The Perfect Videoconferencing Set Up

For the past year I've been looking for ways to improve my videoconferencing experience.  I bought a 24" iMac solely for this purpose. The camera is the highest quality output I've experienced so far - even better than the HD (high definition) from my Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000... and the iMac's graphic processing makes the picture better than anything else I've tried.

So it's a very good experience. I videoconference my mother in Britain, and  a couple of years back bought her a 20" iMac. We can now both videoconference from the opposite ends of the earth using Skype for Mac, with very little audio/visual lag, and no headset or external microphone. The picture is stunning 90% of the time, and very good for the rest.

This lack of hardware means that either of us can wander off around the room while still talking and it gets picked up perfectly.

It struck me that the perfect videoconferencing setup would be a extension of what we are doing now. It would be a large lifesize screen on the wall of the room, left permanently on, and would act as a window so that as each party came into the area and found the other there, they could strike up a natural conversation without appointment or set up bother.

Doing videoconferencing this way would go a long way to making the event less of a TV appearance - with all its formality and structure - and more of an interconnector of events. It would appear as if the two parties were actually in the same room on a conversational level.

How I Found A Checklist To Run My Online Business

My online business has a series of sequential, recurring and mostly daily to-do steps that it needs to accomplish, or die. Items like:

- process all manual orders
- write article for newsletter and publish
- put article on blog
- write weekly article for directories
- answer client support issues
- back up databases
- check auto backups
- check order links for sales page working

And so on, right to the end task: "Clear desk completely."

There's a lot of stuff to do, even though some steps might only take a minute or two. I have about 35 daily checklist items that must be done for my business to survive and thrive. And these steps have to be done religiously every day. When there's a lot going on you have to be on top of the stuff that matters, whether it's organizational or marketing. Most small businesses have the same requirement.

But a lot of business owners don't do enough. While I'm an enthusiast of Tim Ferriss's 4 Hour WorkWeek, the reality is that a substantial or growing business needs more than an hour a day to be continually successful. So the list of essential to-do's is a large part of the success operation.

I've had many headaches over the years trying to design and run a perfect checklist system. Seems so simple to do, but it's not. One of the problems was finding a way to separate the daily tasks from the weekly ones. I kept a paper diary for a while and wrote the tasks on Post-It notes, shifting them all to the next page as required. Very messy.

Then I used the checklist in an Outlook email message that I kept in a folder titled "-DAILY". The hyphen ensured that it stayed at the top of my folder list. As each day went past I would prefix the completed task with an 'x' if completed, or a '-' if not. At the end of the week I would wipe out all the x's and -'s and start again. But that was unwieldy and time consuming, and it was often hard to see where I was at any time of the week.

The commercial programs available weren't much better either. They were often clunky and unattractive in a DOS format kind of way, and didn't present the checklist as I thought it should be set out, or buried it in other less effective areas. None really had a common enough structure.

That's until I came across gtdagenda, a web based task management system.

It has a number of goal setting and task devices built around David Allen's cult of efficiency, "Getting Things Done" (the gtd part of the program), but that wasn't what attracted me. It was the checklist system, which has proven to be an exact match for my needs.

After years of trying other things, this program has finally fitted around what I need, almost intuitively. The layout and methodology is very good. If you're task-oriented as I am, this has got to be the best way to cover your dailies. And as you 'do the business' each day, you have the confidence of knowing that your butt is covered and nothing falls through the cracks. And being web based, you know it's not going to leave you high and dry when your PC crashes.

Best way is to take a look - it's self explanatory. There's a free option too, with a limited number of items (free) through to unlimited, starting from under $4/mth.

Since I started using Gtdagenda this last week, I've actually become more efficient and motivated. Using just a checklist system - I know, sounds crazy - but it works beautifully.

Yes, I know...

I'm on a post holiday right now! Nothing much happening at the moment.

screens-R-Us

I love the convenience of my screens! My office is on the bottom of our 4 level home, and it's a 20 second climb to get to the lounge or front door. So I'm extending my reach through cameras and screens.

At the moment I have a screen open (using the first of 4 outdoor security cameras to come), showing the road outside my office. I have motion sensor fields so that when a car drives down the road it is recorded to my hard drive, and I can play it back anytime.

I used it yesterday to see whether a courier had come up the road to drop off an expected delivery at my front door. They had (at 13.19.05!) - so I went up to collect it - the SeeEye-2-Eye eye level viewing device I talked about a few posts back. More about that in a later post. The delivery I was hoping for was a dome camera for the front door which I will connect to my security screen. That came later in the afternoon and I'm testing it now.


On another dedicated 15" tv screen I'm watching one of my Roombas vacuuming our lounge 3 levels up. I have the sound on so I can hear when the job is done. The wireless camera - one of four around the house - shows the room with incredible detail. In this photo it's easy to see how I've turned over a corner of the rug for the Roomba to do underneath, but on other occasions I can also see if our cat lying under the coffee table has her eyes open or not.



So far I have 8 working screens in my office connected round the house, gradually building up a complete surveillance. It's a great life, this video life!

portable videoconferencing device

If you have a spare US$700, Creative will sell you a portable, wireless videoconferencing unit (picture from here):


This was first announced in December 2007 on the enGadget blog, and officially at CES 2008 last Saturday.

According to the enGadget website: "the portable video conferencing device promises that "you can join a board meeting in Geneva, a one-on-one in Africa, and your child's birthday party in California while you're stuck in the airport in Australia."

No launch date yet for the Creative inPerson Video Conferencing device.

where is videoconferencing heading in the future?

The convenience of videoconferencing is not that hard to promote. The advantages - like those shown in this simple but cute ad, and many more like it - are pretty ho-hum by now:



Of course we know that videoconferencing replaces traveling and all its inconveniences. Yet we still do it. Yes, it's great to talk to someone from halfway round the world in an instant. But phone was the same 50 years ago.

So if it's all a little commonplace and predictable, what's the future of videoconferencing in 2008 and 5 years beyond?

I don’t think much will improve until a 'next big thing' like full color holography emerges. And hopefully not like this 1980's Star Wars version:



In the meantime I'm predicting we'll be making smaller increments of change:

- Video call quality will improve. That's a given. With all the emphasis presently put on videoconferencing as a foreign medium (not as easy to use as the phone, and 50% of the population so far not wanting it), there's not many places to go except stepping up the quality. Even so, improving quality will attract people like me, but the masses won't notice.

- The desktop will reign because it's convenient and cheap. Think how hard it is for the average person to set up a dedicated videoconferencing room with proper lighting and sound. Even though I'm a stickler for quality, I'm still very satisfied with my setup... natural window light, my Polycom Communicator for the best sound outside a head mic, and the Skype High Quality video. It will take a big quality jump to get an improvement on that.

- High definition will get better, but won't help much. Last year I went to a LifeSize demo in my city because I was curious to find out the advantages, if any, of true high definition. I wasn't that impressed. It turned out exactly as I expected. The 42" flat screen on the wall still contained a "tv announcer," and the conversation was a little disembodied as a result of a lack of high quality audio. That's the problem... HiDef videoconferencing today still looks like we're interacting with a better quality tv. The personal interaction is lost - a step removed from reality - which is the holy grail of videoconferencing.

Here's another LifeSize ad which tries to bridge this reality gap, and I think does it quite well:


- Interfaces will improve. I hope so. The Skype window, similar in design to SightSee, is very unattractive. Like Google and Amazon, it is in that state because it's simple. But simple is not always best because these interfaces are not intuitive and it's still hard to use. I hope they improve it somehow.

- Multitasking will get better. Split screens for video and data will become more important. Imagine talking with a relative and showing a photo of your family trip to them in another window. Or bringing up a website on the data window while you're talking about a product. It's done now, but not easily. This futuristic Apple ad on videoconferencing shows how well that integration (around 6:40) could be:

simplification isn't easy

Why is everything about computing so complicated? Why can't the engineer geeks stay inside the box and out of the GUI designer's way?

Geeks talk in a strange language that takes years to acquire. I daren't mention words like download and upload to anyone new to computers - because those expressions just don't make sense to them.

Why don't we call it the more logical IN and OUT instead?

Or RECEIVE and SEND.

(And if you didn't know what the confusing acronym 'GUI' stands for, google it).

skype video auto-answer

Skype's auto-answer is an ideal way to make the reply process easy for the receiving party. All they need to do is sit at their computer when it rings and wait for the video window to open.

To set Skype to auto-answer in video, use the Skype program menu:
TOOLS > OPTIONS > CALLS > CALL SETTINGS


Tick the box "Automatically answer incoming calls" and click "Save."

Your receiving party will still have to mouse-click the icon in the video picture to enlarge the live video if they want a bigger view.

I will be experimenting later with Macro Express to see if it will open a large window automatically.

nicholas negroponte's video vision

In his 1995 book "Being Digital," the then director of MIT's Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, talked about a telepresence project he was involved in (p121).

His idea was to project an exactly registered video of the subject onto the back of a translucent, life-size mask of their face. When the video ran, the impression of reality was impressive.

Could this be the future - or at least until holography catches up with videoconferencing?

Here's a quick graphic I whipped up to show how it works, with thanks to Rutgers for the animation faces:

new video conferencing technology

Here's a selection of videoconferencing ideas. I especially like the idea of the virtual dinner:



Links to this story:
Apple iChat:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat.html
Accenture's Virtual Dining:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/family-dinners.html
TEEVE:
http://cairo.cs.uiuc.edu/teleimmersion/

new Skype keyboard idea

Here's an idea to simplify using Skype video, which, let's face it - is not that simple for someone new to a PC.

From my observations, there is a lot of confusion when people use Skype for the first time. The layout is unduly complex, and the sequence of events is not clear - apart from the obvious ones of starting and finishing a call.

Older people especially who have not used a computer don't know which keys to use, and they have poor co-ordination using the mouse for the first week or more. The learning curve is steep.

My solution is a dedicated keyboard showing a minimum of simple buttons designed to be used in sequence from left to right.

1. You press the Skype button to open the program or make the window live.
2. You select your contact name with the up and down arrow buttons.
3. You initiate the call with the green button.
4. You stop the call with the red button.

A dedicated keyboard which eliminates pesky mouse movement and looks something like my layout would be the answer. The new keyboard could also be a part of a standard computer keyboard too.

Hope someone takes it further and runs with it.

how to do a GoToMyPC photo transfer

I love GoToMyPC. It's a program you can install on your computer which allows you to remotely access your computer from any other internet-connected computer in the world. You use any browser for access, and pay a small monthly fee:

When I've been overseas I've been able to log in to my computer and answer email almost as if I was there in person. My own computer screen appears as a full-size window in the browser on the computer I am using. Move the mouse, and my own mouse thousands of miles away moves at the same time.

Which brings me to another handy application. My aged mother-in-law - who you've read about in previous posts - is not computer literate. I knew there would be a long learning curve, so I installed GoToMyPC on her computer. It has been very useful in correcting daily problems that would have required a 30 minute drive across to her place each time.

But it has also been very useful in another way.

I started a Photo Album folder on her machine and transferred family photos to it through Skype. She has been viewing them almost daily.

But today I found a better way to make the transfer. It's a simple drag and drop.

It works like this: I have GoToMyPC open on her PC displaying her photo album folder on one of my screens.

On another screen I have a folder with the photos (JPEGs) I want to transfer to her machine. I simply select all and drag them across to the GoToMyPC screen, and they transfer without any problem.


In the photo above you can see the GoToMyPC window for my mother-in-law's computer is open on my left hand screen. The files are transferring from my picture folder on the right hand screen.

This afternoon I transferred 16 JPEGs of about 500 KB (half a MB) each, and it took just a few minutes. I captioned each one beforehand so they are ready for her to view straight away.

You don't have to have separate screens of course... you can also do it by minimizing the two windows - the GoToMyPC window and your own folder - on one screen.

video calls on the move

Videoconferencing becomes more attractive when it replicates a real setting, or expands our boundaries of view.

For example, our daughter is visiting another country at the moment and used a wirelessly connected MacBook laptop to Skype us.

During the video chat she moved the laptop around the back of the house she was staying at so that we could see her surroundings. We saw the back yard, a friendly dog and the back lawn.

It is a huge improvement on a "talking head" scenario. Like most people I crave variety, so a background setting with a plain wall and a pot plant does nothing for me. I want to be involved, immersed.

In my office I sometimes use a 30 foot USB extension lead on my Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 which allows me to take the viewer with me as I walk down the hallway. Of course wireless is better than a cord for mobility, and maybe that will come later in my experiments.

There's no denying the moving eyecam experience has impressed everyone as they virtually explore my environment along with me.

Here's a review of the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000:

the paperless office revisited

Yes, I'm declaring war on paper... again.

A year or two back I tried to morph completely to a paperless office.

But the idea was flawed from the start because I wasn't solving the problem - paper itself. I was finding ways to digitally store it (using the Fujitsu Scansnap Scanner with a lot of success), but doing nothing to stem the flow.

This picture shows the mail and paperwork I have on my desk from a week's worth of mail neglect. They include:

• Money and checks from customers. In my websites I state that I don't accept payment in any other form except for credit cards, yet they still keep sending me money.
  
• A refund check from a company returning my credit card deposit for goods that weren't available. They were unable to deposit the amount directly back to my credit card.
  
• An account from my Mercedes shop, because they hadn't prepared it before I picked my car up. I always like to pay immediately.
  
• Numerous bank account statements and payment advice.

All this paperwork could have been avoided if the companies and people involved were a lot more organized and businesslike.

So my task for 2008 is to eliminate as much paperwork from these sources as I possibly can. I guess that I can quit at least 90%. There will always be the exception, like the bill from my plumber that I'll need to pay manually. But already I have eliminated a lot of paper activity by automating my payments through internet banking. Of course these institutions are obliged to send the bill and receipt as well!

However, there will come a time when everything on paper is electronically satisfied. And I'm looking forward to that day.

Here's a look at the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510:

change of video view

While it's great to video chat to a person face-to-face, a bit of variety adds some interest. So I've taken to changing my backgrounds so my callers see a different view each day.

Each day I put the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 video camera on a different one of my four monitors. Because they are arranged in a curve on my desk, it means the webcam points at a different part of my office. So far the reaction has been good. Variety is the spice of life!

See Eye 2 Eye

For the past year I've used a home-built videoconferencing unit I developed that enabled me to make accurate eye contact with my video caller. I'll give more details in a later post, but I was intrigued to come across a similar system in principle shown here, at Bodelin.

It is designed to give true eye contact with your caller. The unit fits over the top of your screen, and with a couple of 45 degree mirrors reflects the image so that you are looking directly into the subject's eyes. I've ordered one just now, and will do a review when I get it.

The Bodelin website explains: "See Eye 2 Eye works like a periscope. When you place this patented device over your webcam, a set of mirrors beams the picture of the person you're talking to onto our optical grade beam-splitting glass, which sits in front of your webcam lens. You can see the reflected image while the other party isn't even aware you're looking at anything but your webcam."

One of my questions about its usefulness is the small image size. It looks like you need to reduce the caller's image to 320 x 240 on your screen to get the picture to fit the unit.

That's too small for me - I like to increase a video to full screen (19") for full immersion. A small picture is no better than a videophone like the Ojo with all its size and quality restrictions.

Some people will prefer small talking heads, but I believe the true immersive experience involves a varied background and extended views. For example, when I pick my Logitech Quickcam 9000 off the top of the screen and turn it round my home office, the viewer is always excited to see the larger view. This is the ultimate experience for improved realism and interactivity.

why does business need to videoconference?

I can see the usefulness of videoconferencing for family and friends. But I'm not really sure it's needed in business.

How important is it to see the expression on someone's face when you're talking to them in a business or selling situation? Would it make or break the sale? As a boss, would you be more inclined to promote someone if you could see their demeanor (and acne) rather than all the ticks in the right boxes on their CV? I think that business video calling is hugely overrated, and its general uselessness could be part of the problem for videoconferencing not taking off as quickly as predicted.

Recruitment and executive placement will possibly promote the business need, but it is only a very small part of the business landscape.

But connecting visually with family and friends is really where the future of videoconferencing is, whether from the desktop, or a commercial service like Amigo Live (pictured above). There's a huge advantage in seeing familiar people on a regular basis, especially when they're overseas or a great distance away.

Everyone knows the advantage of seeing family they haven't talked to for a while. This morning my mother-in-law - the same 93-year-old I've talked about in an earlier post - Skyped my mother in Britain, half the world away. By all accounts it was a tremendous bonding experience, since my mother-in-law hadn't seen her since visiting the year before. That's the real value of videoconferencing, and it's where the most gain will be made.

I can see that in another decade all the dedicated high definition and expensive business videoconferencing rooms will be lying unused, while video calls will carry on from desktop to desktop. Email and telephoning will rule, as usual.

Skype High Quality video calling

I've been using a Skype High Quality video calling setup for the last week, and the results are spectactular.

Here's an excellent and detailed review on the process by Skype Journal blogger Jim Courtney. I'll give my personal experiences and more detail in later posts.

a glimpse of the videocall future

What will videoconferencing look like in a few years? Here's one scenario I've thought about...

I'd like to predict that in the near future we'll all have a remotely controlled robot in all our homes that we can use as our own persona, or body double. When it's placed in a remote location - a friend's house for example - we'll log into it remotely through the net and our own video face will show on the remote robot.

We will be linked to it. It will act as "us" on our command, moving about as we would in the remote surroundings. It will send images and sound back to us in a 3D process that would enable us to be there virtually.

We could move though the host room and sit by the grandchildren, perhaps reading a story to them (providing they are used to the concept and won't get freaked out!) Or we could sit on the sofa, or across the dinner table and join in the family conversation.

We could even hire one located at seminars, museums or trade shows and wander the floor looking around and interacting with the staff. This concept would make videoconferencing useful. It's being done already at a simpler level.

iRobot are doing this with their ConnectR, a virtual visiting robot due out 2008:

HeadThere.com has the Giraffe:

A primitive-looking robot called IvanAnywhere is a working solution:

UCLA Medical Center has had a robotic doctor since 2005:

Honda have their ASIMO robots jogging along at 6 km/hr and serving tea. You can imagine how effective this could be as a 2-way interface:



It's only a matter of years before this concept accelerates to a sophisticated level.

"By the end of 2010, we'd like to see these robots working at every street corner of the city," said Tomohiko Kawanabe of Honda's Fundamental Technology Research Center.

At the moment these processes are very primitive. The experience of being there would have to be developed further for it to work, but I'm sure that current research will have that done within the next five to ten years.

why we still don't like videoconferencing

Videoconferencing is not new. Global business has been using videoconferencing for the last 15 years. And in the last couple of years programs like Skype have made huge strides in increasing quality and ease of use for personal users with their High Quality benchmark introduced this month.

Videoconferencing is mainstream. Today at 3.15pm I saw Skype has 5,153,338 people online at one time. It's been as high as 10 million, which shows how a large number of people are accepting and using this type of technology.

But only about 50% of my friends and family enjoy videoconferencing, and this percentage seems to be typical. The main barriers seem to be reasons they won't readily admit to:

- They can't multitask while having a video call. Most telephone users will do something else while they are talking, like typing or paperwork. I've sometimes done that myself. One member of our family readily admits that she enjoys looking out of the window during a phone conversation. She can't do that with a video call however, and feels obliged to remain looking interested during the talk. While that's not difficult if you like the person (or they are related!) but it's hard work to keep up the pretense if you have to be there.

- They don't want to look like a slob, either personally or their home. Most people want to get spruced up for a video chat. Why? I don’t know, since many will invite people into their messy house and greet them in old clothes. But the 50% will give this reason as an excuse for not wanting to use video. It's a bit like the early days of the automobile, where everybody dressed in their Sunday best to go out motoring. Now we just drive around in a T-shirt and jeans. Dress is a barrier that has to be overcome.

- Videoconferencing is just not real enough. That's because a generation of one-way television viewers find it difficult to accept, subliminally, that the screen will interact and talk back to them. It's a mental expectation that the screen is uni-directional, as if we're not talking to a person but just to a familiar image on TV that is not quite real. A real-world example... our grandchildren can sometimes be slightly rude when they Skype us... even though they wouldn't dream of doing it to our face. There is a removal of reality because subliminally they believe they are talking to a representation rather than a real person.

- There's no eye contact. We're all familiar with the standard webcam view... the person on screen studying our chin - and only occasionally looking up if they are aware of good webcam etiquette. We soon get used to the downward view of their profile. But the difference true eye contact makes is remarkable. Most people can discern an eye contact variance of less than 5° at around 20 feet. That means they will be able to tell when a person is standing 20 feet away and looking past your shoulder. The small deflection is immediately obvious. Wow. The human brain is massively sophisticated in discerning these slight differences. So why do we put up with it?

What's the answer? How can we get people to enjoy videoconferencing? I've got some ideas which I've used, and which I'll expand on later.