January 22, 2007

Calling for free... almost :-)

I found myself far from a broadband computer the past few days, but needed to place international calls. The problem is that these calls are very expensive to place from a mobile phone, and I would not want to scare Magnus away from his new job with my phone bills.

Here is a tip.

Marratech's own Manager has two subscriptions. One at Broadvoice ( inexpensive flat rate for USA and Canada) (for the USA and Canada) and one at WX3 here in Sweden.

With just a web interface on my mobile, I log into our Manager and do the following:

1. I press the Dial Out link on the front page.
2. I select a room we created called Phone Booth, select the SIP line with WX3 and dial my mobile number. When it rings, answer.
3. I go back to the Dial Out link. Reselect the room called Phone Booth and select the Broadvoice SIP line. I then dial the number in North America I want to call.

BINGO! Pick up your mobile and you will be talking to the USA for free (apart for a local call charge from WX3) from your mobile in Europe.

With a bit of scripting, this can be made automagically!

What happens is that the Marratech Manager connects both calls for you, making sure that the voice from one call goes into the other and vice versa.

Great way to make cheap international calls when you are on the go.

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 03:11 PM | Comments (2)

January 17, 2007

Lars goes to Space!

Today, I feel a mixture of sadness and joy. Our CEO and my colleague for the past three years, Lars Persson, announced that he was leaving us and will be heading the Swedish Space Corporation. The announcement can be read here.

It is a very prestigious and demanding job Lars has accepted. The Swedish Space Corporation has just agreed with Virgin Galactic to create Spacesport Sweden in Kiruna. This will definitely put Sweden on the map in terms of space travel.

Lars brought a very positive work atmosphere at Marratech, where openness, constructive feedback and a never-quit attitude helped me and others to perform at our highest level, while having fun doing it.

His nomination at SSC is a stamp of approval for Marratech, proving how much we have achieved with so little ressources. Marratech seems like a good launch platform.. pardon the pun! We are sad to see him go, but happy he found such a great job!

My colleague and Marratech Co-founder Magnus Hedberg will be a very capable interim CEO ( iCEO :-) ) for the time being.

Lars, send us a post card from space will you?

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2006

Moodle integration

One of our customers, NITLE, started a summer of code project last summer. The project's goal was to integrate Marratech into the very popular open source Learning Management System (LMS) called Moodle. The ambition of the project was for students to gather experience in systems integration using extreme programming as a programming method and producing code that is maintainable.

The result is a first prototype integration release. The source code is available on SourceForge and the installation instructions on the moodle web site.

Marratech provided the appropriate server software and technical support. I am happy to report that NITLE needed very little support and did this project by itself for the most part. NITLE used the Marratech API to accomplish the integration.

While it is a prototype, and as such is not ready for prime time, we believe it creates a great base for further work. The source code is under GPL, meaning any adaptations will require you to upload the changes made. We hope that this work will act as a catalyst for further improvements in the plugin.

It was really nice to work with Eric J and Eric H on this and I hope to work with them again!

We like the idea of integration work being open source, as the community can save time and money by improving, adapting and extending what has already been done!

Here is a document sent to me by NITLE to explain the project and future work:






Moodle-Marratech Integration Project
NITLE | National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education
http://nitle.org

Overview of the Project

The goal of the project was to prototype an interface between Moodle and Marratech in the form of a Moodle plug-in and server-side components that would permit Marratech resources to be scheduled and allocated from Moodle. The code communicates from Moodle PHP plugin to Java components (servlets) via HTTP, and the Java code communicates with Marratech via the Java API exposed by the Marratech Manager.

The system developed in the prototype resolves many of the complexities of this issue, including identifying and preventing of conflicts in resource usage (i.e. exceeding the number of licensed seats at any given time), how to integrate with real-world user expectations (for example, configurable “buffer” zones around meeting times to reflect early arrivals and late departures), how to de-allocate resources in the event of unexpected conflicts (i.e. a virtual meeting running over time), logging and activity tracking, and how to invite outsiders (non-Moodle course members) as well as notify and remind users of meeting times. The project also approached these questions with the goal of maintaining Moodle’s approach to user experience.

The code was developed in the summer of 2006 by a group of 10 students from liberal arts colleges that are NITLE participating institutions, and the students were guided by faculty mentors and others. The student development team used the extreme programming methodology to develop the prototype code. The prototype code works in development environments, and is currently undergoing testing before it is used on a production system.

The Future

We hope others see the value of this project and will contribute to it. The current code is only a prototype, and we would be very willing to share our experiences with those who could assist in organizing it into a deployable product.

In reflecting on the prototype, we felt some design features of such a product would be important:

• A pluggable calendar system: the prototype uses the local Moodle calendar, but a more robust system might plug in to other calendar systems. We have noted that many users of Moodle have other calendar systems where Marratech scheduling might also need to appear. We suggest Google Calendar as a potentially valuable initial target for a plug-in, given the robust features, the detailed API access, and strong publication features of Google Calendar.

• The prototype never resolved successfully a protocol for dropped connections to Marratech when reconnecting from Moodle. Such users, for technical reasons, would be counted again for each connection, which could lead to an inaccurate assessment of the seat usage.

• The prototype code requires PHP 5. This is one version above the minimum requirement for Moodle. Rewriting the code to function under PHP4 might be necessary for some production environments

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 02:43 PM | Comments (2)

New server and client available!

As promised on this blog, our new software is now available for download.

Our forum entries (here) and (here) lists all the new features, but I would like to single out a few for you.

We are taking major strides in helping out customers leverage their H.323 investments. Version 3.5 of the server let's H.323 end points dial into a meeting room. This means you can both dial out from Marratech or dial in from H.323. It just goes to prove our strong commitment and focus on interoperability.

On the client side, the most notable changes are in video and audio. With echo cancellation, we hope to make first time meetings (often without a headset) much more enjoyable. Our improved H.264 video will surely be appreciated as well.

Large scale deployments have been made easier through the ability to deploy preset preferences (just edit the preferences file from the jar file before rolling out) and moderation of all participants can be achieved through a simple click. (Yes, the middle and right mouse buttons have been swapped!)

Last time we had a major release was in January 2006. While we have been working on major consultancy projects, we have also been closing bug after bug and working on this new functionality.

We hope you also think 6.1 and 3.5 are a step in the right direction. We welcome your comments!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2006

"Green" Marratech in Svenska Dagbladet

One day, I would like to sit down and go through how much energy and pollution is saved through the use of our software.

At Marratech, most of us can avoid rush hour, we work productively from home and we meet customers from all over the world on our screen.

In fact, taking myself as an example, the use and evolution of our software has had the following consequences:

-1 or 2 trips to Lulea per year instead of more than 10 in 1999

-2 trips to the US per year, instead of earning a Gold Status in 2000 / 2001

-Work from home at least 3 days a week.

Energy wise, this must be very good. Less fossil fuels burned, less congestion on the roads and public transport, etc...

Now if 5 % of the population could do something like this and reduce their energy consumption as I have, imagine the result! The infrastructure is there... only people's behavior needs changing... we are a stubborn species.

All of this rambling is to mention that Svenska Dagbladet mentions Marratech in an article where the environmental impact of Trains vs Planes is discussed in Swedish.

Our CEO, Lars Persson, mentions that 3 out of 4 meetings could be replaced with technology such as our own. And that many green-companies and organizations are finding their way to Marratech... our turnover has doubled during the past year.

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2006

Preview of the upcoming client

We are hard at work at closing the client for release to you!

I thought that our blog readers should get a small preview. So here are release notes for you to read and enjoy!



Marratech v6.1 Readme file

Marratech v6.1 is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Marratech v6.1 includes major changes to the voice and video code. Please read the release notes carefully.

NOTE

Marratech v6.1 will run under Mac OS X v10.3.9 but has undergone very limited testing and is therefore unsupported. There are a number of issues fixed in Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger that improve Marratech performance. No separate download required.

System Requirements

For the latest minimum requirements, please consult the support section at http://www.marratech.com/

License

The Marratech client software is free to download and use under the conditions set forth in the License found at http://www.marratech.com/eula/eula.html

How to Install

For step by step information on how to install the Marratech client, please consult the following:

Upgrading Deploying

Version 6.0 and 6.1 can coexist in the same meeting room and should not pose any problems.

What's New in 6.1 Known issues

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2006

Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?

Yes, this entry is about echo and feedback which happen when sound from someone's speakers goes directly into an active microphone.

We of course highly recommend various headset and various echo cancelling speakerphones, but the fact remains that all you need is one person in a meeting without the right equipment to ruin the whole experience.

Also, we have found that certain audio cards (especially on laptops) leak audio from the speaker output into the microphone input.

And, to make it even harder, certain headsets' microphones are so sensitive they pick up audio from the headphones.

Talk about an uphill battle.

In comes software acoustic echo cancellation. This feature removes echo by using very complex software algorithms, accomplishing what was only possible in hardware just a few years ago.

Now, this feature has been available in other software for a while. The trick for us was making it work on three platforms and making it work for group conversations, not just one on one.

The latter is what has delayed us somewhat, as the processing power required was too high. Now, thanks to faster computers and more efficient algorithms we can announce that Marratech will soon have Acoustic Echo Cancellation in software.

We hope to have it as a part of our client software, which is free, before December.

We think this will take away a significant hurdle to acceptance by new customers and I am counting the days until we release it!

Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?

GOODBYE! :-)

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 03:04 PM | Comments (1)

April 26, 2006

Review by Network Computing

Network Computing published an article focusing on online collaboration for education.

The article focuses on the major market players and hosting vs inhouse solutions.

A couple of great things:

1. Marratech being compared to Microsoft, Adobe, Webex and all the others is a tremendous achievement. A small company from the north of Sweden is able to take on the biggest, and beat a bunch of them on the way!

2. Here is a direct quote from the article: "In fact, in our evaluations of audio and video quality, Marratech led the pack." This means that if you want to interact with voice and video, look no further :-)

3. Another direct quote from the article: "Like Breeze and e/pop, Marratech offers multiparty video, but its was the most stable and robust." Crashing during collaboration is just no fun.


Where we need to work some more:

1. "Some of the biggest limitations of Marratech come in its participant-interaction functionality. There is no discussion control and only limited differentiation between user roles. We would prefer not to have to determine roles of participants in advance."

Our moderator function was introduced recently, in January, just in time for the article. Next week's server release improves on the moderator functionality greatly and we will continue to work on this, seeing how important it is.

I guess this is how we have done it for the past 9 years. Put out a new feature, keeping it basic and stable and then improve it with the help of customer feedback.


Conclusion

The best quote was however this:

"<...>the small and medium-size simultaneous group meetings, Marratech performed best, followed by Breeze and Centra. The ability to have good quality audio and video with multiple speakers and video windows was key here."

that quote, combined with:

"<..>If cross-platform functionality is vital, or you prefer an in-house system, go with Marratech or Elluminate."

...says it all!

A well deserved B with some very powerful arguments for video and audio quality, powerpoint clarity and cross platform. The article also gives us insight on what to focus on in the near future: user control and management.

Combine our strenghts mentionned in the article with H.323 compatibility, our API, dialing out to phones with SIP, our heavy duty security, server cluster support and IP Multicast (things not mentionned in the article) and you have a winner... in my eyes :-)

Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did!

/Serge

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 11:11 AM | Comments (1)

April 07, 2006

Live presentation from a happy customer

One of our customers, Network Appliance, did a demo at APBM 2006 in Boston using their Marratech server.

Deborah Rousseau, Technical Briefing Program Manager at Network Appliance, Inc. used Marratech with the UK and Stockholm (with our own co-founder Magnus Hedberg) live to discuss how technology was being used in NetApp's environment and it's impact on their briefing programs.

Congratulations Deborah on a great demo!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2006

Marratech used for Teleworking and Disaster Relief

Great article looking at the way Marratech can be used in Teleworking and as a tool for disasater relief.

Getting such an article in your ibox is a nice way to start a week!

http://www.fcw.com/article92789-04-03-06-Print

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

March 31, 2006

YAP: Yet Another Platform!

Today, we officially released our Universal Application verision of the Marratech client.

This means that we now support Windows, Linux, Mac OS X PPC and Mac OS X Intel. Even though the installer file is the same for both Power PC and Intel, it is too very different beasts when dealing with Codecs and such, as a lot of very low level code can be found in there.

So, Intel Mac users, welcome to our user community!

/Serge

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 12:50 PM | Comments (1)

February 22, 2006

Graduate students to Luleå University of Technology

Marratech works closly with Luleå University of Technolgy and the Media Technology research group. This research group is currently looking for new graduate students.

[Written while listening to: Misty - Mike Oldfield - Tr3s Lunas (3:59)]

Posted by peter at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

Next Generation Internet Interaction System: Thelma

Evening, I have written a short paper regarding the future of webconferencing. The title is: "Next Generation Internet Interaction System: Thelma" and all comments and questions are very welcome!

Is this something you and the market might need in the future?

Please discuss the paper using the Marratech Forum.

Posted by peter at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)

Cool post

By setting the Google Blogsearch to hunt down for blogs that write about Marratech, I found this entry:

http://www.kolabora.com/experts/heike_philp/2006/02/17/virtual_global_and_fun.htm

It is nice to see our software being able to be used in this context, as it is precisely designed for this use.

By the way, here is a RSS link you can add to your news reader or bloglines.com to have Google notify you of Marratech news in the blogosphere.

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&filter=0&q=marratech+-site:www.marratech.com&btnG=Search+Blogs&num=10&output=atom

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2006

Marratech 6.0 available

Marratech 6.0 is now available. We have been at work for a while on this one, and we are quite proud of it.

It includes H.264 video, developed in conjunction with Alcatel Alenia Space, full screen video and something that our education users have been asking for a long time... moderator control! This will enable a moderator to control what the participants in a meeting may or may not do.

We have done dozens of tweaks and fixes, including an easier to use private voice interface. By far our best release ever (tm).

On the server side, we have fixed the "slightly annoying" DTMF tone bug and have optimized and fixed LDAP support, in conjunction with our users.

Hopefully all the hard work will show in this release! Consult the forum for more details!

Version 6.0 comes the same day as the Parnes family delivered baby 2.0. Congratulations Johanna and Peter and welcome to Oliver Benjamin Parnes!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2005

HP + Dreamworks = HALO Video Collaboration

HP and Dreamworks are selling an high quality video collaboration system for 550.000$ (or by pay plan for 30.000$ per month). Requires 54Mbps network.

text: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2005/dec/1221869.htm

text: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5993103.html

Marketing site with images: http://www.hp.com/halo/index.html?jumpid=go/halo

Does anybody know more about this? What type of technology are they using?

[Written while listening to: Walk Of Life - Dire Straits - Money For Nothing (4:08)]

Posted by peter at 09:52 AM | Comments (4)

December 12, 2005

Internet2

Marratech is an Internet2 corporate member and as of today Marratech is featured on the Internet2's front page.

[Written while listening to: Heavy Fuel - Dire Straits - On Every Street (4:56)]

Posted by peter at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2005

Chinecto presentation at Keystone

Our valued customer Dr. Larry Elchuck did a presentation that included how they use Marratech in K12 education at the Chinecto School Board in Nova Scotia.

The presentation they made at the Keystone conference earlier this year is available here in MPEG4 format.

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2005

First time usage, making the learning curve flat.

Our goal is to make great software for groups of people that need to work together closely, even though they are far apart.

While we try to make our software as easy to use as possible for the sporadic user, we also want to focus on the frequent users. Basically, we try to find the right balance to make the right compromises.

Our software is computer and internet based. Our kind of software pushes computers and networks which are normally used for email and surfing the web to a new kind of level. Doing multiparty voice and video with high interactivity uses your computer's resources like never before.

This means that a new user may hit some initial barriers that may come from our compromise between first time vs power users and from the computer's setup. I will try to list some of the barriers a first time user may encounter to flatten the learning curve.

1. MeetNow! Through the click of a link, the Marratech software can download, install, update and launch itself in the appropriate room. While in theory this is all nice, some of you may discover some issues with Java.

Before using Marratech the first time, visit http://www.java.com and click on the Download Now! link. This will install and or update the Java Virtual Machine on your computer and will ensure that Marratech will properly launch right the first time.

2. Network Marratech will work across most home, small - medium enterprise routers and firewalls directly. We also have built in support for NAT.

However, in larger enterprises, firewalls may be closed to UDP traffic. If you read my earlier post, you will find that Marratech relies on UDP traffic to offer the best audio possible. Other solutions will use more firewall friendly TCP traffic but will suffer from degraded voice quality with long delays. This is not acceptable from a virtual office solution for frequent users.

Marratech has secure, easy to explain rules that can be applied to firewalls in order to permit meeting traffic which will give your group the best possible experience.

3. Audio Device Marratech can work with many sound cards. For example, you may have an echo cancelling mic connected to one sound card, your headset to another and your camera's built in microphone. In frequent usage, you may need to switch between these. It is therefore important to choose the proper device from the start. Avoid your camera's built in microphone. It will easily distort and pick up ambient sound.

4. Headset or echo cancelling mic. We are keeping a close eye on echo cancellation algorithms. These have proven pretty efficient on one-on-one scenarios, but tend to degrade in group conversations.

The algorithms are getting better and the processors faster meaning they will show up in Marratech soon. In the mean time, and even when software echo cancellation will be available, the best results are achieved through a good headset or with echo cancelling microphones sush as the duet.

5. System drivers. Drivers are the glue between your computer's hardware and the operating system. Since we push the computer harder than most applications with 16 khz voice (this is not common, 8 khz is usually the norm), many video windows, etc... you may need to upgrade your system drivers with the newest from your manufacturer. This is especially true of Windows 2000 system... which is now over 6 years old.

6. Don't panic! What I just wrote about is not rocket science. :-) In fact, if you have a 2 year old laptop, a headset and a ordinary network, chances are things will work very well.

If not, you may need to bring small updates to your system in the form of Java and your audio and display drivers. If you are behind a closed firewall, it may need to be configured.

The goal of this post is to be honest and make you aware of the steps you may need to take to succeed in using the best group collaboration tool out there.

We are working hard on making the learning curve flatter. If you have any suggestions on how to make this happen, let us know. We have not been first time users for a loooong time!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 10:45 PM | Comments (1)

October 21, 2005

Presentations

If anybody is interested I will hold a presentation based on the Ubiquitous Human Communications paper for the CoolCampus project at Monash, Australia. It will be held online (of course) via Marratech.

Online: Monash Marratech Portal->CC Monash Mobility Workshop.
Date: October 24
Time: 07.30 AM CET (Swedish time) which means 01.30 AM EST.

The same day one of Marratech's former employees Jeremiah Scholl will defend his PhD thesis entitled "Technology for supporting informal communication in multimedia conferencing systems" on Monday. More information and the whole thesis is available here:

The presentation will be broadcast using Marratech in the Media Technology Presentations e-meeting
Date: October 24 2005
Time: 13.00 CET (Swedish time), 9.00 AM EST.

Chairman at the defense will be me!

[Written while listening to: Bach / Brandenb. Konz Nr. 1 - Various Composers - Classical Collection Vol.2 (4:00)]

Posted by peter at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005

Developer @ Marratech Luleå

Marratech is once agan expanding and we are now hiring a developer to the development team in Luleå.

Here is the add (in Swedish).

Posted by peter at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2005

Managing your workstations

In an organisation such as Marratech, where you have employees in many different locations, countries and even continents, IT support can sometimes be a hassle. People run into problems and need someone to look over their software settings. While there are solutions to this (such as Apple Remote Desktop or Windows Remote Assistance), they are not easy to use, and very seldom secure. Most of them requires configuring the local firewall if you want to use them over the Internet - try that while you're at a hotel!

Enter Marratech. Since the Marratech client works well through firewalls, there is no reason why you can't use it in the same way. Better yet, the communication is encrypted using 256 bit AES which means noone else on that hotel network can listen in when you type in your passwords. With the application sharing, people can easily share their desktop with their IT staff, who can fix the error while talking to the employee!

From our Office in Stockholm, I've used this to set up Outlook on a PC in Chicago, manage printers in Copenhagen and fix corrupt documents in Northern Sweden - none of that would have been possible without Marratech due to firewalls and the need for security. More likely, we would've had to send the PC to a technician or the other way around, which would've cost us money and time. Now we had everything up and running in less than half an hour.

Posted by rln at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2005

Ulrika Sandberg

I am happy to announce that Ulrika Sandberg will join our development team is Luleå as test engineer. Ulrika holds a Master of Science in Media Technology from Luleå University of Technology and comes most recently from Tieto Enator.

A big warm welcome Ulrika!

Posted by peter at 03:57 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2005

Norway

I just got back from Norway. Our norwegian reseller, Officeline organized three days of Marratech events. Wednesday was a preparation day and a journalist meeting, Thursday was a full day seminar with potential customers, and Friday was spent in Bergen, about 45 minutes flight west from Oslo where we met the Bergen Officeline employees, the health care departement of the region and a net based learning research center.

The events where well organized. I like doing this since it gives us direct contact with the customers, which is critical for staying on top of what is needed when detailing our development plans.

Johnny Widén and David Richardsson each did a presentation and discussed their planning, the need for unofficial meetings and their own experiences. A big thank you for you both!

Johnny brought up a good point. Did you know that between 80 and 90 % of all information exchange with colleagues happens outside of planned formal meetings ??? This is why a virtual office is so effective!

Rikard demo'ed from Luleå for all of my meetings, he is a real trooper. He did about 10 demos. It is an art to repeat one self so many times and yet do it with such interest. Let's just say he is a master of that art!

It feels honest to demo on real equipment and real networks. For instance, when David Richardson's network was loosing packets, we could see the video slowing down without the audio being affected. It gave me a chance to answer questions related to this common scenario.

We often see other companies demoing on dedicated networks with top of the line equipment. This raises expectations to a level that only leads to disapointment. For our demo, we used the Oslo university network, a 1200 USD laptop and an Accumic. Nothing secret. All of it real.

During the seminars, I felt the interest for our H.323 solution which I demoed. I also previewed our development plan (ex. video quality improvements) and got feedback which matches what we are curently focusing on. This confirms that our plans match what customers require.

Some experiences from the seminar:

• When people are online, don't forget to repeat the questions from the live audience. (I forgot this frequently)

• Although it worked on monday, the projector would not go higher than 800 x 600 This seems to be a windows problem.

• The windows computer had the mic boost clicked in. The mic boost only worked when power was plugged into the laptop. When we gave the laptop power, the audio became really bad. When the battery was used, the sound was perfect. Turning off the mic boost solved this issue. Good to remember!

The events served as a good warm up to the upcoming Internet2, Loudoun Economic Summit and Educause events.

More resellers are planning seminars, Marratech-school days and other events that we will participate in. Hope to see you there!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2005

The Arrival of the Virtual Office - Whitepaper

Wainhouse Research has published a new Whitepaper entitled "The Arrival of the Virtual Office". This Marratech-sponsored whitepaper is available here.

Here is the summary from the article:

The typical work day can be divided into two distinct parts: the time spent attending meetings, and the time spent completing work. In recent years, a wealth of “meeting enhancement” tools has flooded an efficiency-hungry marketplace. For the most part, these tools provide significant and material benefits (like increasing access to expertise or decreasing business travel). These tools, however, are designed to support the metaphor of a meeting, but not the remainder of the work day; in many respects they do not address the continued need for collaboration and teamwork.

This white paper, sponsored by Marratech, focuses on the emergence of a relatively new paradigm for collaboration: the virtual office. More than just an enabler of virtual meetings, virtual office solutions bring geographically dispersed employees virtually together into the same workspace, thereby supercharging teamwork and cooperation between previously isolated resources.

Posted by peter at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

Emblaze Acquires VCON

Of the smaller players on the H323 market, VCON has been acquired by Emblaze. More info on Conferencing News and here.

Posted by peter at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2005

Conny Ericsson is getting married TODAY!

Conny Ericsson is a former Marratech employee and is today one of our best resellers working from his own firm. BUT I doubt he is thinking about selling Marratech licenses today ( or at least I hope he is not) as he is getting married today. He has been living in "sin" for the last 20 years with his bride to be. We at Marratech wish him all the best today and we urge him to not trip and to check his fly!

Here is a small poem in Swedish by Rikard dedicated to Conny and his bride:

Uti första Moseboken står att finna
Utav Adams revben blev en kvinna
Därför hylla vi ikväll Conny och hans "revbensspjäll" :-)
-Marratechianerna
All the best and warmest congratulations,
   The Marratechs


[Written while listening to: Son Of A Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield - Pulp Fiction - Soundtrack (2:28)]

Posted by peter at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 08, 2005

ReelSmart.com - Marratech: Complete Collaboration For Online Meetings

ReelSmart.com blog writes about the Marratech solution.

Posted by peter at 08:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Back in business

Hi all,

Most of us are back from vacation and back in the grind of things. The summer vacation gave us thousands of Marratech Free downloads as well as good questions and feedback in our user forum. The first feedback we got was that our Mac OS X installer was hard to use... so today, we have posted a new one in response to this. We are learning every day, and your feedback makes this possible.

The autumn has a lot in store for us, but our main activities will be set around releasing the H.323 connection functionality sometime in the early fall. (Sept - Oct) A lot of people are waiting on this one and we feel the pressure :-) This means that, in a way similar to making a SIP call, you will be able to call an H.323 videoconferencing end point, or a conference hosted at an MCU with both voice and video.

Our API is also developing and we have started to explore more possibilities for integration. Our first big integration is our Time-to-Meet model and look out for some new announcements during the fall. LMS, financial tools, project planners... we want the Marratech experience bundled everywhere!

And of course, maintenance. We like to fix bugs. Even if new features are what people see with every release, we spend a lot of time using optimizers, fixing our releases for the latest Cupertino OS, doing code reviews and using our own internal builds within the company. So keep reporting your issues in the forum, they will be on our list!

You will also get a chance to meet us at different conferences and events in both Europe and North America. For example, Officeline, our Norwegian reseller, has a full day of activities planned on the 1st of September in Oslo. Conny Ericsson has activities planned in September in Stockholm. We will be attending these events and we hope to see you there.

And finally, we will be looking at new ways to communicate as a company. We will be using our forum even more, this blog will grow, our own software will be used for seminars and support sessions and we have a few more surprises in store...

So, the Swedish summer is over and Marratech is ready for the autumn!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 04:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 07, 2005

Tip: Testing your own audio

Good day,

Did you know that a very quick and simple way to test your own audio is to have a private conversation with yourself? Nothing beats talking with yourself as you always get the best answers!

Anyhow, press the P next to you own name in the corridor and a private conversation window will show up. Press the phone handle icon and you will now be sending audio to yourself to check the quality of your microphone (if it is working at all e.g.).

A very good and simple thing to do before a meeting starts!

Take care!

Posted by peter at 12:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 28, 2005

Microsoft Vista (Longhorn)

Some people would say that I am an early adopter of new technology, I personally would say that that is an understatement :)

With the first official beta of the next version of Microsoft Windows, Vista/Longhorn I just had to install and test it with our software. The installation was very smooth and simple. I didn't even had to burn the DVD from the image but rather install it directly from a local hard drive. I did a dual-boot option to keep my old XP installation untouched.

The first thing I did after installing some drivers was to test Marratech (of course!!!). Unfortunately I wasn't very successful as the Java virtual machine didn't want to install. There wasn't any local virtual machine installed with Vista.

I also tried running an old installation (installed under XP) but the Java virtual machine crashed as soon as it needed to do network interaction. This was even before any Marratech native code was loaded.

I just guess we have to wait while before we can run Marratech under Vista.

Have fun!

Posted by peter at 12:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 22, 2005

Marratech is expanding

We are happy to announce that we are expanding the Luleå team with at least one test engineer. The person(s) will join our current development team and will have the main objective to enhance our current test environment and make our great products even better.

An add in Swedish can be found here and the final deadline is August 14.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me (contact information in the linked ad).

Posted by peter at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 30, 2005

Marratech Free - Flashback

Hi,

I would just like to write a blog entry on the reasoning behind Marratech Free, since it is of great importance for us.

1. Product accessibility

There are a few things in the web conferencing industry that I feel needs to change. What better way than to change yourself first?

There is a clash between internet culture and web conferencing providers.

Internet savvy users want to try software without contacting a sales agent first. This is true of people at home, IT departments doing evaluations and university users.

Web Conferencing tools are often sold as complex solutions and in a way that is reminiscent of video conferencing systems. High prices, complex setup (ISDN for breakfast anyone), etc...

I believe that the future lies in quick, small and nimble systems. Free is our first step towards making it simpler to use and test, more changes at Marratech are to come.

With Marratech Free, we want people to be able to try our solution out and use it without having to have to go through aggressive sales tactics.

If you try Marratech Free and you like it, great! If you like Marratech Free, but would like encryption, SIP / H.323 bridging, Multicast and all the functionality, contact us! Our resellers include very devoted and talented people that will help you in that step.

2. Competition

There are many free solutions out there. Some of these are "alternative" solutions as they do not come from traditional web conf / video conf providers.

iChat, Skype (both with up to five for video and audio) MSN Messenger, etc... These tools are all seeing wider and wider acceptance, and are slowly moving into the corporate space.

While each of these tools have clear usage scanerios and benefits, we believe that our Marratech Free will fit into many new, unthought of usage scenarios that will open doors to widespread usage.

Instead of letting those competitors creep up on us some more, we decide to not hide our product behind complex sales processes and push it as a great alternative. Cut the chat :-)

3. Product comparisons

During purchase decisions and when analysts do a table comparison that includes our software I always get the nagging feeling that the truth is not coming through.

For instance, there may be a check box for VOIP... but does it really work? Does it have higher than telephone quality? Does it have very low delays in the audio? We have tested a well known solution just last week (Brrrrrr....) and after a 20 minute meeting I had over 5 seconds of delay in our conversation. ( I have a dedicated 100 mbps internet connection BTW)

Another example is multi platform support. Some compared solutions may say they have multi platform support, when the truth is that only a subset of the functionality is available.

Marratech Free will enable people that are doing these evaluations to do much more indepth comparisons, instead of looking at pages full of check marks that may hide the truth.

I do note dare say our solution is perfect (it isn't, and if you want something fixed or improved, tell us!) and I hope this does not come off as arrogant... but these grids have been somewhat frustrating.

4. Quality Assurance

This one is kind of easy to explain. The more users we have, the more feedback we get, the higher the product quality we can achieve.

5. Marketing

This is probably the most important one. Marratech is not a known name. Throwing huge amounts of money in marketing is not possible for our company. We do not have the time to grow this by word of mouth, as the market is moving fast. By using the internet as our platform, and using Marratech Free as a tool for this, we hope to reach more people than ever before.

Well, I hope these ramblings explain a little bit more the thinking behind our Marratech Free initiative.

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 02:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

External Code - Thanks!!!

Hi from Norway, yes I am in Trondheim today but still online (as always). For those that doesn't know I live in Luleå in northern Sweden.

I wanted today to thank the open-source team that has made it possible for Marratech to include SIP functionality into Marratech. First of all the main part, JAIN-SIP from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST and then we use a few files from the SIP-COMMUNICATOR project headed Emil Ivov of the Network Research Team, Louis Pasteur University.

The full licence information for these are included with every Marratech Manager installation in the .../copyright/ directory.

JAIN-SIP is released under an "AS IS", in the public domain and SIP-COMMUNICATOR is released under the Apache Software License the following copyright statement:

Copyright (c) 2000 The Apache Software Foundation. All rights reserved.
In future releases we will make this information even more accessible and visible in the product interface.

I also have to mention that we by mistake included the SIP code in the Marratech 5.1 client as well, but it is not actually used in the client at all. It will of course be removed in the next release. In our Marratech MeetNow 5.1 client this is not the case.

Thanks all of you involved in these projects!

Take care from a warm Trondheim!

Posted by peter at 01:51 PM | Comments (1)

June 28, 2005

A vision: Tovah, the always present expert

Just wanted to share a small vision about the future usage of e-meetings with you.

Tovah, the always present expert

Tovah is working on the nano-satellite project where she has a very specific expertise regarding the propulsion system, her expertise also means that she is working as an advisor on other projects and due to that she has to be always available. Tovah also has a great interested in what is happening in the various projects she is involved in. Tovah further feels that she wants to be very close to her work colleagues to get a feeling of presence.

Tovah works from several places, from her desk at her main office, loaned offices at the other projects, from home and while on the move (both on business trips but also when she is moving within the same city, between offices and to ad from her home).

Tovah is using the Marratech Ubiquitous Human Communication, UHC system to be in touch with his various groups. When Tovah is on the move, she will get information pushed to her mobile device. This information can be anything related to the projects she is working on, including presence information of her colleagues with live video sent from each participant.

The Marratech UHC includes general positioning and context awareness so when Tovah reaches her main office her desktop computer will automatically start displaying the same information she saw on her mobile device and start sending video to show her presence to her colleagues.

Anton needs to get in contact with Tovah to ask her a couple of questions and he simply sends her a private chat message asking if Tovah is available for a voice communication. First they exchange a few messages about what this is related to and Tovah agrees to the voice conversation and uses her desktop for the audio communication, but after a while she realizes that this is going to take some time and she has to drive her daughter to soccer practice. Tovah now transfers the conversation to her mobile device and continues the communication with Henrik actually not noticing any difference in the audio. In the car, Tovah's car mounted camera will start sending a video stream of her to Anton automatically when Tovah seats himself behind the wheel. The car mounted display will show the documents and drawings Anton showed Tovah earlier during the conversation and the audio will once again be moved to the audio system mounted in the car.

Using the Marratech Ubiquitous Human Communication, UHC for rich communication it allows Tovah to be instantaneously available independently of where she is located at the moment and it will make her mobile allowing her to work from anywhere she wants and by that give her a higher life quality.

What do think? Is this something you would feel was beneficial in the future?

Posted by peter at 01:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 27, 2005

Marratech Free

The cat is out of the box! Marratech is going free! Yes you heard right! You can now have Marratech e-meetings for free!

Robin Good over at Kolabra.com has written a very good article about the new Marratech Freeware and of course you can read all about it on our new www.marratechfree.com site.

The catch is of course that you cannot get everything for free so you only get basic functionality. But hey, that is a HUGE step forward for the collaboration market.

Depending on which type of Manager you connect to, you will get different functionality, but it is still the same client so you do not have to install anything new just because you are jumping between various Managers.

Download it now and tell us what you think!!

Yipes, there is so much fun happening around Marratech right now, Marratech Free, Marratech Time-To-Meet via http://us.ttm.marratech.com/, Marratech Manager 3.1, Marratech 5.1 and so many other fun things I cannot tell you about hiding in the shadows. And I am so bad at keeping secrets.... How will this end?

Posted by peter at 09:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 26, 2005

Meeting on the porch

I just finished an e-meeting on the porch with a friend in Israel and now I am watching the sunset. The wonderful Marratech technology allows me (and you) to work basically from where ever we want and it also makes it much easier to work when ever we want. If I want to meet with somebody for a quick check about some issue then I do not have to go into the office, but rather do it from my home. Of course, now you think I could use the phone instead but that is not the same thing. Usually when meeting with colleagues, you want to share some information with them, such as documents and display something. That I cannot do over the phone.

Another thing that always amazes me is commuting. Why spend time commuting when you can start working later from home instead and still be early for work? I do that most days of the week and I enjoy it very much.

Do you have a story about e-meeting use you want to share with others via this blog? If you do, Email me! Peter.Parnes@marratech.com
By the way, it is my birthday today! :)

Posted by peter at 09:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 24, 2005

Mid Summer and Marratech 5.1 preview

God Morning!

Today is actually a holiday in Sweden, "midsommar" in Swedish meaning mid summer. Big party for everybody with very long traditions. And here I am working....

Anyhow, I promised you gossip and here is where you will get it first. We will soon release Marratech 5.1, but as a reward for those reading this blog you can try it out for yourself via MeetNow on one of our public Managers, http://us.emeetingportal.com/ and http://emeetingportal.com/.

I will not provide an official list of new features in 5.1 but there are some nice ones such as the ability to choose language of the interface in Marratech!

Take care in the sun!

Posted by peter at 09:42 AM | Comments (2)

June 23, 2005

Serge's first post

Not to be outdone by Peter, here is my first post. He snuck in his before mine :-)

The idea of blog felt like an answer in how to differentiate our company by communicating directly, without hiding behind the vail of white papers, press releases and user manuals.

I think the catalyst making this possible quickly is the discussions I had with Robin from http://www.kolabora.com/ After reading about some of his frustrations with corporate PR from companies in our industry, it all became clear to me. I thought to myself: We are a small company, let's do things in a way the big elefants can't!

The first proof of this is our user forum, on http://www.marratech.com/ With around 2500 articles, and titles showing up on our home page, we are showing that we mean business. We have users and resellers out there using our software in very important scenarios, dedicated enough to share experiences and help each other out. This was the result of another small hint by Luigi, which has resulted in much more forum participation.

It is not always fun to have tough headlines showing up automatically on our home page, some saying: "It does not work", or "I missed a meeting". But guests that look in our forum closely will see a dedicated staff that has solved most problems in a very timely fashion. I believe this inspires confidence in our team.

Marratech is in an exciting position. With this blog, I hope to be able to take up subjects like why voice-over-TCP is just not adapted to real time collaboration (versus UDP), design decisions and pin point the things that are just impossible to convey in evaluation grids when looking at the market.

I will also try to talk a little bit about the challenges in developing computer based communication tools, like our favorite pastimes of upgrading drivers and configuring pesky firewalls that were designed on mars.

So, join us for the ride, after 7 years, I can truly say it is only beginning!

Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2005

Marratech Blog

Hi and welcome to the Marratech blog! Here we will share Marratech related information with you in a more relaxed manner than on our main website, www.marratech.com. Hopefully we might give you some interesting gossip about new functionality to come.

Just to have something to say today I can mention that we released a new press release yesterday, "Marratech Brings Real-Time Collaboration to United States Business and Education Users".

On another note, I can mention that we have been working on an EU-project proposal with about 15 partners all over Europe and Israel. We have our first physical writing meeting in Trondheim next week and up to now we have had 3 formal online meetings and a number of informal online meetings. Most people have joined with Marratech MeetNow and some have joined via phone via our SIP-phone gateway functionality. We had the third meeting today and it worked verywell! Of course not all have learned to use all the features of the Marratech client. I should say that we are doing this together with the Media Technology research group at Luleå University of Technology.

The future looks so bright I have to wear shades! Take care!

Posted by peter at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)