Viewplicity is pleased to announce the 1.3 service upgrade release. We added remote control capability to allow experienced Viewplicity users or conference administration users to help others with their camera and microphone settings. We also added our initial “push-to-talk” option.
All new features are controllable by the web site designer. Through their choice of HTML tags, the designer chooses which of these new options are made available to the site users. These features add to our arsenal of tools to aid “first time users,” along with the automation features introduced with release 1.2.

A “first time user” is someone that comes to your site and encounters a Viewplicity page, perhaps as a result of a login workflow on your site. These first time users may or may not have cameras attached to their system. Viewplicity automatically detects that the user has never configured a camera with our environment and selects a default camera for him, if the release “auto add camera” is enabled. The camera is added to his camera list and a self view player is made visible that will allow him to make configuration changes if the default isn’t what he wants to use for this session.

The remote video control feature may be configured to allow the owner of a Viewplicity group to remotely control the camera and microphone configuration settings of anyone online in the group or the feature may be configured to allow anyone in the group to remotely change settings for any other user.
Frequently, the experience that a receiver of a video or audio stream is having is the best predictor of the settings that should be used to send the stream. With this new remote control feature, the user receiving the stream can adjust the settings himself without the aid the sender.

For large conferences, or conferences with first time users, this feature is useful to allow an administrator to handle video and audio quality problems in one central location.

The new “push-to-talk” (ptt) feature provides an aid to handling audio (feedback) problems. In situations where the participants are not using headsets and are experiencing echo problems, the ptt feature can be used to ensure that only one microphone in the group is activated.

The ptt feature can be configured such that the owner of the group can turn it on and off. When ptt is on (enabled), all users will see a “hand” next to their camera in the group management UI that can be clicked as a “request to talk,” as a “cancel request to talk,”or as a “talk release.” If two or more people issue requests, they will be processed in order.

When ptt is first turned on, all microphones are placed in a mute state so it is a quick method to immediately get control of echo, When the owner turns ptt off, all requests will be cleared and all microphones will return to their prior mute state.

This service upgrade also supports a new PHP programming interface that allows web developers to manage the Viewplicity user and group database for their domain from within their web application. They may still empower their users to create new groups and invite people into them, but the web application can also perform those functions. The web designer can build workflows that manage the users and can access activity (call) detail reports to account for their usage.

If you’re a web site owner using the Drupal platform and want to install Viewplicity on your site, click here to download our PDF Drupal Install/Configuration whitepaper.

Note: You first have to license the Viewplicity product with your site.  Click here to get started. (more…)

Announcement

Viewplicity is pleased to announce the 1.2 service upgrade release. We have added extensive automation features to make it easier for web sites to handle users that are new to the Viewplicity features and that are new to the use of cameras.

All new features are controllable by the web site designer, enabling varying degrees of automation depending on the site requirements.

A “first time user” is someone that comes to your site and encounters a Viewplicity page, perhaps as a result of a login workflow on your site. These first time users may or may not have cameras attached to their system. Viewplicity automatically detects that the user has never configured a camera with our environment and selects a default camera for him, if the release 1.2 feature auto add camera is enabled. The camera is added to his camera list and a self view player is made visible that will allow him to make configuration changes if the default isn’t what he wants to use for this session. Changes that he makes will be remembered for the next browser session. (more…)

Bob Nimon, Viewplicity Developer

Viewplicity is a Flash-based group video collaboration service with customizable components for both the novice website owner and the experienced web developer.  That’s what we say we offer, but what does that mean?  At the core, we are a video chat service.  What makes us stand out from the crowd?  Why use Viewplicity when you can use free services like Skype?

We asked Bob Nimon, one of our developers, to expain the differences between Viewplicity and Skype.  In this two-part series, Bob gives us a peak into the many features that makeViewplicity stand out in the crowd.

Functional Differences

• Skype is an application—it is a downloaded and installed application with its own user database requiring users to register and login to it.  Viewplicity can be embedded into your own web site, and can be used with out the need to run a third-party application. Web sites using Viewplicity to provide collaboration use the omnipresent Flash player (no download, typically) and they use their own user database – no login required to a foreign database or entity. It can be configured so that web site users do not have to click anything to be connected to the video player.

• Skype only supports two-party video conference calls, while Viewplicity supports conferences with entire groups of people.

• Skype does not support recording the video streams. Viewplicity not only provides a recording feature, but also provides a management interface for users deal with the recordings. Viewplicity supports playing back videos that are in a group’s archive simultaneously with live video conference streams. Videos are recorded directly on Viewplicity’s servers and therefore available for playback to anyone in the group almost instantly.

• The web site designer has many options for integrating and skinning (coloration, sizing, etc.) of the Viewplicity components so that the collaboration features feel more a part of the web site and its user community. Skype looks the way Skype looks.

• Skype does not provide any meaningful way for web site owners to track the usage of their service, while Viewplicity provides real time and monthly reports available 24/7 from our site that details usage by group  and members within a group.

• Skype provides a simple mechanism to group contacts into a list called a “group” and give it a name. You can then use that to make an audio call (no video). Viewplicity’s concept of a group is much more powerful. Skype’s group is only a list of contacts with a single users list. There is no knowledge of the group outside of the single workstation. With  Viewplicity, a group is a subset of the entire web site’s membership that is owned by a member who is allowed to invite others. Members that join a group can see others who are in the group and instantly be connected.

• Viewplicity keeps up with all of the groups that a user belongs to and allows him to switch quickly from one to another. The members that are online in a group can send text messages instantly to all members that are also online, or they can select individuals and send private messages very similar to Skype. However, Skype functions as if there is only one large group, while Viewplicity supports collaboration groups that align with your purpose (scouting, church, customers, support, etc.) Viewplicity organizes video recordings in the groups. When you switch groups, you see lists of the recordings that pertain to that group and have the option of instantly connecting to all members in the group who are online with you in that group.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in this series on the differences between Viewplicity and Skype.

At Viewplicity, we pride ourselves on being “platform agnostic,” meaning we support all platforms and don’t pick sides.  We want our product to be available to be used by anyone on any platform.

That being said, there is a lot of talk about which web development platform is best.  While we’re not handing out any awards here, we did want to get an idea what users think about the different platforms.   Without getting to technical, here are some thoughts on how Drupal compares to other development platforms.

With plug-ins (or modules, in Drupal lingo) for just about everything, Drupal might just be leaving the “others” (a.k.a. Joomla) in the dust.

On the surface, Drupal is the open source platform geared toward the experienced developer and programming expert.  Joomla, as one user said, is made for “mere mortals.” (more…)

What is programming? We have been seeing a trend towards tools that want to allow the development of applications, especially on the web, to be done by people that aren’t programmers. We see that this month’s article in the Association of Computing Machinery on Scratch: Progamming for All to be viewing this from another slant.

For those that don’t subscribe, it’s a great article on a project and web site called Scratch (Imaging, Program, Share)., hosted at MIT. This project has been going on for over six years and targets mostly kids from ages eight to 16. They develop programming skills to take them from basically just being “digital natives” that can use online technologies to people possessing true “digital fluency” by being “able to design, create, and invent with new media”.

At its core, Scratch promotes learning through “tinkering” – sort of building things from the bottom up and playing with your application until it does something useful. For these applications, the kids are primarily developing games and other forms of collaboration.

Collaboration is also at Viewplicity’s core, so we take note. We started recently to foster more tinkering with the user interface appearance of our components, giving the web developers more control over the colors and shapes of the visual aspect of them. We already also have some limited capability for their end users to control aspects of our appearance on their page (things like being able to drag/drop/minimize the components), but not nearly to the degree implied by what the Scratch end users can do. We certainly stop short of any sort of programming capability.

We are driven to eliminate the need to write software in order to use our product on a web site. As we add features to give the web developer or his user more control of our appearance and behavior, there is an increase in difficulty to keep our interfaces simple – to avoid creeping into the complexity of programming in Javascript and CSS.

Building web applications themselves, even with a framework like Drupal, involves some programming – more than we wish sometimes. Viewplicity doesn’t want to add to that burden, but efforts like the Scratch project may be teaching that it’s not totally about whether you are programming, but perhaps how you are programming.

Software tools become more friendly the more they are “domain specific” – when they are designed to do one thing well. Scratch makes the point that their domain is for a specific age group and for kids that want to learn what programming is about while doing fun and useful things, but they don’t tackle the domain of professional programmers. Were they successful? One measure may be that over a half a million projects have been written and shared by “Scratchers”.

Their accomplishments make us look at our goals – at least we should stretch to foster more tinkering by the end web site users of our product. We want to be more “tinkerable”, as Scratch refers to itself, but within the comfort level of our target domain.

And, maybe someone will do a Viewplicity plugin for Scratch someday.

Viewplicity is a turnkey, video conferencing service – first and foremost.  The Viewplicity Collaboration Service is a web “SaaS” (Software as a Service) concept, with the goal of minimizing the things  a web site designer has to worry about in order to leverage this service for his users.

Most of Viewplicity’s functionality is wrapped into four component containers that will create a visual experience on your page for each of the following:

• Group membership control
• Video player control
• Video archive control
• Text messaging

There are three main ways of embedding the services of Viewplicity on a web site in the current offering.

• Use can embed one tag in your page and reference a Viewplicity server script – it will take care of everything required. All of the containers will be displayed in a small grid within the tag, plus a toolbar that is used for overall control
• If you need to spread the containers out on your page, you can directly embed simple “div” tags (one for each container) and place them anywhere you want, sized for any reasonable size you choose
• Lastly, you can eliminate the need to do code any div tags, if you use one  of the popular frameworks  including Joomla, Wordpress, and Drupal. We have some simple plugins for each that will help with the basic placement of the containers on your page.

So, the short story is that Viewplicity is a service that supports enhancing simple web sites with live video conferencing, video recording and archiving, as well as text messages for user created groups. It offers several means to connect to that service, including simple plugins for some of the popular frameworks or direct placement of tags in your page – we have simple documentation to support either approach.

Demo sites using the framework plugins have been constructed using basic, off-the-shelf templates with little requirement of additional plugins.

wordpress.viewplicity.com

drupal.viewplicity.com

joomla.viewplicity.com

These sites each have their own user membership databases. You can feel free to create your own account at each and form your own groups with friends.

Our site main site also has a demonstration of the sevice embedded in a web site with no framework.

www.viewplicity.com

It has a “TryIt” demonstration. Here, you register with the site and explore our collaboration service, either alone or with your friends at no cost while we are in our first promotion. This promotion also allows you to license your domain for one year absolutely free, giving you 10 hours of video conferencing on your site per month.