How much do you hate Polycom ? GoToMeeting ? Vidyo ? Skype ? Or whatever the hell else you use to hold in meetings with distant co-worker ? Well , I ’m here to tell you that somebody may have lastly figured out a unfailing means to make teleconferencing really ferment . “ May ” because I only spent ten minutes with the so - called solution , but it impressed the heck out of me anyhow .
Here ’s how it work :
Step one : Buy this adorable aluminum - clad camera for $ 800 . secure it into a TV in your conference room .
Step two : Download the Highfive app , and any sentence you ’re within about 30 foot of the camera , your earpiece , tablet , or laptop computer will mechanically pair with the camera over Bluetooth . Automatically ! I ca n’t strain that enough . do first - time setup ( you know , Wi - Fi and stuff ) .
stride three : Now anyone with the Highfive app can commence a meeting . Just typecast in a conference name , and you ’ve begin . skid your thumb across a individual obvious button to as if by magic beam your group discussion to the television receiver if you ’re within Bluetooth range . weigh a individual obvious button on your laptop computer , and you ’re instantaneously sharing your cover with everyone .
Step four : fight a exclusive obvious release to summate participants , and each will get an email or SMS with a link . Tap the link and you ’re lumber into the meeting : no usernames or passcodes needed . Do n’t have the app ? It ’ll shoot you right over to the app store to download that too , then automatically lumber you in without requiring a single extra detent . I can attest to that .
Step five : If you invite masses who are n’t in your companionship domain , they ’ll demand to be O.K. by the organizer . imagine what : it ’s well-situated ! They have to take a selfie with their smartphone camera , and up bolt down their face on the organizer ’s app . One tap later , they ’re in the encounter .
dance step six : There is no step six . Unless you call for to muffle yourself or turn off your camera . Two more obvious buttons , by the style . Oh , and do n’t nettle paying a monthly placard unless you want IT - favorable feature film . The canonic inspection and repair is liberal .
To be frank , I do n’t have a go at it if Highfive executives were right that competing solutions cost upwards of $ 20,000 , because I do n’t buy Polycom teleconferencing systems on a regular basis , but I ’ve never heard of anything this easy . I follow them demo it mighty in front of me , took it for a spin myself , and bug out wondering what the catch could be .
There are a few possibilities . Right now , you could only have up to 10 removed participants in a call , and you could only see one video flow at a time . There ’s no Android app yet , and the iOS 8 version is still under review . I could n’t get a serious handle on call quality : though the 1080p camera emphatically seemed set to cover a conference room with its 170 - degree subject field of scene , it does n’t have any contestation or rapid growth , and I could n’t tell how well the four - mike beamforming array did at echo and stochasticity cancellation .
Plus , I have to wonder : Why has nobody ever used Bluetooth to car - negotiate connexion like this ? It ’s awful . They could n’t say — only that the Bluetooth handoff is good because both the app and the tv camera authenticate your workplace email knowledge domain .
But they sure do have a lot of people convert that it ’s a good musical theme . Highfive says they ’ve signed up over a hundred customers already , let in Warby Parker , Shutterfly , Hotel Tonight , Mimeo , and NxStage ( a house dialysis equipment house ) . They ’ve raised $ 13.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz , General Catalyst and Google Ventures , as well as Marc Benioff ( Salesforce ) , Drew Houston ( Dropbox ) , Aaron Levie ( Box ) , and Shishir Mehotra ( YouTube ) among others .
Highfive founders Shan Sinha and Jeremy Roy also created Docverse , which became the genuine - time collaboration lineament of Google Docs when they were adopt in 2010 . Now , they ’re compare themselves to Nest , which is moderately vulgar for hardware startups these days . ( Would n’t you wish your 2nd ship’s company to get bought by Google too ? ) But Highfive feel like it could be the literal batch . I ’m await for the other horseshoe to drop . [ Highfive ]
Camera
Daily Newsletter
Get the good tech , scientific discipline , and culture news program in your inbox day by day .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
