Codec Wars: Yahoo! Messenger 10 + GIPS Video

Yahoo! Messenger 10 beta came out last week, switching to the Global IP Solutions’ VideoEngine for 1-to-1 voice calls.

Y!M video calling is not backward compatible; all users must be on Y!M 10. Interop with MSN doesn't extend to video calls, so friendship across networks is still limited to commodity text IM.

Yahoo! recommends at least 300 Kbps download and 128 Kbps upload, video cards with 96 MB memory, and Microsoft DirectX. This compute burden comes from the audio and video codecs.

Yahoo! adopting GIPS's video plumbing is a coupe for GIPS. Yahoo!'s choices influence other software companies; GIPS just became a safer choice for video. Despite Yahoo! only using the GIPS VideoEngine for limited 1-to-1 video chats, this opens up room for Yahoo! to expand to video conferencing and game-related video applications.

So far this year Skype published its home-grown SILK wideband audio codec, Google bought On2 for its video codecs, the telecom industry held its first conferences on "HD telephony," Microsoft released a bandwidth-consuming HD webcam, and Yahoo! boosted the quality of its video codecs. Moore's Law and mobile broadband seem to be pulling industry to higher fidelity.

Screenshots and comments:

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 1 of 4 – Welcome to Yahoo! Messenger – Typical Install

"Typical Install" includes everything: two browser add-ins, setting Yahoo.com to your home page, and making Yahoo! your default search engine.

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 1 of 4 – Welcome to Yahoo! Messenger – Custom Install

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 2 of 4 – License Agreement and Terms

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 3 of 4 – Ready? Set. Install!

The payload is about 16 MB without toolbars. Skype comes in around 20.

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message - "More friends = more fun"

Progress messages set expectations and guide users to features they may not discover on their own.

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message - "Keep Friends at your Fingertips"

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message - "A better video and voice experience"

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message - "Continue the conversation on your phone"

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 4 of 4 – Installation is complete!

Yahoo! Messenger 10 - Login panel

It's a loooong panel.

Import Contacts

The import contacts wizard suffers from the Password Antipattern, asking you to trust Yahoo! with your logins to other services. Most of the sites Yahoo! imports contacts from support OAuth.

Still no contact import from other Yahoo! properties like Delicious, flickr, and upcoming. Or from Skype.

Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup - 1 of 3 - Microphone

Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup - 2 of 3 - Speaker

Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup - 3 of 3 - Camera

Goofy face not included.

Yahoo! Messenger 10 Home Page

A Messenger "home page" isn't new. This design keeps the distracting advertising apart from news and tools.

The Yahoo! Mail tab again shows messaging media are converging experiences, just as Web Messenger is part of Yahoo! web mail and the Yahoo! home page.

GIPS news release below:

Global IP Solutions Powers The New Yahoo! Messenger Video Calling

New Video Call Feature Available for Everyone on Yahoo! Messenger

San Francisco — August 24, 2009 — Global IP Solutions (Oslo Børs: GIPS) announced today that Yahoo! Messenger, a leader in real-time communications with more than 133 million users worldwide, is using GIPS VideoEngine™ to enable new high-quality video calling with the launch of Yahoo! Messenger 10.

Since early 2006, GIPS has provided the underlying voice technology for Yahoo! Messenger, allowing friends, family and colleagues to communicate. Now with the addition of the video calling feature, everyone on Yahoo! Messenger can enjoy video calls enabled by GIPS VideoEngine for superior sound, picture quality and user experience.

“With the launch of Yahoo! Messenger 10, we’re allowing people to instantly communicate with friends and family around the world through new interactive and social features like video calls,” said Dave Merriwether, senior director of Yahoo! Messenger. “The GIPS VideoEngine enables us to provide the Yahoo! Messenger community with the best video experience possible. Now people can enjoy full-screen, face-to-face chats with friends and family at no cost, in the familiar Yahoo! Messenger environment.”

“Yahoo! Messenger is the leading communication platform that provides people with the greatest choice to stay connected to one another through text IM, PC-based calling, mobile text messaging and now video calling,” said Emerick Woods, GIPS’ Chief Executive Officer. “We’re proud to work with Yahoo! to deliver a truly differentiated high quality video experience for the hundreds of millions of people on Yahoo! Messenger around the world,” added Woods.

To download the latest Yahoo! Messenger 10, visit http://messenger.yahoo.com/winbeta

tags: gips, codecs, yahoo, skype, video, voip, google, on2, videoengine, conference, conferencing, competition

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Fidelity Wars: Microsoft strains video call resolution

From the Competition Is Good Department. Microsoft will sell its upgraded LifeCam webcam starting September 9. The "Cinema's" resolution is now 720p, 1280×720 pixels at 30 frames per second.

Your PC must convert all that video into streamable bits. The image encoding/decoding and compression take serious processor power, lots of memory, and real broadband bandwidth. Microsoft says this requires a dual core 1.6GHz processor, and recommends a 3GHz dual core processor and 2GB of memory. No news yet on which drivers and codecs they'll use, how much burden using the Cinema will put on your system (will you be able to run Outlook while calling?), nor how much bandwidth a HD video call will take.

This year Skype published the free SILK audio codec for wideband audio at the same bandwidth and Google announced it's buying On2, the maker of Skype's video engine. The race to fidelity hasn't been this hot since Skype promoted the GIPS audio codec suite in 2003, followed by Yahoo!, Google, AOL, and Microsoft.

LifeCam Cinema Features: 4x digital zoom, glass lens, auto focus, Microsoft "ClearFrame" frame-rate doubling technology, noise-cancelling microphone, Windows Live calling button, aluminum body. For Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. £70 or $80.

tags: cameras, webcams, microsoft, lifecam, cinema, skype, clearframe, codec, compression, HD

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype Becomes Platinum Sponsor for eComm 2009

Perhaps the most informative event I have attended during my two-and-a-half years of writing for Skype Journal was last spring's eComm 2008. Our of a sense of frustration organizer Lee Dryburgh took it upon himself to risk organizing this event when the former eTel Conference announced it would be no more. The 300 attendees were treated to a buffet of information about various initiatives being undertaken to deploy IP-based communications in innovative ways. From communications enhanced business processes to a garage-based operation to monitor security of abandoned farm houses, we all learned a lot. And the networking opportunity was excellent.

eComm 2009 has been announced; in fact, a call for speakers flooded Lee's email over the past few weeks. He has put together a tentative schedule and been recruiting sponsors. Last year's sponsors included many vendors we have written about since the event including iSkoot (Skypephone), Voxbone (iNum), VAPPS (HiDef Conferencing) and Brough Turner's NMS Communications. Sponsors recruited to date for eComm 2009 include, once again Voxbone, and newcomers Global IP Solutions and Voxeo.

Today we learned that Skype has added its name to the list of sponsors. This is a new initiative for Skype in that they have previously tended to maybe provide speakers but not sponsorship at this type of event. In a statement to Lee Dryburgh this evening, Skype's GM Audio and Video (and a keynote speaker last year) Jonathan Christensen said:

... thinking about why we did it.. We believe that communications is going through a major shift from hardware devices on dedicated networks to software applications. A new paradigm is emerging. As a clear leader in this new age of communications, it makes sense for Skype to sponsor the eComm event as it is all about celebrating this innovation and sharing our vision for the future of communications with those individuals and companies who are most interested in changing the way people around the world communicate.

It's been pretty quiet recently on the Skype scene. But then President Josh Silverman did tell us in our September interview that Skype was undergoing a major restructuring. And we have not heard of any layoffs. So it would only be natural to assume that development efforts (beyond the Skype for Windows 4.0 beta program) are under way and we can assume we'll see new product and service announcements in 2009.

Would any be made at eComm 2009? Speakers from Skype include Jonathan Christensen and Director of Strategy Julien Decot.

Registration for attendees opens December 2, 2008.

Note: Skype Journal editor Phil Wolff, Skype's Jonathan Christensen, Voxeo's Dan York, Brough Turner and Jon Arnold are on the eComm 2009 Advisory Board.

Tags: eComm2009, Skype, Jonathan Christensen, Lee Dryburgh, Julien Decot, Voxbone, GIPS, Voxeo

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Global IP Solutions Coming Back to Life: Driving the Desktop Video Space

Global IP Solutions today announced a white paper on Desktop Video Conferencing, providing a background for their video infrastructure technology that has the potential to make video calling and video conferencing available to a much broader user base beyond Skype's (even though it is quite large) and SightSpeed.
Many of you will recall that Skype's original voice engine came from Global IP Solutions (formerly Global IP Sound) and contributed to Skype's initial adoption through both its ease of use and voice quality. In April 2006, Skype acquired Camino Networks whose voice engine provided improved features such as echo cancellation. Camino's President and CEO was Jonathan Christensen, Skype's current General Manager for Audio and Video.
Global IP Solutions went on to supply their voice engine to other players, such as Oracle and Yahoo but, as a company, they have been struggling; their most recent quarterly report demonstrated the extent of the revenue drop-off after loss of the Skype royalties.
This past April, GIPS announced the appointment of a new CEO, Emerick Woods (see full disclosure below). Since joining GIPS Emerick has led a reorganization of the company that included dropping their professional services offerings due to not only lackluster revenue but also the channel conflicts that operation created for their core audio and video infrastructure technology business. They have also closed a Tokyo office and settled outstanding customer lawsuits, including one with Skype where GIPS' previous claims were denied in an arbitration resolution. As indicated in this interview with iLocus, they are moving to extend their customer base for their Voice Engine product line. As an initial move in August there was the announcement of Voice Engine for iPhone accompanied by a white paper.
In my interview with Emerick at that time, he pointed out that, while GIPS offers, through its various Voice Engine products, a total solution linking the Internet inbound/outbound connection to the user's microphone/speakers, customers can also customize the voice engine, particularly when it comes to codecs. Customers can use either the GIPS codecs available with the voice engine or any other standard codec. Another feature he emphasized was their independence from operating system restraints and their support for various mobile platforms.

One additional focus has been on working with their current customer base to build stronger customer relationships that can extend their various Global IP Solutions implementations. Going forward, GIPS will be investing in innovation with video as a key focus.

Today GIPS released a Desktop Video Conferencing (DVC) white paper, authored by analyst Jon Arnold, outlining "the value proposition behind desktop video conferencing, especially in conjunction with other solutions, such as telepresence. Supporting this is an analysis of the trends that create the momentum we believe will make desktop video conferencing as ubiquitous as PCs themselves, and even mobile phones in the years to come."
Jon talks about the spectrum of video conferencing solutions from telepresence systems employing large "real life" HD video displays, such as offered by Cisco and Polycom, to boardroom systems that provide the basics of teleconferencing via standard display monitors, to desktop conferencing where the user does not have to leave his/her desk to participate in a video conversation.

In short, compared to other video conferencing solutions, the value proposition for DVC is based on three variables: quality, cost and flexibility. Today’s DVC solutions can deliver a high-quality experience, at an affordable price point, and across a wide variety of environments. Aside from complementing the other types of video conferencing solutions, DVC can be deployed in a host of scenarios that are simply not practical any other way.

Jon goes on to provide tables comparing the three scenarios and then goes into details on potential market size for DVC as well as enabling trends that will help provide an appropriate infrastructure for DVC. On a SquawkBox conference call this morning we discussed one aspect: support for HD video. Its minimum 720p resolution will require higher bandwidth upload speeds (> 1.5 Mbps) that I have been told will be coming to Rogers Internet next year with an implementation of the DOCSIS 3 infrastructure and probably to other cable Internet services; recall that the widespread availability of broadband Internet was one factor in the rapid adoption of Skype back at its launch in 2003.
He then goes on to discuss the complexities of the providing and adopting the underlying technologies starting with video quality. Synchronization of audio and video, a consistent user experience, the variability of DVC end point configurations and support for a wide range of camera devices are other factors.
And, now for the commercial: GIPS is offering four products, Voice Engine and Video Engine for the PC client side and Voice Conference Engine and Video Conference Engine for the server side, that will allow ready embedding of desktop video conferencing into their customers' services. Basically GIPS is providing platforms that allow developers, enterprises, service providers and end users to have a high quality DVC experience. Jon concludes:

With GIPS, they have a complete engine that handles all the complexities of IP communications, and with that, a clear path for allowing DVC to reach its full potential, not just at the desktop, but in the mobile world as well.

GIPS has put up two demonstration videos for comparison: one "Traditional Video Conference" and the other "Video Conference Using Global IP Solutions".
The only current customers using these services are Oracle and Baidu, the Chinese portal; however, discussions are being carried out with several prospective customers, probably including many in their current customer Most interesting is their potential for mobile video; the only North American carrier supporting video to date has been Rogers; however, its most obvious problem is finding other users who can take video calls. Introduction of the Nokia N95 8GB was supposed to expand the video calling-enabled user community; however, iPhone and BlackBerry Bold have stolen the 3G phone market.
Skype's High Quality Video, SightSpeed's acquisition yesterday by Logitech, Qik on Blackberry and Nokia N-Series combined with news of GIPS video engine offerings are all precursors to a much broader adoption of user-friendly video in both business and personal conversations in the future. (Yes, we all know users have been looking for Skype video conferencing; when?)
Skype Journal: On2 Powers Skype High Quality Video
Full disclosure: GIPS CEO Emerick Woods was the Vice-President, Internet of Quarterdeck Corporation in the mid-1990's with whom I worked on several business development projects involving partnerships with ISP's of the time. Over the past 12 years, Emerick, in his capacity as CEO of several startups, which have gone on to be sold, has hired the author at various times for his business development services. The author, however, has no business relationship with Global IP Soltuions. One more clarification: Emerick has the same initials as a well known Tiger and loves golf just as much.
Tags: Global IP Solutions, GIPS, Emerick Woods, Jon Arnold, Skype High Quality Video, Polycom, Cisco, Nokia, BlackBerry, Qik.com, Logitech, video conferencing, video calling, video, Jonathan Christensen, Desktop Video Conferencing, Voice Engine, Video Engine

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Michael Robertson responds

[A letter by Michael Robertson.]

Phil,

Thanks for the post on Skype Journal about my letter to Skype pointing out the hypocrisy of demanding that the wireless carriers open up their network when Skype will not open their network to receive calls from others. You don't address the core issue about Skype interconnecting with other networks and seem to make excuses about why it's not possible or safe. These protests had no validity 5 years ago when peering was an issue with the major IM networks. Back then AIM and Yahoo used identical excuses about why they could not interconnect which MSN and Google. Now those entities cross connect with each other in several instances.

Gizmo5 uses and fully supports an open standard called SIP which lets callers from different networks connect to each other similar to how emails from different servers are connected to each other. This is how the Gizmo5 network connects with over 250 big and small networks. You might also be surprised to learn that Skype supports SIP already! Skype uses SIP to hand-off calls to the PSTN (the original phone network). Anytime you are using Skype-In or Skype-Out your calls are going from/to your computer using both the SIP and Skype systems. In spite of your questions and concerns below, this unquestionably proves it is not only technically feasible, but secure and practical.

When it is in Skype's best business interest they support SIP. Other times they want to lock out all competing VOIP companies which is why they don't publish a public SIP interface which is what I'm calling for. (You probably know that several companies like Fring and Nimbuzz have reverse engineered the ability to send and receive Skype calls but it is susceptible to breaking or being blocked by Skype.) This is exactly the situation with the FCC letter. Skype wants others to open their networks but Skype won't open theirs. Either you believe companies should be able to choose or you believe everyone should be open. Either argument has validity but toggling between the two positions to fit business justification should be pointed out.

You state in your public defense of Skype's closed system: "How we connect a phone to a mobile network is standardized. How we connect a client to the Skype network is not. How we connect the Skype network to another service is not." I would contend this is inaccurate. There is a standard way that Skype client's connect to a network - they have just chosen not to publish this and their reluctance you believe gives them the right to lock everyone out. (The wireless carriers could of course make the same argument rebuffing Skype.) However to send and receive calls, it is not necessary for Skype to reveal how its entire network work. Rather they are only required to offer a SIP interface which as I mentioned Skype already has it is just not made available to others.

You proposed several questions so let me address them below.

1.  Will you peer IM, video, file transfer, presence, commerce, desktop sharing, conferencing, texting, microblogging, and data channels? Crossing all conversational modes? Exactly whose codecs and protocols should everyone use? Should Skype users downgrade the quality of their voice and video calls to match Gizmo's?

Yes, Gizmo5 will and does peer all conversation types. We use XMPP for text messaging and presence and SIP protocols for voice. We strive to adhere to the standards to insure interoperability with all. Where there are standards we use them and publish them. If we build something that is not to standard we are open to publishing the specifications.

This is "Skype Journal" so I don't expect objective treatment about voice quality but the facts are Skype and Gizmo5 calls will have similar voice quality because both products use the GIPS media engine. This means the code is identical all the core aspects that impact call quality such as jitter protection, echo cancellation, noise protection, etc. See:  http://www.gipscorp.com/default/customers.html

On the video front, Skype does have higher quality video because they implemented On2's proprietary solution called vp7. Gizmo5 chose the open standard called h.264 so that we could interoperate with others doing video calls. In fact, you will see mobile to PC video in the near future suing Gizmo5 because of this technology choice. Gizmo5 would be happy to license On2's technology if that is what is required to interoperate with Skype. Gizmo5 already supports multiple audio/video codecs so adding another one is trivial.

2. Will you require realtime encryption? Strong enough to prevent live intercepts? Will you require all networks to notify users when their conversations are no longer encrypted?

Skype and Gizmo5 have similar approaches. Skype to Skype calls are encrypted as are Gizmo5 to Gizmo5. Anytime someone calls the PSTN (whether on Skype or Gizmo5) those calls are never encrypted. Encryption should be a user choice where appropriate. No, we don't require realtime encryption.  We don't tell others how to run their networks. If others don't run their networks responsibly then users will abandon them.

3. Will you agree to strong user authentication? So users can have confidence in the identity of friends and strangers?

Not sure how this is relevant to peering with Skype. Remember - that's what we're talking about. Users of other VOIP networks being able to call Skype users and receive calls from them. We don't support this, but the fact of the matter is that if it's important to consumers then a network will support it and users can migrate to that service. As it is, users are locked into Skype and have no choice to choose another service if they want to call anyone in the Skype network.

4. Will you (and everyone you peer with) agree on user profile data structures, white page directory services, and directory search interop?

We can't make everyone who peers with us agree to do this. We do publish an API for our system so others can interoperate. I think this would be ideal. I'd love to have it for email addresses and IM addresses and social network profiles, but sadly we do not. It sounds like you're making my case about why open standards are important.

5. Will you support data portability principles? So users can switch to and from you network with their identities, profiles, buddy lists, histories, and preferences?

I started MP3.com 10 years ago on the premise that open standards are the way to go. They are with music (MP3) and they are with email, IM and VOIP as well. Data portability is also important and I spend my money building companies which adhere to these tenets. Again, not sure what this has to do with peering since Skype supports none of the items you have listed. I encourage you to check out another company I run called MP3tunes which stores your personal music collection in the cloud. Go sign up for a free account. You will see that we let you sync your entire music collection everywhere - no lock in.

6. Will you peer customer support costs and security? How should customers escalate security and technical issues across multiple networks?

Gizmo5 already sends and receives calls from over 250 VOIP networks. And we work through security and technical issues across networks as they arise. This is not a hard thing to do. There's no reason VOIP can't be a universally open system like email. These are just straw man arguments about why it's hard or not possible. These wobbly arguments work when you're testifying in front of congressman who don't know a damn thing about technology, but they don't hold water to technologists. And the point of using standards is that if people adhere to the specifications everything works fine together right out of the box. Of the more than 250 networks we regularly exchange calls with we have had issues with less than 15 in 5 years and they have always been quickly addressed because it's in both peoples interest to make sure things work.

7. Will you mandate end-to-end transparency of call quality information?

I don't even know what this is. But no, we don't mandate how others operate their network.

8. What namespaces would you suggest Skype use? Will you support OpenID or some other namespace?

The SIP standard supports namespace issues. It is similar to email. username@skype will work just fine. Again, this is how we interoperate with hundreds of networks now. It's a non-issue.

9. Will you open Gizmo up to all partners? Your contact page says "Unfortunately, we are not setup to partner at this time with organizations with fewer than one million users."

Nice misquote. Let me include the entire paragraph in context so your readers will get the full picture. From: http://gizmo5.com/pc/about-us/contact/

Potential Partners

Companies and organizations looking to partner with Gizmo5 should visit our parent company site, SIPphone.com. Partners looking to brand the Gizmo5 client and service typically have user bases well in excess of 1 million users. If you are a smaller company or individual looking to start your own VoIP service, please visit our developers area, where you can learn how to start your very own VoIP service. Unfortunately, we are not setup to partner at this time with organizations with fewer than one million users.

As you can see the 1 million reference is related to people who want a branded version of the Gizmo5 client to distribute. Anyone with a VOIP network can setup a SIP service (or Asterisk) and dial our users or receive calls from our network. If Skype Journal has a million users we will provide you with your own branded VOIP client to distribute.

10. How will you make all this work? What industry body or standards process could help Skype and other companies find the sweet spots of commoditized conversation?

Some years back some smart guys got together to address this very problem.  They did so in a public manner using the same process that brought us standards for the web and email which is why the web and email work universally. They called the standard they defined SIP and it deals precisely in how calls are initiated, negotiated and connected. It's what Gizmo5 uses and promotes as the solution to allow calls to flow freely between networks instead of having a big number of disparate networks. You can read all about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol

Skype should support a public SIP interface so standards based networks like Gizmo5 and others can seamlessly send and receive calls.

-- MR

Michael Robertson

www.MP3tunes.com - Your Music Everywhere
www.Gizmo5.com - IM/VOIP/SMS from PC and phone

 

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