Marratech is installed and in use at SÄS, making us proud to be a contributing factor in helping them reach their environmental goals for 2006 and the future.

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.

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?

Read more at: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/070109-2851.asp

As you may know, my colleague and Marratech co-founder Peter Parnes also works with the Media Technology group at the Lulea University of Technology.

Mikael Drugge, PhD. has worked together with Peter Parnes at LTU for many years and is now lending us a strong hand at Marratech. Yesterday, Mikael was awarded his PhD. in front of an international jury. You can read his thesis here.

While I could not attend his presentation, the grapevine says that he showed no signs of being nervous and did a very good presentation. Well done!

And on the subject of PhDs, I forgot to mention that our former colleague, Johan Kristiansson also became Johan Kristiansson, PhD. on November 11th under the guidance of Peter Parnes as well. Congratulations Johan!

You can read Johan's thesis here.

I have had the pleasure to work with Johan and am just getting to know Mikael. They are both focused, down to earth hard working people. The kind of people that deserve the PhD. title, while not letting it get to their heads.

In fact, you could say that of a lot of our research "cousins" that are now PhDs.

Good work Peter!

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!

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!

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.

Delegates will gather at university "hubs" across the world to view speakers on big screens - 36 are so far expected in Manchester and about 50 in Tallinn, Estonia, as well as groups in up to 15 other venues linked to the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), from San Diego, California, to Zhejiang in China. But others will also be able to watch proceedings from laptops on their kitchen tables and even interrupt, so long as they have a microphone. This will be made possible through a combination of access-grid technology and video conferencing in the university hubs and Marratech technology for desktops.

Full article follows:

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

Peter Parnes showed us the Marratech enabled auditoriums and classrooms at the Lulea Technical University.

My jaw just dropped.

I do not know how to best describe it, other than to describe it via bullets.

• Every room has a raised floor for cables
  
• Every room is acoustically treated.
  
• Every table has a shielded, button enabled speaker microphone.
  
• A motion detector rail in the ceiling feels where the presenter is, making the camera follow the presenter automatically.
  
• A document camera, hidden in the ceiling, can be used to show documents.
  
• When a classroom attendee uses one of the table microphones, the main camera automatically focuses on the person talking.
  
• Every room has a computer dedicated for the teacher / presenter slide and document camera while the room has it's own computer for ensuring the video and audio from the room never gets interrupted.
  
• The first table in the class room has a plasma screen facing toward the teacher, so he / she do not need to turn around to view the material.
  
• 4 quiet projectors show the video from the network, the whiteboard, the document camera, etc... Controlled by the teacher.
  
• All is controlled from a profile based touch screen system. So a teacher's profile is kept and activated when he / she logs in.
  
• Power and network for all the attendees and the presenter built into the tables.
  
• 6 such rooms are now being used, ranging from a small room to large auditoriums. Projectors are swapped for very large plasma screens in the smaller rooms.
  
• All turned off or on by a button.
  
• All the rooms are controlled and assisted from a central control station where the Marratech client software is installed, the client computer sending all the video and audio from the classroom is controlled from there. (Long analog connections from the classroom to the computer)
  
• more more more...
  

In the 10 years I have worked with this stuff, I have seen many attempts at building such rooms, always OK, but never lived up to the possibilities of our software. It was always a set of compromises that left a lot to be desired. Less a question of effort and more a question of what was possible technically.

The setup being used beats the best VC enabled rooms to the ground. I have not been this surprised for a long time. The best part is, the system just worked. It was simple to use, it just worked.

I lift my hat very high to everyone (companies, individuals) involved in this. What an accomplishement!

I hope to be able to post pictures and a small video clip in the coming weeks and more details.

Ten years ago, I left Canada for the Lulea University because of how truly ahead this university was in terms of technology adoption, the quality of teaching and the absence of heavy tradition that impedes innovation. Yesterday, it confirmed to me that it still is the case.

I was informed of this project a while back through a reseller and it fell silent... so the silence for once meant a delivery :-)

The details are here. Thank you to the ATutor people for this module... always nice to see a Canadian effort link up to Marratech!

Thanks to the Marratech Manager J2EE API and some specific H.323 video conferencing development work (E.164 and E.164 dial in), Marratech is now being deployed for e-learning across the Glow network, accessible to 800 000 students and teachers in 2008.