Another absolutely huge week has come and gone in the field of Web-based real-time communications (WebRTC), and as such, a wide variety of news topics has emerged to match. We took a look at a lot of exciting developments in the field this week, so with the coming of the weekend, let's take a few moments to settle in, relax, and run down the high points of the week that was in WebRTC.
First, Mozilla--who is rapidly shaping up to be one of the major players in WebRTC, gave us all a better look at the future of WebRTC, bringing a demonstration to the recently-concluded Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona involving users using desktop platforms and mobile devices simultaneously to not only carry on a WebRTC call, but also transfer files during the call. While Mozilla had some help in the demonstration thanks to Ericsson, it was still an impressive look at just what may be in the future for WebRTC.
Next came a look at a growing number of start-ups in the field of WebRTC, and the idea of a "Skype killer" for the field. Since there's still quite a bit of room in the field, that's giving rise to several new software codecs, among other things, that are still trying to be settled on as different programs and platforms find that ideal combination of usability and battery consumption to make the best efficiency possible. But with major names like Skype and Google in play, that's putting some pressure on the newcomers, who are already starting to look not at killing Skype, but rather improving the overall experience.
Pervasip weighed in with some happy news, having executed a set of agreements designed to both refinance and eliminate a large portion of outstanding debt, including the immediate elimination of $5 million in debt to its senior secured lender. With the retirement of a large amount of debt, Pervasip can start looking more to future development and improving the product lines of both itself and its direct subsidiary, VoX Communications.
Then, Magor Communications brought in news of its own with a new visual collaboration tool based heavily on the advances of WebRTC, which will allow almost any user to, with their Web browser, simply proceed to a Magor endpoint with a guest URL and kick off a real-time visual collaboration session all through that browser. Magor showed off this technology at TeleSpan's eighth annual Future of Conferencing Workshop, and it certainly showed off the overall capability of WebRTC, as well as Magor's own slant on the medium, nicely.
Finally, the Hypervoice Consortium stepped in with a bit of news, bringing in two new founding members. The Hypervoice Consortium has only been officially on the record since November, but it's been busy in the intervening time, bringing together Telefonica Digital, Voxeo Labs, Martin Geddes Consulting, and HarQen to its ranks. Now, the Hypervoice Consortium has recently added InterDigital and Ericsson for a total of six founding members. Hypervoice is a service that converts voice communications to Web objects, making them easier to work overall.
It was another huge week in WebRTC, with moves being made, new products emerging, and companies looking to poise themselves for big new growth opportunities. That means a lot of news is to be had in the field, and our global online community brought in plenty of it.
