Digital Common Sense

I’m cross posting this here from my orginal post on the Realtime VoIP Conversation.

Regular readers know by now that while it isn’t an application that has depth of enterprise penetration yet, I’m  one of SightSpeed’s biggest supporters. You should know that support comes as a user and customer and friend. I don’t have any business relations or financial relationship with SightSpeed. But I talk to them often and manage to stay pretty close to what they’re doing. In the morning they’re going to send a press release out about version 5.0, which will be available tomorrow. I haven’t seen the new version yet, but I have been using the 4.6 release that provided a lot of the foundation work for 5.0. If you haven’t looked at SightSpeed lately, you’ve missed some dramatic improvements in the last two releases, and this 5.0 release will be the biggest leap yet.

I’ll be watching the servers tomorrow to get upgraded as soon as it’s available, and I’ll be looking for some of my Speed-list contacts online to see just how good this new release is.

Oh, and while it won’t go out to the world at large until tomorrow morning, here’s the press release scoop.

(Berkeley, Calif.—July 26, 2006) On Wednesday, July 26 at 9 p.m. (PDT), SightSpeed, the leading provider of free and premium personal video services over the Internet, will unveil the latest version of its award winning personal video services with the debut of SightSpeed 5.0.

With 5.0, SightSpeed will offer the highest quality and first complete suite of easy-to-use personal video services that are delivered over the Internet for both Windows PCs and Macintosh personal computers and are interoperable between both.

SightSpeed Voice Only Calling (VoIP)
In addition to significant enhancements to its award winning video communications services, SightSpeed 5.0 adds all new PSTN Out and In-calling features, giving SightSpeed users the ability to make and receive great quality voice calls to and from regular telephones and cell phones at competitive rates. SightSpeed 5.0 also introduces free and unlimited PC to PC voice-only calling which, as do all of SightSpeed’s award winning features, works cross platform between Macs and PCs. With 5.0, SightSpeed’s real-time communications suite is complete with the best quality video and voice over IP (VVoIP), voice over IP (VoIP) and text (IM) solution.

SightSpeedTV
SightSpeed 5.0 also introduces a new breakthrough extension of its personal video services with SightSpeedTV, a revolutionary place shifting television viewing feature that gives users with a TV capture card the ability to watch their TV anywhere in the world on their PC or Mac for personal use. SightSpeedTV requires no additional hardware and comes complete with an intuitive “remote control” interface, enabling true channel surfing. SightSpeedTV will be introduced as a beta feature that is available for free to all SightSpeed users.

Significantly Enhanced Video
While fleshing out its overall suite of best in class personal video services, SightSpeed 5.0 stays true to the company’s central mission of providing the world’s best free Internet video communications services. SightSpeed adds a new enhanced video codec to 5.0 and, once again, raises the bar for video calling and makes the best even better. Users of SightSpeed 5.0 will immediately see significantly enhanced video clarity across all network conditions, while continuing to experience full 30 frames per second video, no latency, and perfect synch of video and voice unmatched by any other service.

“The first thing that will strike 5.0 users will be the amazing video quality and clarity delivered by our new enhanced video codec,” said SightSpeed’s CEO, Peter Csathy.

Overall Usability Improvements
Recognizing the importance of its fast-growing Mac user base, SightSpeed 5.0 places the Mac user experience at true parity with the PC experience. SightSpeed 5.0 also adds important enhancements to its video blogging capabilities with extended two minute video recording time; and to overall ease of use, including support for portable devices and the introduction of “My SightSpeed” click-to-call buttons that can be easily placed in blogs, websites and emails.

“With SightSpeed 5.0, our goal was to delight our users by offering the world’s first complete suite of personal video services available anywhere, giving them the best and easiest to use one-stop communications and content creation and publishing solution, as well as new SightSpeedTV,” said Csathy. “This true Web 2.0 mash up shows that imagination, innovation and fresh ideas are central to both our company’s culture and our product strategy.”

“SightSpeed always has led the pack in video communications over the Internet, and delivering best-in-class video experiences always will be central to the SightSpeed brand and to what we do as a company,” added Csathy. “With SightSpeed 5.0, we have strengthened our leadership position by applying our unique expertise and technology to significantly enhance and extend our personal video services. Expect to see more innovation in the future as we give our users the ability to experience SightSpeed more richly beyond their desktops, in their living rooms, and in the mobile world.”

About SightSpeed Inc.
SightSpeed offers consumers and small businesses the most complete and compelling suite of personal video services over the Internet. 

SightSpeed’s award-winning free and premium services include best in class video and voice over IP (VVoIP), voice over IP (VoIP), and text messaging (IM). SightSpeed offers advanced community features, including a public directory and an easy-to-use video creation platform that gives users the ability to record and publish original user-generated content to blogs, websites and emails. SightSpeed also offers SightSpeedTV place-shifting features, as well as support for mobile personal video. SightSpeed’s suite of industry-leading video services offers unique opportunities for video-enabled advertising and e-commerce, in addition to communications, content creation and publishing.

Founded in 2001 and based in Berkeley, California, SightSpeed is a privately held company funded by The Roda Group, best known for launching the company Ask Jeeves.

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Technorati Tags: SightSpeed, unified communications, video, VoIP

Filed by at 8:22 pm under Unified Communications