remote control for zooming and panning.