2.5.2 … Are You Kidding Me?

By caseyking | Published: May 22, 2009

This week we posted our latest software release on the Lifesize website, version 4.1, build. Like most software releases it adds some features, fixes some bugs, improves stability and in general makes things work better. That’s the intent. And with maintenance releases it’s almost always true. Major releases include many more new features and can sometimes introduce new behavior that wasn’t … let’s say … “intended”. Version 4.1 is a maintenance release.

The big new feature was supporting our new codec, Express 200. But we slid a few new features in there as well. Most visible will be the return of some screen layouts that we innocently removed in version 4.0. People really like those layout choices! Check out the release note for all the gory details. You do read the release notes, don’t you?

Why don’t people upgrade software?

I upgrade software regularly, but even I will choose to skip the upgrade notifications I get weekly on my computer. Just checked on my notebook and what do you know … 13 different updates available. A little bit nervous about that OS upgrade after reading about some guy whose address book got wiped out. Probably an isolated incident.

But the rewards of upgrading are enormous. Often, it takes the same exact piece of hardware and allows you to do things that have never been done before. It’s like getting a totally new machine. All for the price of a software upgrade.

So imagine my surprise when I visited a customer a few weeks ago. They were going on and on about how much they use their Lifesize Room codec and simply love it. But I noticed the camera operating in a mode that I hadn’t seen in quite awhile and looked at the version of software they were running. Version 2.5.2. Are you kidding me? We released that over 2 years ago. Talked to our guy heading up support and the same week he ran into a system that was running version 1.0.4. This was the original software released over 3 and a half years ago. We’ve come a long way since then.

Why don’t people upgrade software? If you’re a reseller, why don’t you ensure that your customers are running recent software? How can we make it easier for you?

A quick (and brief) history recap of Lifesize codec software.

1.0:Dec 2005
Introduced High Definition to the videoconferencing market

2.0/2.1: Jun/Sept 2006 
Improved quality, interoperability and protocol support

2.5/2.6: Jan/Apr 2007 
Increased usability, higher audio quality

3.0: Sept 2007 
Smashed the HD price/performance barrier with $5K Express, added VoIP interop support, plus new features enabled across the entire product line (Virtual Multiway)!

3.5: Mar 2008 
New smaller, simpler HD Focus camera, improved management, and higher performance 6-way MCU on Room

4.0/4.1:Oct 2008/Apr 2009 
High performance Full HD (1080p30) Room 200, improved legacy interop (H.261, transcoding), security improvements and a new dual display Express 200

What version are you running? Easy to find out. From the home screen hit the blue button and there it is at the top of the screen. Or you can call us on video and we can easily tell.

One more thing. Upgraded to the new release, version 4.1. You’ll like it.

2 Comments - Leave a CommentPosted in: Features, LifeSize, Products, Technology Tagged: , , ,

Boldly go where no one has gone before…

By caseyking | Published: May 8, 2009

I just watched the Star Trek movie trailers … again. There are four clips on the official website, and I remember seeing the teaser trailer last year with the welder working on the Enterprise exterior and the words, “Under Construction” flashing across the screen … goosebumps!

star-trek52

Today, there are a lot of us in the Austin office that are sneaking out to catch the matinee showing and it’s going to be awesome. I’m envious of some friends that saw early IMAX shows this week, but our time comes in a few hours!

OK, I’ll admit it … I was hooked on the original Star Trek series. Wasn’t every 9 year old boy? I had an infatuation with Batman too, and my parents told me that I actually wanted to change my name to Bruce Wayne, but back to the Trekkies.

Yesterday, somebody sent me a link to the Top 10 real life Star Trek inventions and there it was … Telepresence. That’s right, you remember, Captain Kirk on the Enterprise deck watching the Klingon vessel de-cloak itself on the massive screen and soon a point to point video call being made between the 2 ships. Looking back, this was the first time I ever saw a video conference. Probably the same for you too.

star-trek

Let’s have some fun with the nationwide screening of Star Trek. What was your favorite episode? Favorite gadget that has appeared? Favorite gadget that will appear in the next 25 years? Favorite Star Trek quote? All series and movies are fair game, including the new one.

Tractor Beam, Tricorder, Communicator, Cloaking, Phaser, Telepresence … what’s next … Transporter?

Have fun at the movies and we’ll be back to the regularly scheduled program next week.

3 Comments - Leave a CommentPosted in: Products, Technology, Trends Tagged: , , ,

New Products & Product Development

By caseyking | Published: May 5, 2009

Announced and available. Those words should go together, but often they don’t. Announcing is the talking part. Shipping is the doing part. We are doers, not talkers.

Last week we announced and began shipping a new product, Express 200. LifeSize is a industry leading product company and that’s what we do, design and build new products and continually improve our existing systems. It is a very complex process that involves all aspects of our company.

By the time we ship a product, the development team has already transitioned to the next big thing. When our customers are seeing a new feature for the first time, we’ve already moved on. As an engineer, there is no greater satisfaction to seeing an abstract idea come to life, and those big moments don’t happen often. First to see a 720p30 HD call, first to see HD multipoint call, first to see 720p60, first to see 1080, first to see Virtual Multiway, Transcoding, new UI elements, 6 way VAS/CP, video and audio coming up on a new product. All very exciting, fleeting, and immediately followed by new technical challenges. That’s why we became engineers, to work on hard problems.

LifeSize Express has been a killer product and the recipient of many awards since we introduced and starting shipping 18 months ago. It was one of those products that was just destined to happen. At the time we were working on a high end platform (that later morphed into Room 200). But, in the span of a couple weeks, the entire company had refocused on the exciting new project which turned out to be Express. The enthusiasm around it was contagious. You knew it would become one of those special products.

Express 200 makes the Express line even better. I’ll touch on 3 new features.

  1. Dual Display. Six months ago, if you wanted a dual display system you bought a Room system. In October 2008, we added the functionality to Team 200. Today, Express 200 brings dual display to our entry level codec as well. We have tremendous flexibility in our dual display configurations and you can read more about that here.
  2. 60p Receive. Coupled with our flagship product, Room 200, you can receive 720p60 video on Express 200. If you’ve never seen 720p60, then give us a call and setup a demo. It is really that good. The fluidity of motion is spectacular and to have this feature at the entry point of the product line is something no one else does. This could be the killer feature of Express 200. 720p60 receive at 1.1 mbps!
  3. Improved Encoder Performance. We’ve given the Express 200 video encoder subsystem a boost. The encoder is the piece that makes the low bitrate, full frame rate video look great. Now we can make it look even better.

Express 200 is shipping with our latest software release, version 4.1. Very soon, this software release can be downloaded as an upgrade to all of our codecs. We’ll then take that opportunity to explore some of the new software features that have come in recently.
We are very excited about Express 200. Announced and available. No vaporware.

How do you like what we’ve been doing lately with Room 200, Team 200, and now Express 200?

1 Comments - Leave a CommentPosted in: LifeSize, Products, Technology Tagged: , , , ,

Happy Earth Day

By caseyking | Published: April 22, 2009

We went on a trip to Glacier National Park in Montana six years ago. An incredible park and beautiful glacially carved valleys. But where were all the glaciers? Since 1850, the number of glaciers in the park have gone down from over 150 to fewer than 37 named glaciers. Scientists expect that they will all be gone within 25 years. Grinnell Glacier is often photographed and you can see the receding effects here.

Put it on your list. Go see the glaciers before they all melt!

When you go, you might want to head a little further north to the Harding Icefield located in the Kenai Mountains of Alaska. Four years ago, my son and I hiked up to what is the largest icefield in the United States and I’ve got to say that I’ve never seen anything like it. We were stepping back into time to see an Ice Age. The Harding Icefield feeds about 40 glaciers with the most accessible being Exit Glacier.

Harding Icefield

At Harding Icefield

This week, the Austin American Statesman ran an article on the front page noting worldwide CO2 emissions. Not surprising, North America was near the top in consumption. More than 2x the usage per person of European countries, 4x China, and almost 20x India.

Regardless of your personal view on global warming, we can all feel pretty good about reducing our carbon footprint. Using collaboration technologies like immersive HD video, audio & data communications certainly fits the bill.

I took a look at a few or our systems around the office today to grab some call statistics. You have to be the administrator to do this, but it is located in Admin:Diagnostics:Call Counters. Also remember that we are constantly changing out systems, restoring to factory defaults, and all sort of actions that make these numbers VERY conservative. But a few of them were:

  • 3384 video calls for a total of 507.2 hours
  • 44,212 video calls for a total of 4,069 hours
  • 1607 video calls for a total of 367 hours
  • 657 video calls for a total of 309 hours

Collectively, the LifeSize employee base is on video literally thousands of hours per month.

How many trips did we save? How much was productivity increased? How many carbon offsets were generated? There are ROI calculators to measure all of these and more, but you don’t need a calculator to know you’re doing something positive.

So book a trip today to go see some glaciers. At least get outside and go take a hike. Use more video. If it’s been awhile give it another shot. By the way, I’m really interested in seeing other call counter stats, so take a look and send them in.

Happy Earth Day!

** Read more about Alaska melting.

**Get 10 tips on going green in the office.

2 Comments - Leave a CommentPosted in: Green, Technology, Travel, Trends Tagged: , , , ,

Great Products

By caseyking | Published: April 16, 2009

Challenge: Name Five Great Products

Go ahead, stop reading, jot down your absolute favorite products. Five of them.

You know what they are. They are so good, you can’t do without them. They bring joy to your life. They bring a smile to your face when you think about them. You may already have them, or you may aspire to have them someday. Everybody knows a great product when they use one. And everybody knows when a product is not so great.

A couple of years ago, I gave a presentation at a company meeting and I talked about the importance of recognizing and building great products. Preparing the material, I actually went around and polled most of the company (we were a lot smaller then), and asked them the same challenge question. Name Five Great Products. You can see a few of their answers here:

Great Products

click to view

click to view

click to view

click to view

click to view

Common threads that connect great products are:

  • People start smiling when they think of one
  • Great products just work
  • They never fail
  • I can’t give it up
  • Just glides
  • Convenient
  • Oozes quality
  • Real value
  • Great products are fun to use
  • Use it everyday
  • Makes complex things simple

In my first blog last week I wrote, “Luckily for me, LifeSize makes great high definition video communications products that we use ourselves everyday.” Technically, I don’t get to make the determination whether our products are great or not. That’s up to our customers to decide.

I can say that we aspire to build great products. We are passionate about the products we build. We continuously work to improve our products. We’re busier than ever.

So what are your 5 favorite products? I’ll list mine in the comments below. My Kindle2 arrives tomorrow, will it make the list?

Leave a commentPosted in: LifeSize, Products, Technology, Trends Tagged: , , , , ,

vLog Introduction to the LifeSize Blog

By caseyking | Published: April 8, 2009

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

5 Comments - Leave a CommentPosted in: LifeSize, People, vLog Tagged: , , , ,

Welcome to my Blog

By caseyking | Published: April 8, 2009

To say I was coerced into writing a corporate blog would not be completely accurate. You see, I actually volunteered to do this after reading Seth Godin’s book, Tribes. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Right now I’m sitting at gate D40, DFW airport. The 6 pm flight moved to 7 pm, then 7:10 pm and now they are saying that 7:30 pm is the new estimate for a decision. Not departure, but decision. Not promising. Something about the front gear strut and autopilot.

I love to fly. In fact, I fly for recreation. I got my private pilot’s license when I was 17, built my own airplane when I was 37, and things with wings still obsess me at almost 49. But commercial aviation has truly taken the fun out it.

Luckily for me, LifeSize makes great high definition video communications products that we use ourselves everyday. I don’t actually travel on a plane that much. Certainly not as much as a typical CTO does. I do travel around the world everyday using LifeSize technology. Often multiple locations in a day and I can still be home so my wife and I can catch my sons baseball games.

I’ll use this blog to talk about a lot of different topics. Technology, trends, products, features, people, and occasionally a topic that is unrelated to anything LifeSize . My intention is that this will be an interactive adventure and we have a lot of ideas to make that happen.

Almost forgot, my name is Casey King, I am the Chief Technology Officer at LifeSize Communications. Welcome to my blog.

*The flight actually left at 9:00pm. I checked into the hotel at 1:30 am.

6 Comments - Leave a CommentPosted in: LifeSize, People Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

  • Follow LifeSize

    @LifeSizeHD

    On Facebook

  • About Me

    Most of my time is spent working hard on the latest in high definition video communication technology as the CTO of LifeSize. Outside of work, I watch a bunch of high school baseball games and go on the occasional family trip. I used to be a lot more active! Traveling in our RV, flying around with my airplane buddies, riding off road motorcycles, boating on Lake Travis, playing rec sports and hiking. But lately, I watch a lot of baseball. I reside in Austin, TX with my wife, teenage son, and our pets (2 dogs + 1 cat).