Video Mail

If you choose to leave a video message, you can click to record a video clip and leave it in a GlowPoint-served mailbox. The recipient receives an e-mail notification of the video message. It shows up in e-mail as a thumbnail jpeg with an HTTP link to GlowPoints password-protected video mail server. It can be played through the PC, using Windows Media, or from a video endpoint. Personalized outgoing greetings, similarly, can be video-recorded by subscribers, just as we personalize our greeting on network-hosted voice mail. Trachtenberg sees Video Call Assistant not only as a way to demystify uncompleted video calls, but as a branding opportunity. It puts a name and a face on GlowPoint, in a more pervasive way than James Earl Jones has done for Verizon. He further sees this as a wholesaling opportunity to other carriers whod like to be "GlowPoint-enabled." These wholesale customers might choose their own operator personalities and logos, he says. GlowPoints Radvision video gatekeepers are used to register IP endpoints to specific DID numbers and allocate bandwidth along GlowPoints network of PRI (primary rate interface) lines to support on-demand conferencing. MCU equipment comes from Polycom and Tandberg. What are Microsofts plans in the VOIP space? Click here to read more. Video Call Assistant is free for all GlowPoint subscribers. Video Call Mailbox is offered to subscribers for a 45-day free trial, and for an additional $19.99 per month thereafter. Video callers outside GlowPoints system still will see the Video Call Assistant videos, if they call in through GlowPoint gateways. At the low end, GlowPoint supplies a small business with a DSL connection of guaranteed 512 K bandwidth, enough for one video call at a time, for $499 a month. You can up this to T-1 emulation, at 1.2 meg, supporting as many as three simultaneous video calls (with three DID numbers) at 384 kbps, for $799 per month. Technology Editor Ellen Muraskin can be reached at Ellen_Muraskin@ziffdavis.com. She has been observing and illuminating the murky intersection of computer intelligence and telephony since 1993. She reaches for her VOIP line when the rain makes her POTS line buzz. Check out eWEEK.coms VOIP & Telephony Center at http://voip.eweek.com for the latest news, views and analysis on voice over IP and telephony.