Tag Archives: Zoom

Jabra Unveils PanaCast 50 Video Bar System Empowering Hybrid Work

October 10, 2023 Nur Jeevan Leave a comment

With the world struggling to find the balance between working remotely and in the office, hybrid work is emerging as the way of the future. However, organizations and enterprises are finding solutions to empower collaboration and push productivity further. According to a report by Jabra, a staggering 80% of meetings now happen either fully remotely or in a hybrid fashion. Yet, 37% of employees often feel excluded during these hybrid meetings. This highlights the challenges that accompany the transition to hybrid work arrangements.

To help with this conundrum, Jabra has introduced the PanaCast 50 Video Bar System (VBS). This system is now coming to Malaysia, as part of its PanaCast 50 solution portfolio designed for small to medium-sized meeting rooms.

The PanaCast 50 Video Bar System: Your Ultimate Meeting Companion

The Jabra PanaCast 50 Video Bar System is a comprehensive solution that includes an Android-based compute unit, state-of-the-art System-on-a-Chip (SoC), speakers, microphones, a video camera, and interfaces for network and display, ensuring a hassle-free setup.

One of the standout features is its 10.1-inch touch controller that allows users to manage their meeting experience with a few taps before diving into important discussions. The system, built on top of Android, seamlessly runs Microsoft Teams Rooms or Zoom Rooms. It also supports most major conferencing platforms.

The PanaCast 50 differentiates itself with an immersive meeting experience. It comes equipped with a Panoramic 4K multi-camera that offers a 180° field-of-view. The system can do this thanks to the onboard AI which stitches the images from the three camera sensors to create lifelike representations of all meeting attendees in the room.

The system boasts four powerful speakers in a zero-vibration stereo setup to help with crystal-clear audio quality. This is further complemented by a total of eight professional-grade microphones featuring voice detection and intelligent algorithms that help tune out residual noise.

The PanaCast 50 also offers Intelligent Meeting Room Experiences, which include the Virtual Director, Intelligent Zoom, and Dynamic Composition. These features engage remote participants, enhancing the overall meeting experience. It even comes with an AI-powered feature set that allows the system to highlight and focus on people presenting and speaking even in crowded meeting rooms.

Pricing and Availability

The PanaCast 50 Video Bar System is now available in Malaysia for RM26,070.00.

Accessories, Android, Lifestyle, Mobile, News

Android Auto Now Gives You Weather Updates

September 14, 2023 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

Google’s Android Auto has been getting constant updates for a while now and is getting the attention it finally deserves. Android Auto has been a blessing for plenty of Android users in their cars. With every update, they just get better, more useful, and even more relevant to drivers today than ever before. You can use Google Assistant seamlessly in your car, for example. You can also reply to text messages via Android Auto, obviously via voice activation. In one of their latest updates, the interface now allows you to spread the screen out in multiple windows with Google Maps or Waze taking up most of the real estate while allowing another app like YouTube Music, Tidal, or Spotify in a smaller window. Even your notification can get its own window in the latest interface.

Copy of 1. Hero Asset 2096x1182 — Source: Google

In their latest update, Google is looking to make Android Auto a better journey companion than before by bringing more apps into the Android Auto Ecosystem. For those that are always on-the-go but can never get away from their smartphones for work, Google is bringing Zoom and WebEx into Android Auto for a more seamless video call experience even when you are stuck in a terrible traffic jam. For the long-drawn-out standstill traffic, they are also bringing Prime Video into the fold. Best of all though, for better journey planning, they are bringing weather updates via The Weather Channel app into Android Auto.

The Weather Channel app has been the most popular weather prediction app on Android devices worldwide. It is only natural to start bringing the app into Android Auto for the purpose of journey planning. The Android Auto version of the app will operate a little differently from the smartphone app though. There are still some similarities like push weather updates, but now it is more catered toward your specific journeys. It updates the users of incoming bad weather, for example, just so that you can either plan around the traffic build up, or brace for extended journey times. The Android Auto app also can offer hourly forecasts, follow-me alerting, and Trip View radar that allows you to be your own F1 race engineer watching out for rain on your journey.

Copy of 2. Android Auto commsapps — Source: Google

The updates are being rolled out to Android Auto units by select manufacturers currently and will roll out to other users following the select manufacturers. They are also rolling out digital key support in select regions for select manufacturers and models. Of course, while that nifty feature allows you to lock and unlock your car via your smartphone, you want to keep in mind that it will only work if your care comes natively with Android Auto. More information on the latest updates on Android Auto can be found on their website.

Business, Lifestyle, News

Zoom Acquires KITeS, a Real-Time Translation AI

June 30, 2021 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

Zoom just made an announcement earlier today that they will be acquiring Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions (KITeS). While an acquisition of another firm may not sound like much, this is a significant acquisition for Zoom. This acquisition should improve the experience and the interface that is Zoom.

Zoom has been an immensely popular platform since its rise in the recent pandemic situation. In the situation that is the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us are driven to work-from-home measures. That also means that communication with your colleagues and friends are limited to phone calls, online chat platforms, mobile text messaging, and video calls for more intimacy. Hence, the boom in Zoom’s popularity last year.

The company has also been facing plenty of challenges and criticisms when it comes to its user friendliness and, most of all, the platform’s overall security. Of course, the ever so popular video conferencing solutions provider responded to all the security issues pointed out by its users as swiftly as they can. Most of the issues have been rectified, according to Zoom.

The pursuit to the best video conferencing experience is a never ending one for the likes of Zoom though. Recently, Cisco’s Webex have been updated with new interfaces and features. One of the includes a live transcription and even instant highlights of the video call with the help of a clever integrated Artificial Intelligence (AI).

KITeS is a developer of a real-time translation and transcription software, or AI. In some ways, the technology that KITeS is working on mimics the capabilities that Google wants for its Google Translate software except that everything is sort of integrated. At the same time, the technology does sound promising for companies like Zoom.

Zoom already has their own real-time transcription algorithm integrated within Zoom though. The only issue with the real-time transcription function in Zoom is that it only works with English and no other languages. That is the problem that Zoom’s latest acquisition looks to solve.

With the acquisition of KITeS, Zoom hopes to integrate their clever AI into their video conferencing app to ensure that real-time transcriptions are more accurate than before. On top of that Zoom hopes that the AI would also allow real-time translations from other languages to eliminate the language barriers altogether in international video conferencing.

Zoom did not provide a timeline to when the said functions would make it to Zoom. We also know that Zoom will not be the only video conferencing solutions provider that is looking to integrate more accurate real-time transcription and translation functions in their app. Platforms like Google Meets has already integrated real-time translations into the platform thanks to their clever Google Translate. Microsoft’s Translate algorithm is also integrated into Microsoft Teams, if you are wondering.

Zoom is available for free on all major computing and mobile platforms in the world. Of course, free membership also means limited access to Zoom’s functions. Free membership also means that your video calls are only limited to 40 minutes at a time. Paid subscriptions range from US$ 14.99 a month to US$ 19.99 a month with differing access to features in Zoom. You can find more information on Zoom in their https://zoom.us/.

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