Skype: new third-party Skype video plug in may be flawed by ZDNet’s Russell Shaw — According to “Jaanus,” who runs Skype’s Share Skype blog, the company is looking into reports that the in-beta, vskype video add-on for Skype may be sending unwanted messages to people on user’s contact lists.

This is interesting, partially because vskype is not a Eurogarage hacker trashcode project, but is an undertaking of widely respected software developer Santa Cruz Networks, whose main product, VidiTel is a well-thought-of interactive collaboration platform that works over VoIP networks.

In a press release, Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), participated in the world’s first demonstration of MPEG-4 compressed, high definition (HD) live TV broadcasting over an operational ADSL2+ network. Alcatel, Broadcom, France Telecom and TANDBERG collaborated on the HDTV over ADSL2+ technology demonstration, which took place at the French Open Tennis Tournament at Roland Garros Stadium in France, June 2, 2005. This same demonstration was also presented at Salon Europeen de la Recherche et de l’Innovation/European Research and Innovation Exhibition June 3, 2005.

To enable this demonstration, Broadcom supplied France Telecom with its latest generation Internet Protocol (IP) TV set-top box reference design platform, which performed the HD MPEG-4/advanced video compression (AVC) decoding and audio/video delivery. This reference design builds on Broadcom’s field-proven set-top technologies, enabling IPTV set-top box manufacturers to quickly ramp into production and support video over DSL deployments.

The technology developed by LiveVisual.com gives users the ability to place a live stream of text, audio and video on any web page that can display Macromedia Flash files, including eBay listings. Orbit Drop franchisees will be able to have a webcam in the store and offer buyers online a way to ask questions and see the product they are buying live. This in turn adds value, expands the reputation, and establishes stronger relationships between the buyers and the Orbit Drop store.

More information here
For more information about Orbit Drop, Inc. visit http://www.vlcn.com/obdp61605.htm .

The first full beta releases of MediaFrame for Mpeg-4 are now available for download, along with complete source code, sample implementation files and documentation.

MediaFrame is an Open Source streaming media platform in Java which provides a fast, easy to implement and extremely small applet that enables over 97% of web users to view audio/video content without having to rely on external player applications or bulky plug-ins. MediaFrame does not require special servers, software or programming knowledge.

MediaFrame is released under the GPL and is available for Mpeg-1 & Mpeg-4 now.

Read more here

As stated in this PCworld blog entry, Microsoft’s next salvo in upping its digital imaging support is its release of the RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer, a free “PowerToy” for use with Windows XP. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it would offer RAW image format support–uncompressed images produced by digital cameras from vendors like Canon and Nikon–in its future Longhorn operating system, as well as in an update to Windows XP.

The update arrived yesterday, in the form of a 47.7MB utility available for download from Microsoft’s site. The utility lets you view images and EXIF data, and print photos captured in RAW image formats from supported Canon and Nikon digital cameras.

Embedded.com has the complete text of a nice overview article on audio compression. You can’t really go into too much depth in a standard sized magazine article, so author Mihir Mody has to just hit the high points. But he does go into a little detail on some interesting new tidbits, such as recent ammendments to MPEG-4 covering audio. A few decent reference links as well, although much of the standards stuff is only available to committee members and those with bucks.

In a press release, Algolith, a provider of digital image processing software and hardware for the film, post production, and video industries, announces the release of a major update to its Algolith Plug-ins software, now renamed AlgoSuite , the format conversion and noise reduction solution AlgoSuite v2.0 is available for Adobe After Effects v6.0 and 6.5, Apple Shake v3.5 and Eyeon Digital Fusion/DFX+ v4.0.

AlgoSuite v2.0 refines and improves the following algorithms in terms of both quality and processing speed:

- The Multiple Type Noise Reducer (MTNR) deals with 3 new types of noise: film grain, speckles and additive noise. It also features an automatic mode that detects the noise type and strength.
- The three-dimensional MPEG Noise Reducer (MNR2) improves the removal of blocking and compression artifacts to clean up any DCT-based compressed image such as MPEG 2 or DV.
- The Motion Adaptive Anti-Aliasing De-Interlacer (MAADI) is Algolith’s 4th generation de-interlacer that produces nearly perfect progressive images from interlaced video.
- The Anti-Aliasing Processor (AAP) will improve significantly the result of progressive images generated by other de-interlacers on the market.
- The Cinetel (CINE), Telecine inverse, performs 3:2 pulldown detection and film restoration.
- The Content Adaptive Scaler (CAS) takes advantage of multiprocessor workstation.

In a press release, Ulead Systems Inc, a developer of Picture, Video and Web design software has announced the availability of the MPEG-4 Plug-in for VideoStudio 9.

The MPEG-4 plug-in for VideoStudio 9 lets you create video files suitable for any device. Choose your format - PDA, mobile phone, DVD-quality or Sony PlayStation Portable - and the ready-to-go template makes a video designed just for that device.

MPEG-4 was defined by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and hundreds of researchers around the world contributed to its development. It has been designed to deliver DVD (MPEG-2) quality video via small file sizes that will play back on many different devices, from mobile phones to satellite television, and is ready to stream incredible-quality audio and video over the Internet. With MPEG-4, you can create, watch and share high-quality video almost everywhere.

In a press release, Occam(R) Networks Inc. (OTCBB: OCCM), a supplier of innovative Ethernet- and IP-based loop carrier equipment to telecommunications companies worldwide, today announced that Farmers Telephone Cooperative Inc. (FTC) has selected the Occam BLC 6000(TM) System to build the broadband network that will deliver Triple Play services, voice, video and high-speed data to its 60,000 subscribers in eastern South Carolina. The video portion of the network will utilize MPEG-4 Encoding, one of the first commercial deployments of MPEG-4 in North America.

FTC has recently installed the nation’s first all-MPEG-4 AVC digital headend using the Tut Systems Astria(R) Digital TV platform and will use the Occam BLC 6000 System’s Gigabit Ethernet transport to deliver a full range of Triple Play services including Digital TV.

In a press release, ER Mapper, has announce that it is the primary sponsor for GDAL. GDAL is an Open Source collection of common programming libraries that allow application developers to quickly add raster image support to their software.

ER Mapper recently released the full source code to its ECW JPEG 2000 Software Development Kit.

ER Mapper offers integrated imagery solutions for enterprise geospatial applications. Clients in more than 120 countries use the ER Mapper product to prepare imagery, ECW to compress and use imagery, the Image Web Server to serve imagery over the Internet and RightWebMap for integrated web map solutions. Visit ER Mapper at www.ermapper.com or the Image Web Server web site at www.EarthEtc.com

GDAL is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats that is released under an X/MIT style Open Source license. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. The related OGR library (which lives within the GDAL source tree) provides a similar capability for simple features vector data.