Early December saw the roll-out of Chrome 47. When doing anything with WebRTC, this is always an interesting time. A release brings new features or may break things, like removing the getUserMedia functionality for insecure origins.
Our metrics clearly track such roll outs as seen below:
At our September TechTok WebRTC consultant and analyst, Tsahi Levent-Levi, came along to discuss the power plays of the video coding industry.
Just when we thought we were done with the video codec wars in WebRTC – we found out we’re only just beginning. Tsahi was here to talk us through some important questions – how is this WebRTC codec war going to play out? Where do the alliances lie? And where are we headed?
Watch the full video here:
UPDATE 9/16/15: After we published this post Google announced that they are pushing back the release date of the HTTPS security change. They’re estimating that it will now be released to production in December 2015.
Google recently announced a security policy change that will impact future versions of the Chrome browser. Any website which has integrated geolocation technology, screen-sharing, WebRTC and more, will now be required to be served from a secure (HTTPS) site.
We at TokBox are supportive of this update as we believe operating your WebRTC-based applications through HTTPS is a best practice and offers enhanced security. In addition, it has the added bonus of improving your end-user experience by remembering their hardware settings, and even allowing screen-sharing (if you choose to implement it).
The Internet has fundamentally reshaped the world of work. Emails, instant messaging and video conferencing first transformed the way we communicate, and today as we increasingly move into the cloud, nearly every aspect of work takes place online in a globally connected 24/7 environment.
The physical office space as we knew it has become less relevant and an increasing number of employees are working from home or remote locations. Startups and even the most well established global firms, are realizing the benefits of flexible work and are embracing communication tools that enable teams to connect and collaborate effectively online (eg. Slack, DropBox).
Last week TokBox hosted the monthly SF WebRTC meet up at our offices in San Francisco.
It was a great evening, with a range of speakers and topics from the WebRTC world. This month we heard from:
You can watch a full recording of the event below and if you are interested in hearing more about meet up events at TokBox, you can join our meet up group here.
WebRTC is maturing and we can see the needs in the market evolving along with this.
However, with the increased need for rich, digital experiences comes the challenge of building more advanced applications. We know that building real-time video communications can be challenging, especially when it involves more than two participants. To pull off a multi-party call using WebRTC off-the-shelf you’ll need a strong backend infrastructure and a deep understanding of media processing. That’s why we are looking forward to exploring this topic with WebRTC expert, Tsahi Levent-Levi, founder of bloggeek.me, in our upcoming webinar.
We’ve all seen the statistics and now know that mobile usage is at an all time high and is still on the rise. Increasing with this is mobile video consumption. As mobile data has become more affordable and reliable, and with more WiFi hotspots popping up, it is becoming increasingly easy to watch, share and communicate via video on mobile devices.
This is something that our partners at Simpleweb, a web and mobile development agency in the UK, have noticed too. They know that a new wave of apps is revolutionizing the way we view and broadcast video online, many of which are powered by WebRTC.
Mozilla has released further enhancements to Firefox Hello, powered by OpenTok, including the ability to screen share within a video chat. This new feature allows participants to open and share a browser tab or application window from within the chat, making browsing, shopping, drafting or any other activity more collaborative and engaging.
At this month’s TechTok, Philipp ‘Fippo’ Hancke, &yet’s WebRTC lead and industry veteran, explains everything you need to know about how to handle failures with WebRTC.
‘If you’re going to launch a WebRTC powered service for financial gain, then you need to have done everything within your power to ensure it works reliably across as many cases as possible.’ Chris Koehnke.
Philipp knows just how to do this so we will leave it to him to tell you. If you want to learn more about how to fail gracefully with WebRTC you can watch a video of Philipp’s full presentation here:
One of the fun things about running a communications platform company is watching new use cases emerge as companies and developers innovate using our technologies.
Several months ago, we began to notice a new trending mode of use of WebRTC in the area of Field Service enablement. I’ve also heard people describe it as remote workforce applications, or even fleet management systems.
The key concept is that a field worker – someone who goes onsite to a customer location to effect a repair, make an inspection, or deliver or pick up products, uses some sort of a computer or electronic device as an essential tool for that onsite visit. Increasingly these devices are smartphones or tablets.
It’s predicted that by 2018, 70% of mobile workers will use a tablet or a hybrid device that has tablet-like characteristics. (Source: RapidValue Solutions)
