Webcasting specialist MediaPlatform has added a couple of new features to its WebCaster platform, both designed to enhance its cloud-based webcasting software to meet increasing demand worldwide.

The Los Angeles-based company added support for UTF-8, a universal character set transformation format, which now will allow WebCaster to include text in any language.

The company also said it had incorporated Adobe Stage Video feature into the WebCaster video player, enabling improved video playback quality and reducing processor usage by up to 85 percent.

"Video use is increasing significantly in the enterprise, but it will explode even more when these companies are able to reach their international audiences more effectively with high quality video and lower processing requirements," said Denis Khoo, chief technology officer at MediaPlatform.  "By adding support for features such as UTF-8 and Stage Video, WebCaster continues to add the functionality our customers are demanding to make webcasting an even more attractive means of communicating company-wide."

Adobe's Stage Video helps websites and webcasts deliver video across screens and browsers by enabling access to hardware acceleration of the entire video pipeline.

MediaPlatform offers WebCaster as both a cloud-based and premise-based platform.

For more:
- see this release

With the growing adoption of tablets by consumers and enterprises, it's no surprise that more videoconferencing vendors are targeting them as endpoints.

ViVu's group conferencing service comes to Apple's iPad 2 and iPhone 4.

Desktop videoconferencing solution provider ViVu, which offers a monthly service for under $10, this week rolled out its own app for Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad 2 and iPhone 4. The iOS component means the videoconferencing product now is available on PCs, Macs, Android devices and iOS devices, without requiring any proprietary hardware.

ViVu is one of a number of vendors offering a scalable cloud-based architecture and enterprise-class secure platforms, without any proprietary hardware.

Using VuRoom, up to 8 users can upstream video from their own devices and collaborate with session participants through slide and desktop sharing.

 "ViVu is committed to delivering secure and scalable videoconferencing solutions--and ensuring that they address all of the requirements for today's emerging people-centric computing model," said Sudha Valluru, founder and chief executive at ViVu.

ViVu's videoconferencing solutions for iOS devices still include the following features:

• Shared desktop capabilities, including animated PowerPoint presentations, slides and documents;
• A user-friendly, intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) to make it as streamlined as possible for users to immediately benefit from visual collaboration; and
• ‘Tivo-like' instant playback and archive capabilities for additional review or knowledge sharing; and

ViVu's videoconferencing solutions are currently undergoing review by Apple and will be available free-of-charge through Apple's App Store shortly. To view a demonstration of the ViVu videoconferencing solution on the iPad2, click here.

The privately held company was founded in 2008.

For more:
- see this release

Related articles:
Video-conferencing startup Vidyo lands $22.5M in new funding
Polycom sees video conferencing future in software, rebrands platform
Verizon Wireless targets SMBs with FuzeBox's video-conferencing offering
Citrix rolls out Android app for GoToMeeting users

“VoIP penetration among businesses is increasing rapidly, but I believe that reliability and redundancy can still be improved. Many service providers have not yet implemented redundancy to improve reliability,” said Arash Vahidnia, President and CEO of IPsmarx, in an interview with VoIP.Biz-News.com. 

March 10th, 2010 – IPsmarx, a leading provider of VoIP application and switching solutions for service providers, has just been awarded ‘Best VoIP Product of the Year’ for their SIP-based calling card platform. This is the second time in as many years that IPsmarx was selected a winner by the readers of VoIP.Biz-News.com for their experiences with the product, as well as the vendor.

Our polls for the Biz-News.com “Product of the Year Award 2009” closed on the 15th of February. The winner is a result of the amount of votes they were awarded by readers, all readers where invited to vote for their favourite products or service in the Smartphone, HDTV, Storage and VoIP categories.

Contenders for the Biz-News.com Product of the Year Award are on a tight struggle to obtain the leading amount of votes for the 2009 Awards.

The awards are people’s choice; users are being called upon to express their consumer experiences during 2009.

What VoIP service worked for you best? Which would you recommend to your friends and colleagues?

Let us know and award them a vote by filling this form.

Last year Biz-News.com celebrated the “Product of the Year Awards 2008”. Nominations where received from all parts of the globe. First hand users explained their experiences and recommended best practices for the most innovative products out there.

Honouring those who have fought to make the most of this year, Biz-News.com again wishes to call upon its readers to nominate their favourite product of the year.

Nominations will begin on November 19th and will close on February 15th 2010. Runner ups will be featured in our editorial and winners will have an exclusive interview complete with user reviews and photographic backup published on Biz-News.com.

Verizon Business announced today it has certified the ADTRAN NetVanta 6310 IP Business Gateway for use with its IP Integrated Access solution in Europe. Since the product allows for connectivity with VoIP and TDM end-points, it allows for customers to gradually transition their communication networks to IP.

Verizon also announced that its Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunks capability is now available in its European markets, allowing multi-location enterprises to distribute capacity to support spikes in traffic at different points in its customers' networks. The BEST feature, previously only available in the U.S., and the ADTRAN product support can now be accessed by customers in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

For more:
- see the PhonePlus article here 

Related articles
Verizon Business steps onto the cloud
Verizon Business leads Infonetics VoIP matrix

HP and Microsoft announced on Tuesday a four-year, $180 million extension of the Frontline Parnership at Interop Las Vegas. The Frontline Partnership, which began 20 years ago as a way to ensure interoperability between the companies' products, will now be used to develop new unified communications and collaboration tools and technology.

The companies will invest in new UC product development, test new services and jointly sell and market any products produced through Frontline. They plan to develop an end-to-end solution with software, hardware, networking and support services that will streamline communications and their delivery across enterprise networks.

"Together, we are offering the extensive breadth of capabilities of our respective technologies to deliver a truly unified communications and collaboration solution to help our customers improve business productivity," said Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business Division, in a prepared statement. "This means one click to communicate, one click to conference, one click to collaborate."

Frontline will build out products and services around Microsoft Office SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft Office Communications Server, in addition to HP ProCurve networking gear. The partnership also will develop and offer complete business services to support unified communications installations. 

For more:
- see the press release here 

Related articles
Microsoft forbids VoIP services on Mobile Market
Disasters drive videoconferencing

VoIP.biz-news is providing extensive coverage from this year's Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona between 16-19 February.
We will be posting regular updates on product announcements and press conferences from big industry names like Samsung, Toshiba and Microsoft as they happen.

The new year is firmly underway and time is running out for submitting your nominations and votes for voip.biz-news' 2008 Man and Product of the Year awards.
But with voting expected to be close in both award categories there's plenty of opportunity for latecomers to make their mark.

Toshiba’s Strata CIX family of IP business communication systems has been named winner of Network Products Guide’s Best Products and Services Award in the 2008 VoIP category.
The annual award by the Silicon Valley publication on technologies and solutions, honors products and services that represent the rapidly changing needs and interests of the end-users of technology worldwide.

Garret Smith writes some thoughtful words about WiFi phones in his blog:

Infonetics Research released a report that showed WiFi ip phone sales increase 60% in 2007, with 682,000 units were sold worldwide. The report cited ?increased vendor support? as the primary reason for the growth. 

[…]

While some people seem to like WiFi phones, they aren?t for the faint at heart, especially if your aren?t technically savvy. My advice, if you want to go wireless, is to pickup a DECT based solution. A little more expensive, but it works?for everyone. 

I still haven’t met a WiFi SIP phone I liked and used more than a couple of days…  

© Edvina AB, Sollentuna, Sweden 2008 VoIP-Forum. All Rights Reserved.

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