Streaming Media - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 31) those who need full- or near-full-motion frame rates (including artists, architects, game designers, etc.), have not been able to use collaborative computing tools. To address the needs of the creative class and content producers, who often collaborate in the creation of their products much more than the typical enterprise or business customer does, companies such as Adobe and TechSmith are acquiring or creating products for this market. These tools, designed to work on any machine, not only those connected to a rich media recorder, address high-frame rate screen captures as well as collaborative computing. An example from TechSmith is SnagIt, a byproduct of the Camtasia and EnSharpen high-resolution, highmotion codecs that TechSmith has developed over the years. It is designed for screen captures but has slowly been finding its way into other products, such as Anystream Apreso. Adobe has Captivate, a product designed for educators to capture screens for ondemand playback, and it has Visual Communicator 3, which provides live Flash Video streaming capabilities. (See Ron Miller’s review of Captivate, pp. 82–84, and Jan Ozer’s review of Camtasia, pp. 86–91.) While Adobe hasn’t released Captivate as a collaborative tool yet, and may have no plans to do so, it has at least begun trending toward software-as-a-service models with its online version of Premiere and the online version of Photoshop it demoed at MAX 2007 in October. It’s not such a hard leap, then, to see products from Accordent, SonicFoundry, and Adobe becoming true collaborative computing tools. Each would fit its own key niche of usage cases, and each might have key industries adopt their products (or services, if Adobe continues its trend toward the service model), but these enhanced video communication tools and the tools that go along with them, such as metadata and keyword search functions, could actually move collaborative computing past the issues of incrementally expanding on 10-year-old innovations and instead move into full collaborative models that address anytime-anywhere computing that is as functional on corporate intranets as it is on the laptop or mobile phone of the corporate road-warrior. Who knows; it might even make your intrafamily remote tech support a little easier as you help your father figure out the best transition to use for the newest video slideshow he’s creating from your children’s pictures. Tim Siglin (articles@braintrustglobal.com) is an analyst and co-founder of Transitions, Inc., a consulting firm based in Kingsport, Tenn. Comments? Email us at letters@streamingmedia.com, or check the masthead for other ways to contact us. Think Fast. ONLINE LEARNING: Textbook Strategies for Video Education Each summer, Streaming Media releases its annual supplemental issue, the Streaming Media White Paper. This year's topic, “Online Learning: Textbook Strategies for Video Education,” addresses the fast-moving world of academic and corporate training delivery strategies. We’ll give you a master class on what is making the grade for the most advanced, efficient, and cost-effective ways to teach and learn online. When you subscribe to Streaming Media magazine, we'll mail you the White Paper, too—for free. StreamingMedia.com/WhitePapers Subscribe at: www.streamingmedia.com/magazine/ ESTABLISHED 1998 Download other White Papers at: www.streamingmedia.com/whitepapers WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 31 http://StreamingMedia.com/WhitePapers http://www.streamingmedia.com/magazine/ http://www.streamingmedia.com/whitepapers http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.