A week long examination of the present and future of technology is coming to Toronto starting next Monday. Net Change week is being held by SiG@MaRS from June 7th to the 11th.

This unique conference will highlight the intersection between social change and technology, the only event of its kind in North America.

Some 2000 people are estimated to be attending the five day event. If you’re unable to partake in person though, there’s some good news – this is the second year for the conference but the first time that we at ePresence will be able to help bring it to the rest of the world. You can check out live webcasts on key events all throughout the week at http://www.netchangeweek.ca.

While Net Change week will emphasize Toronto’s role at the leading edge of social and technological change, the conference will also address the wider impacts of the web. One panel discussion will attempt to map out the future of the web and its expanding role in our lives. To get to the future, however, one must survive the present. Here another panel discussion including Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, will delve into shady side of the net – examining how secure our information really is, our susceptibility to cyber-attacks and much more.

More information about those discussions along with the many others can be found again at http://www.netchangeweek.ca.

ePresence on iPhone?

It didn’t take too long before another round of the media format war begun.  After pushing Windows Media, Real and QuickTime off the Web, Adobe established a de-facto monopoly in this market.  We waited for two more years and then, after learning that non-Flash presentations are no longer produced by vast majority of our customers, we decided to retire the legacy encoders and focus our efforts on user experience, building the UI around Flash.  I must say that after releasing Flash-based ePresence v.6 we are getting nothing but positive feedback. The video quality has improved dramatically, the UI got much faster and sleeker, and a single encoder Capture application became more reliable and user friendly.

Of course, it would be foolish to expect that Adobe’s competitors would just let Flash dominate without a fight. Apple has made it very clear that Flash will never play on their mobile devices. Google has introduced non-Flash version of YouTube (now in beta) and also promised a new video codec (VP8) for Chrome soon.  Microsoft has endorsed h.264 support for the future version of IE, and, of course, SilverLight. Clearly, these companies will try to join the efforts around HTML5 and change the situation.

How does this affect the ePresence development roadmap? Well, we have been in similar situations before, when IE was fighting Netscape, .NET tried to beat Java, Windows Media pushed away Real, etc.  We have managed to deliver a reliable multi-channel presentation capture solution before and we will definitely succeed in the future to bring a product that just works, making the competition among technology vendors transparent to our customers.  Therefore,  we recently made a decision to support HTML5 in the future. We are also working on supporting Apple mobile devices. We are determined to stay and deliver, whether there is a format war or peace.

Peter Wolf, CEO.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

We are very excited to announce the immediate availability of a new “Premium” Hosting plan for heavy users, as well as a significant bandwidth quota increase for all existing subscription plans.

Starting today,  bandwidth quotas are doubled for Starter Hosting 1 year plans and tripled for Standard Hosting 1 year plans — both for new and existing customer plans.  The following changes are taken into effect:

• Starter Hosting: 10 GB of free traffic and 50 GB of free storage – $75/month
• Standard Hosting: 30 GB of free traffic and 100 GB of free storage – $100/month
• Premium Hosting: 100 GB of free traffic and 200 GB of free storage – $200/month

As you know, we are constantly working to drive our costs down and become more operationally efficient. As a result, we hope more customers will benefit from our new hosting options.  Please see the pricing section on our website for more information.

Thank you, as always, for your support.

ePresence Services Team

I’m happy to report that ePresence 6 has been a big success. Most of our users have upgraded and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. There are some quantitative measures such as tech support request ratio and usage stats that also suggest that ePresence 6 demonstrates improvements in both usability and reliability.

ePresence Uploader

Because of the improvements we’ve made to the reliability of streaming, recording, and publishing in ePresence, our team has had a chance to start development on some useful tools and secondary features that many of our customers have requested in the past.

Now in Beta: ePresence Uploader

This application allows you to publish any FLV or MP4 (H.264) video to your ePresence site. It is currently in beta, free for everyone with an ePresence server or hosting subscription, and is available for download here. The publishing process is very straight-forward:  select the video file, give it the title, specify the layout and folder and click Publish.  Easy!

New to ePresence 6: PPT upload to Producer

Since version 6, our post-production tool, ePresence Producer, has been moved online and now works as an ePresence Server extension in the admin area of the site. In the latest micro-release of our Server software, we have added the ability to upload PowerPoint files directly to ePresence Producer. Along with the new Uploader application, this allows you to manually create rich media presentations with your own video synchronized with any PowerPoint presentation.

Of course, ePresence Capture provides the easiest way to make online rich media presentations, but with the combination of Uploader and Producer, it’s now possible to create presentations from scratch, using any video you may have. This feature is now available free for all customers on ePresence 6.0 with current support coverage.

Sneak Peak: ePresence Exporter

This application will allow you to convert rich media presentations to flat MP4 videos. This opens up a number of new options for content distribution, such as:

• Upload your presentation to 3rd party video sites such as YouTube.
• Create RSS (podcast) feeds
• Create DVDs
• Play your presentations back on mobile devices, such as the iPhone

This is still in the very early stages of development, but if you own an ePresence Capture Station, and are interested in this feature, let us know, and we will be sure to include you once the development reaches beta. We plan on releasing this application free to all of our customers.

I hope you’re as excited as we are about the current and upcoming developments!

Peter Wolf

See ePresence 6.0 in Action

Please join us online at www.sig.uwaterloo.ca beginning Wednesday, January 27 at 7PM EST (GMT-5), to watch the live webcast of the Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation featuring Adam Kahane.

The team at ePresence is delighted to be working with SiG@Waterloo to deliver this highly anticipated lecture to hundreds of viewers online.

An internationally acclaimed social innovator, once praised by South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Adam Kahane will deliver this year’s Waterloo Lecture on Social Innovation and will present new ideas on how to achieve significant, durable social change for pressing and increasingly complex social problems. In the lecture, Kahane will draw on his extensive experience working with business, government, and civil society leaders from around the world to help them address their toughest challenges. The lecture, entitled “Power & Love”, will explore the role that these seemingly opposing forces play in affecting positive social change.

Download the Brochure

The ePresence team is very happy to announce the release of ePresence 6.0.

This release is focused on the end users’ experience as well as the UI improvements for the event producers. The list of fixes and improvements is long, but here we’ll mention just a few important ones:

• The Presentation Player has been re-designed using Adobe Flex technology. In addition to the look being completely refreshed for 2010, there are also some exciting new features. Users can watch presentations in full screen, switch between different layouts, and share it with others in a variety of ways. Embedding live and on-demand presentations to any 3rd party web site or CMS has never been easier. Any presentation can be embedded in practically any size.
• Screen capture in ePresence has been re-developed from the ground up. Whether the presenter is simply playing a simple PowerPoint animation, or showing a full-screen DVD, ePresence 6 will do a better job capturing dynamic content than ever before. A new feature in this version is a new “Screencast” mode, specifically designed for software demos. In this mode, the presenter’s audio is embedded into the screen video, ensuring perfect synchronization at all times, both live and on-demand.
• Our Capture Station software has been completely re-designed. This software is built around the H.264 video codec, for both the camera and presenter’s screen, ensuring the highest quality media playback at the lowest possible bandwidth requirements.
• ePresence Producer has been moved from the Capture Station to the Web. The administrator can now edit slide titles and chapters, move them around, trim the start- and end-times of the video, and revert to previous versions. It is no longer necessary to do all of the post-production before publication – our new online tool can be used at anytime.
• Scalability was another focus in 6.0. A lot of features have been optimized for deployment on Cloud Computing infrastructures, which enables the support of many thousands of concurrent connections.

We hope you’ll enjoy the beauty, ease and reliability of ePresence 6.0.

One of the new features of ePresence 6.0 is Screencast mode, which is optimized for software demos and audio-only presentations. It is possible to record a local laptop screen as well as an external laptop screen using VGA output. We used this feature to record a little demo so you can get an idea of how this new feature works. Please hit Play button and enjoy the show

We have some exciting developments planned in the new year, including a redesign of our Capture Station software, a new Flash-based webcast viewing interface, and the ability to edit presentations on the web!

Major Features

ePresence 6.0 is scheduled for release in January 2010. It includes many new and exciting features, such as:

• Complete redesign of our Capture Station software
• Updated webcast viewing interface: 100% Flash-based with improved UI, scalability, and new ability for the webcast viewer to switch between viewing modes (video/PPT/both)
• Better embedding – customizable, lightweight, just like YouTube – for live and on-demand presentations
• New screencast mode for the creation of high-quality software demos
• Improved commenting/sharing system for presentations
• New, easy to use web-based presentation editor

Preview Screenshots

On-Demand Viewing UI

A labeled diagram of new UI

Advanced search & Navigation includes a table of contents (which follows the presentation progress) and search. The view can also be switched in different ways – for instance, to video-only mode.

The UI controls automatically hide when the user is done interacting

Live Viewing UI

Watching a live presentation with a newly designed chat

The new chat includes tabbed private messaging

Commenting / Sharing

Commenting has been re-designed, and is much easier for users to access

Support for AddThis, a popular link sharing service – email or share the presentation with your favourite social networks!

Screencasting

New H.264 screencast includes an intelligent window tracking mode, which minimizes bandwidth requirements and improves readability

What an incredible event… Over 1000 people joined us for the live webcast of TEDxToronto, sponsored by ING DIRECT Canada – some from their homes and workplaces, others viewing at one of the 13 webcast satellite sites across Canada (including one at our home in the Knowledge Media Design Institute). We’re just delighted we could be a part of it.

(See more screenshots on our Flickr photostream.)

We received a lot of great feedback yesterday regarding the webcast production quality, consistency in the streaming video delivery, and the look of our soon-to-be new Flash templates. The whole team is still beaming about it here at the office!

A huge thanks to Tyler Turnbull, Paul Crowe, and the rest of the TEDxTO committee for letting us take part in this incredible, inspiring first TEDx event in Toronto. Tyler and Paul gave us an amazing production team to work with. We’re indebted to Venture Communications for ensuring our webcast needs were accommodated, and the Videoscope production crew for giving us the best sound and camera switching a webcast audience could ask for.

For those who were inquiring as to how we managed to deliver the webcast stream consistently throughout the day, stay tuned for a “behind the scenes” blog post soon!

Missed the live webcast?

Keep a look out at TEDxTO.com in the coming weeks for finalized stats and news of video archives.

Also be sure to check out:

• Official TEDxTO Flickr photostream for great photos taken at the live event at Theatre Passe Muraille (TPM).
• Official TEDxTO live event coverage
• Event recap by Torontoist: The Day TEDxTO Took Over

We’re excited to announce that the Knowledge Media Design Institute (home of the ePresence Lab) will be hosting one of the live webcast meet-ups for TEDxToronto. Please join us at KMDI on Thursday September 10, from 12:00pm to 7:00pm, at the University of Toronto’s Bahen Centre (Room 7256) for the live webcast.

RSVP at: http://kmditedxto.eventbrite.com. Drop-ins welcome!

What is TEDx?

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx – local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

What is TEDxTO?

TEDxToronto (TEDxTO) was established by an enthusiastic group of volunteers based in Toronto who are passionate about TED and generating “Ideas Worth Spreading”. The theme of TEDxTO is “What’s Next?” We see it as a challenge: what are the new and as-of-yet undiscovered ideas, projects, and people that will shape the future of our city, and ultimately the world? The event includes:

• 13 speakers (See speaker bios on TEDxTO.com for full information)
• 3 TED Videos
• 2 networking breaks
• Toronto’s 1st TEDxTO After-Party
• 130+ live attendees with a webcast of approx. 3500 connections.
• Visit TEDxTO.COM for more information.

The main event will be held at the Theatre Passe-Muraille. Because space and tickets are limited, we are hosting a live webcast of the event at KMDI.

Sneak Preview of New Templates

Watching the TEDxTO live webcast will also give everyone a sneak preview of new templates that are coming in ePresence 5.1. These new templates are developed entirely in Flash, which gives us some opportunities to do some neat things, like give the user the ability to change how they’d like to view the webcast, as well as offer:

• Improved UI and customizability
• Improved scalability
• Better embedding — customizable, lightweight, just like YouTube.

If you’re attending  the TEDxTO live webcast on September 10, feel free to let us know what you think!