Category Archives: Jitsi

Figures available worldwide are painting a gloomy picture of peoples mental health and wellbeing during the current Coronavirus epidemic. Apart from worry and grief over the loss of, or potential loss of loved ones, the main effects are the feelings of loneliness and isolation that lockdown brings.

As businesses and organizations begin to act proactively to counteract their employees failing mental (and physical) health, at Tech Wire Asia, we are looking at different ways that technology can help support remote workers.

The poorly-fitting appsMany pages of the technology press Tech Wire Asia included have been dedicated in recent months to examining the ways that collaboration and communication software is helping the remote worker and the businesses employing them. But in most cases, the applications that we all now use daily were conceived and written for only occasional use. Just a few short months ago, we called remote workers road warriors, individuals who worked from airport lounges, hotel rooms, and in the corridors outside conference halls.

Solutions like Webex, Zoom, Jitsi, and Teams were designed to connect working groups: a few remote workers, a body of specialists in one office with a meeting room full of others in another.

With a workforce thats been forced to go remote, these tools simply arent making up the differences between working together in person, and working together remotely.

All the comms solutions lack the human touch: even video conferencing software tends to flatten out features and compress information so that facial micro-gestures are lost. Typically, too, much of a persons body language is also missed out because of the position of the average webcam on a laptop or monitor.

The specialist applications

Both the Apple App Store and Google Play are full of apps that help users meditate, become more mindful, calm down, and concentrate. These activities are highly beneficial, but like collaborative and comms apps, they are not explicitly focused on helping people during their working day.

Embedding this type of positive, habitual reinforcement of awareness, stillness, and mindfulness into work-focused applications is not anything that we at Tech Wire Asia have seen previously (until now see below).

Therefore as part of a new series on mental health in the APAC region during these times of COVID, we focus on ways that employees can boost their overall wellbeing while working from home.

LIFEWORKSThe first app we are considering is LifeWorks, a platform that delivers a broad range of employee-focused wellbeing-focused training, activities, and media.

The levels of support and different content types are as varied or directed as required. That ranges from standard EAP (Employee Assistance Program) fare such as work-focused training and gamification of work success, right through to offering 24/7 access to counseling and support services, either live or as snackable clips.

Mindfulness and meditation guidance sits alongside physical wellbeing programs on the latter score, the app integrates with employees Fitbits or smartwatches to track exercise and daily activity, if desired.

The appeal of LifeWorks is that all resources are available for the employee in complete confidence: as the employer, you receive no personalized information about who is accessing what. Employers do get analysis and figures regarding uptake and engagement, allowing leaders to build their teams better. Whats trending and proving popular will help decision-makers push their employees health and wellbeing successfully, with positive outcomes for all parties in the long-term.

LifeWorks can be used as an adjunct to existing HR solutions or as a standalone, wellness, and health-oriented app. It is uniquely positioned, we feel, between traditional HR technology and personal development apps.

You can read a deeper dive into the LifeWorks offering right here on this site.

SMILING MINDThe second app we are considering is Smiling Mind, created by a non-profit organization and entirely free. (Many mindfulness apps need users to either pay upfront or subscribe somehow.)

Smiling Mind focuses on the different areas in which people can gain significantly: in their sleep, developing mindful practices, in their relationships, and especially relevant here in the workplace. The latter area of focus has around 40 dedicated sessions, designed specifically to reduce stress and conflicts.

Most of the sessions range in length from just a few minutes (perfect for coffee breaks) to nearly an hour.

And for those of us whose attention might wander during Zoom meetings, there are dedicated sessions on tap where users are taught tactics to re-steer their minds back onto other peoples speech. In fact, the focus of mediation can actually be other people talking: perfect for those long sessions where its easy to let attention wander from critical information.

As a bonus, the app also has specialized programs designed for educators, children and teenagers, so those juggling homeschooling kids and working at home can help promote positivity for themselves and their charges.

Finally, as well as iOS and Android versions, Smiling Mind is also available on the web, so those stuck to their laptops for hours each day can intersperse spreadsheet sessions with a few minutes in which to develop a smiling mind of their own!

See more here:
Keeping mindfulness and employee health at the forefront: app reviews - Tech Wire Asia

OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

Last year wasnt exactly short of threats facing humanity, but Zoombombing was an especially 2020 kind of disruption, one that sought to hijack one of the most prominent means of communication by which people stayed in touch with everyone from co-workers to friends and family during lockdown.

Zoombombing, for those unfamiliar with it, works like this: An unwanted participant or participants access a Zoom call without being invited, against the wishes of the participants, and cause problems. One Massachusetts-based high schools Zoom session was hijacked by an individual who screamed profanities and then shouted the teachers home address. On social media, some users reported that their Zoom session had been taken over and used to show pornographic content.

Zoom, whose usage exploded during the pandemic, was suddenly at the center of what appeared to be a glaring vulnerability problem: It was as if the leading manufacturer of front door locks revealed a high failure rate during a home invasion epidemic.

But researchers from Binghamton University in New York say theres more to this story than meets the eye. According to a worlds-first study they have carried out, the majority of Zoombombing incidents are actually inside jobs. To draw an analogy with creepy campfire stories about terrified babysitters: The calls are coming from inside the house. Well, kind of.

There were a lot of people that thought that maybe this was some kind of clever hacking, or else [the result of attackers] finding people that would accidentally post Zoom links on social media or sending out email blasts, Jeremy Blackburn, an assistant professor of computer science at Binghamton University, told Digital Trends. [People figured it was] these outsiders who were randomly showing up, somehow finding a link to a meeting. It was an act of attack that the Zoombombers were perpetuating, just by themselves.

Blackburns major research interest, his university website profile notes, involves understanding jerks on the internet, from toxic behavior and hate speech to fringe and extremist web communities. He was intrigued by the rise of Zoombombing as a phenomenon, but also not entirely convinced by the theories.

How were they getting in? They could be brute-forcing the call IDs, but given the size of the search space, it seemed unlikely that they would be able to consistently find active calls to target. And while human error was certainly possible, in terms of people leaving Zoom links lying around, this also seemed improbable.

To quote Sherlock Holmes popular aphorism: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, must be the truth. Or, in this case, if people arent breaking into Zoom calls on their own, someone on the call must be willfully letting them in.

As it turns out, what we found is that Zoombombings were perpetuated by people that were legitimately in the call, Blackburn said. What would happen is that [a member of the call] would go ahead and share the meeting link on some fringe websites and say, Hey guys, show up and, you know, say the N-word or whatever in the call. Pretty much every time, it was a student asking people to come [and] Zoombomb lectures. They would also do things like say, Hey, use this name when you connect, because thats the name of somebody else in the class.'

To reach this conclusion, the researchers scoured tens of millions of social media posts, uncovering more than 200 calls for Zoombombing between Twitter and 4chan during the first seven months of 2020 alone. Between January and July that year, they identified 12,000 tweets and 434 4chan threads that discussed online meeting rooms, then used thematic qualitative analysis to identify the posts calling for Zoombombing. As Blackburn noted, the majority of the calls for Zoombombing in their dataset targeted online lectures, with evidence of both universities and high schools being the most heavily targeted groups.

In addition to Zoom, they also found evidence of similar bombing attacks on other popular communication platforms including Hangouts, Google Meet, Skype, Jitsi, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, BlueJeans, and StarLeaf.

[For a company like Zoom], unless they perform the type of investigation we did, on their end it seems really difficult to detect this type of thing, Blackburn said. Because its not really a technical vulnerability. Its kind of a sociotechnical vulnerability If they were just looking at traffic [or whatever other] metrics they have, Im not sure it would be possible to purely detect this. You would need a study like ours that goes out and specifically tries to understand how this sociotechnical problem is unfolding.

(Digital Trends reached out to Zoom for comment, and we will update this story when we hear back.)

The results pose a challenge for communication platforms like Zoom. Their ease of use makes them appealing. Just click a link and youre suddenly talking to your friends or joining the morning huddle at work. But this also necessitates lowering security measures that could eradicate this behavior.

Anything involving security is always kind of a trade-off between ease of use and the robustness of the security, Blackburn said. I dont think people [would want to] go through a whole process of registering individual users and creating one-time links [in a more time-intensive manner]. Its much easier, and much more straightforward for non-tech-savvy people, to just have a link, click it, and it opens the program. That is certainly a big reason that Zoom gained the type of adoption it did. If it would have had a much more complicated, but secure, registration system, I would imagine something else would have [become] the dominant application.

Zoom does offer passwords as a login option. However, given the complicity of users, they would seem unlikely have to blocked Zoombombers with the right advanced knowledge. The same is true for waiting rooms, in which the host must manually approve people for entrance. While this would seem to be a more secure option, they are insufficient if the Zoombombers name themselves after people in a class in order to confuse the teacher or lecturer. (Thanks to a recent update, hosts can, however, pause their meetings to manually remove troublesome participants.)

Blackburn describes Zoombombing behavior as raiding, and says that it has always been a part of online life. Now, its using Zoom, but if you go back even to the IRC days (read: Internet Relay Chat, an early text-based chat protocol created in 1988), there were [online] wars where people would try and take over different channels, he said. Any time you have computer-mediated communication on the web [thats] instant and semi-anonymous, youre going to have people that get into conflict and attempt to disrupt things. In that sense, its not new, its the same basic sociotechnical problem with the internet. If theres an available mechanism to cause trouble, somebodys going to cause trouble.

In addition to Blackburn, other researchers on the project include Chen Ling, Utkucan Balc, and Gianluca Stringhini. A paper describing the work, titled A First Look at Zoombombing, is available to read online.

Link:
Inside job: Why Zoombombing isnt as random as you might think - Digital Trends

Latest update on January 13, 2021 at 09:30 AM by Natalia Kudryavtseva.

The year 2020 has shown us how the Internet continues to integrate into our lives and how we have become more and more dependent on digital technology. This trend presents enormous opportunities, but it also imposes a great responsibility on us. Cloud technology, artificial intelligence and neural networks, virtual reality, customer data platforms, universal digital passports in this article, we will discuss the main digital tech trends for the year 2021.

2021 promises to be the year of the boom in smart home gadgets that help us at home (the so-called "Internet of Things"), as well as services and applications through which we communicate and work remotely. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Jitsi and other video conferencing tools that became so popular during the pandemic and will continue to evolve and get new features in 2021. The choices become richer: of course, many of us will continue to use Google Drive and other Google products, but why not, for example, try new services, such as Miro, which is a virtual work board on which you can work together to create projects using images, graphs, stickers and other interactive materials and tools.

Online communication opens the door to virtual reality: for example, the new Microsoft Virtual Stage technology, which uses Azure Kinect technology, not only allows us to include any content as a background in video conferences but also makes it possible for video participants to interact with virtual reality elements.

Increasingly, we are dating online, having fun, and shopping from the comfort of our homes. During the pandemic, big online retailers, online movie theaters and dating apps are having their finest hour. But it's important not to forget that digital technology also allows us to support small businesses and create local projects. For example, to team up with the tenants of neighboring houses to solve communal problems or just to learn a recipe for a new dish. There are also a lot of services and projects on the Internet that help us not to be passive consumers, but to develop creatively and learn - in this article we talk about such platforms.

The introduction of artificial intelligence in various fields is making our lives look more and more like a science fiction movie. The idea of a robot that can think - global machine intelligence - seems increasingly achievable. The latest generation of trained neural networks (so-called heavy networks or "Transformers") is already being used by Google and other search engines and platforms. They can guess a missing word, answer questions about the text, summarize the content of an article, etc. BERT, Google's language model, has been used by the search engine since 2019 to improve search results in several dozen languages and is also used by other companies.

The largest neural network language model in the world, created by the American company OpenAI's GPT-3, can itself create long connected texts based on a small clue phrase. This technology is now being adopted by other companies, including Microsoft. The growing ability of artificial intelligence to interpret data, generalize and create possible scenarios on its own is impressive. This ability could allow, for example, to accurately guess user requests or create any kind of chatbot. In the dystopian version of developments, the future of artificial intelligence takes on an ambiguous character - as shown, for example, in the TV series Westworld, where a giant neural network, Rehoboam, takes over the world and decides the fate of people. Here we return to the theme of responsibility for how to dispose of all the possibilities of technology.

Dealing with user requests on the Internet includes, of course, collecting data about users. And here, too, new opportunities are opening up thanks to artificial intelligence: Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) can use artificial intelligence to organize disparate information and thus solve the problem of so-called "bad data". Such constantly updated "data banks'' collect all kinds of information about users: our preferences and interests, habits, movements, contact data, etc. Adobe, SAP, Oracle, Treasure Data, Microsoft, and other major IT companies are working hard to develop such platforms in order, among other things, to share them with other companies. These platforms allow brands to better engage with their customers and attract new ones to sell their products and services.

Yes, our data is being traded, and that trend will increase. CDP technologies are built with protocols and laws in place to ensure user privacy. However, database leaks such as ones that happened to Facebook, for example, can never be ruled out.

Providing all of the above technologies and products through the cloud makes them accessible and reduces their cost to consumers. Thanks to the cloud platforms of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other companies, the opportunities to provide a variety of digital services will grow and their cost will decrease.

The cloud allows information to be stored and exchanged quickly and with virtually no spatial limitations. So, in addition to the development of applications designed to track possible cases of Covid-19 infection and linking devices via Bluetooth, there are a number of projects aimed at creating a kind of universal digital vaccine passport, which may in the future facilitate our movements, visits to institutions and public spaces, according to CNN. For example, IBM has developed the Digital Health Pass application, which restaurants and concert venues can use to admit customers. And the CommonPass application, created in collaboration with a number of major airlines, allows users to download the results of the Covid-19 test and other personal medical data and transmit them in the form of a QR code, which ensures the confidentiality of this information. The idea of creating a universal digital passport with vaccination data is in the air - the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative, supported by the Linux Foundation and IBM, is promoting a single standard for such a passport.

And, of course, in our review we cannot avoid the development of blockchain technology - the modern cryptocurrency transaction system, which is a chain of blocks of data stored on different computers, which does not depend on a single server. This system is secure, universal and accessible to any user. It evolved with the advent of bitcoin in 2009, the first and most expensive cryptocurrency.

At the end of this year, bitcoin made the world talk again. In recent weeks, its rate rose steadily and exceeded $ 21,000 according to Bloomberg. "We have a new line in the sand and the focus shifts to the next round number of $30,000, said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder and managing partner of Nexo, a crypto lender. This is the start of a new chapter for Bitcoin. Its a narrative the media and retail crowd can properly latch onto because theyve been noticeably absent from this rally. The growth of the cryptocurrency may be due to the fact that investors are seeking to diversify their investments in conditions of economic instability. The bitcoin market is becoming more and more legal: trust funds that invest in bitcoin have appeared, PayPal, Revolut and many other platforms are already working with it, and many analysts predict that this trend will increase in 2021. However, experts also warn: do not forget that bitcoin, like other types of cryptocurrency, is still quite a risky asset, so it is recommended not to invest all your funds in it. And you need to have knowledge and flair, because it is important not only to buy cryptocurrency at the right time, but also to sell it in time.

Photo Microsoft, Miro, Unsplash.

Read more from the original source:
Tech Trends 2021: All You Need To Know - CCM

Web Conferencing Marketresearch report is the new statistical data source added byA2Z Market Research.

Web Conferencing Market is growing at a High CAGR during the forecast period 2021-2027. The increasing interest of the individuals in this industry is that the major reason for the expansion of this market.

Web Conferencing Marketresearch is an intelligence report with meticulous efforts undertaken to study the right and valuable information. The data which has been looked upon is done considering both, the existing top players and the upcoming competitors. Business strategies of the key players and the new entering market industries are studied in detail. Well explained SWOT analysis, revenue share and contact information are shared in this report analysis.

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Note In order to provide more accurate market forecast, all our reports will be updated before delivery by considering the impact of COVID-19.

Top Key Players Profiled in this report are:

IBM, ReadyTalk, Adobe, ezTalks, Free Conferencing Corporation, AT & T Connect Support, Zoom Video Conferencing, Google, ClickMeeting, Zoho, AnyMeeting, GoToMeeting, Jitsi, LogMeIn Join.Me, Citrix, UberConference, Eventials, Cisco WebEx, PGi, Fuze, Microsoft.

The key questions answered in this report:

Various factors are responsible for the markets growth trajectory, which are studied at length in the report. In addition, the report lists down the restraints that are posing threat to the global Web Conferencing market. It also gauges the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, threat from new entrants and product substitute, and the degree of competition prevailing in the market. The influence of the latest government guidelines is also analyzed in detail in the report. It studies the Web Conferencing markets trajectory between forecast periods.

Global Web Conferencing Market Segmentation:

Market Segmentation: By Type

Hardware DevicesSoftware Services

Market Segmentation: By Application

EducationFinancialMedicalGovernmentOthers

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Regions Covered in the Global Web Conferencing Market Report 2021:The Middle East and Africa(GCC Countries and Egypt)North America(the United States, Mexico, and Canada)South America(Brazil etc.)Europe(Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.)Asia-Pacific(Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia)

The cost analysis of the Global Web Conferencing Market has been performed while keeping in view manufacturing expenses, labor cost, and raw materials and their market concentration rate, suppliers, and price trend. Other factors such as Supply chain, downstream buyers, and sourcing strategy have been assessed to provide a complete and in-depth view of the market. Buyers of the report will also be exposed to a study on market positioning with factors such as target client, brand strategy, and price strategy taken into consideration.

The report provides insights on the following pointers:

Market Penetration:Comprehensive information on the product portfolios of the top players in the Web Conferencing market.

Product Development/Innovation:Detailed insights on the upcoming technologies, R&D activities, and product launches in the market.

Competitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of the market strategies, geographic and business segments of the leading players in the market.

Market Development:Comprehensive information about emerging markets. This report analyzes the market for various segments across geographies.

Market Diversification:Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments in the Web Conferencing market.

Table of Contents

Global Web Conferencing Market Research Report 2021 2027

Chapter 1 Web Conferencing Market Overview

Chapter 2 Global Economic Impact on Industry

Chapter 3 Global Market Competition by Manufacturers

Chapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by Region

Chapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions

Chapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type

Chapter 7 Global Market Analysis by Application

Chapter 8 Manufacturing Cost Analysis

Chapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers

Chapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders

Chapter 11 Market Effect Factors Analysis

Chapter 12 Global Web Conferencing Market Forecast

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Comprehensive Report on Web Conferencing Market 2021 | Trends, Growth Demand, Opportunities & Forecast To 2027 |IBM, ReadyTalk, Adobe, ezTalks,...

Zoom is a video conferencing service that has been around for almost a decade. As the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased use of video calling services, Zoom emerged as one of the top apps in use around the world. However, the platform was soon marred by privacy concerns, hackers and questions regarding its encryption. If youre looking for other options, you might be interested in Jitsi Meet, which is a powerful open source Zoom alternative.

We briefly discussed Jitsi in a previous post about Video Conferencing in the Times of Coronavirus. Jitsi consists of a number of open source projects with APIs and SDKs. Whereas, Jitsi Meet is a Zoom like video conferencing app which can be used via an internet browser or an iOS, Android or platforms like F-Droid or Slack. This enables users to use Jitsi not only as a standalone app but also to incorporate it in other corporate platforms.

To get started, you can go to meet.jit.si and enter a meeting name and click Start Meeting. A meeting can be started without any account. You can make your meeting name unique by adding a phrase that best describes your meeting. The below image shows an example of how to create a new meeting with Jitsi Meet. If youre using Chrome, you can also install an extension for Google Calendar and Microsoft 365 integration.

In the next step, you will require allowing access to your peripheral devices and require entering a name to initiate the meeting. Users can join Jitsi via link or dial in to join the meeting.

Unlike Zoom, Jitsi allows as many as 75 users to join a call, with no time limit. This can allow you to hold a conference call with dozens of participants without paying a premium fee.

During a meeting you can choose to enable/disable your mic and video, as well as blur your background, manage video quality, start a live stream, mute everyone, share a YouTube video, get speaker stats, embed video, etc.

Like any video conferencing application, you can also share your screen, e.g. to present a PowerPoint presentation during a conference call.

The Security Options for Jitsi include a Lobby Mode that allows protecting the meeting with a password and a formal approval from the moderator.

While Jitsi is free, 88 is a premium service that comes with advanced video conferencing options. You can use either of the two according to your requirements. Below is a comparison of both services.

Jitsi: With Jitsi, you get all the services you would expect from an app like Zoom, with even fewer limitations. These include HD calls, end-to-end encryption, remote control and integration with popular platforms from Google, Microsoft and Slack. Jitsi also provides unlimited free meeting access for up to 75 participants, although the recommended number of participants is between 35 and 50.

88 Meet: The premium service of 88 Meet provides all the free features of Jitsi, as well as the option to send transcriptions for recorded meetings, phone a guest option, Live streaming of meetings on YouTube, real-time English closed captions, advanced moderation for meetings, analytics and support for additional platforms.

You can get started with Jitsi Meet, see the Jitsi download options or try the free trial for 88 from the link below.

See the article here:
Jitsi Meet: Open Source Zoom Alternative

Jitsi Meet is one of the emerging video conferencing apps today. It is an open-source communicationsoftware that is free, easy to use, and requires little to no onboarding. It encrypts all your calls and does not sell your data. As a bonus, you dont need an account to start using the app.

When it comes to video conferencing, Zoomis probably one of the most used. However, if you are thinking of ditching the appwhether it be due to privacy issues or other usage problemsknow that there are tons of video-calling tools out there at your disposal. One of those is Jitsi Meet. The app simplifies the process of conducting video conferencing. As noted, the app is easy to use and does not need an account. Starting a conference call is as easy as setting up a meeting and sending the other members a link.

To begin, head to the Jitsi call page. Once there, you can enter your desired meeting name under the Start a New Meeting text bar. It is recommended to make your meeting name as unique as possible so that it will be easy for others to find your meeting room. You can also add a password to the call to prevent unwanted participants from butting in during your meetingsomething that happens a lot in Zoom calls. To do so, just click the "i" icon on the bottom-right corner of the screen and select add password.

Inviting the other participants to your meeting is also simple. Unlike other video calling apps, such as Skype and Microsoft Teams, your contacts only need to drop the meeting URL in their browser of choice, enter the passwordif there is anyand they are good to go. Jitsi made the process even simpler by allowing you to send the link by any meanstext, email, and other instant messaging apps. The program can support up to 75 callers at the same time. Plus, there's no time limit for every call. However, the app is prone to glitch issues if there are many participants. A lot of times, users may experience a delay in the audio.

Jitsi Meet hosts tons of features that can compete directly even with paid video-conferencing apps. For starters, you can share their screen or record their meeting. You can also switch to a tile view if there are many participants in the call. To do so, you only need to click the four little boxes on the bottom-right corner once the call starts.

The app also lets you automatically blur your background if you dont want the other participants to see the room you are in during the call. You only need to select the Blur my Background option from the setting menuthree vertical dotson the bottom-right corner of your screen. To make your meeting more organized, Jitsi offers a fun solution with its raise/lower your hand tool. If you click the icon, the other participants will see a tiny hand icon on their screen and know that you have something to say.

Aside from recording your meeting, the app also allows you tolivestream them. You can evenshare a YouTubevideo with your contacts during the call. If you dont have a stable connection, you can manage the quality of the video and set it to low bandwidth to prevent the call from being interrupted. This softwareencrypts all your calls by default, so you are sure that your conversations are safe.

All in all, Jitsi Meet is a good alternative to popular video calling apps. It is easy to use and does not require complicated account setup. Moreover, there is no limit to the number of participants. However, a large number of people in a call may cause glitches. A lot of times, there is a delay in the audioand there are also a few connectivity issues.

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Jitsi Meet - Download

Jitsi Meet is an open-source video-conferencing application for web and mobile. It is simple, easy-to-use, secure, and works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. It is very similar to other video-conferencing applications including, Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet, and supports all common browsers and also mobile devices. With Jisti Meet, you can stream your desktop, video chat with the entire team, and allow other users for meeting using a custom URL.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install the Jitsi Meet video-conferencing application with Docker on CentOS 8.

First, log in to your CentOS 8 server via SSH as the root user:

You will need to replace IP_Address and Port_number with your servers respective IP address and SSH port number. Additionally, replace root with the username of the admin account if necessary.

Before starting, you have to make sure that all CentOS packages installed on the server are up to date. You can do this by running the following commands:

By default, the latest version of Docker is not available in the CentOS 8 default repo. So you will need to add the Docker repo to your system.

First, install the required packages with the following command:

Next, add the Docker repo with the following command:

Next, update the package cache with the following command:

Next, install the Docker CE with the following command:

Once the Docker is installed, start the Docker service and enable it to start at system reboot with the following command:

Next, you will also need to install Docker compose in your system.

You can download the latest version of Docker compose binary package to the /usr/loca/bin directory with the following command:

Next, change the permission of the downloaded binary with the following command:

Next, verify the installed version of Docker compose with the following command:

You should get the following output:

Jitsi meet package is not available for CentOS operating system. So we will install Jitsi meet using Docker.

First, download the Jitsi meet for Docker with the following command:

Next, change the directory to the downloaded directory and copy the sample environment file:

Next, create required directories for Jitsi meed with the following command:

Next, build the Jitsi meet Docker image with the following command:

This will download the Jitsi image from the Docker hub and start the containers. You can check all the running containers with the following command:

You should get the following output:

At this point, Jitsi meet container is started and running on port 8443.

Next, you will need to configure firewalld to allow ports 80, 443, 4443, 8443 and 10000. You can allow them with the following commands:

Next, reload the firewalld to apply the changes:

Now, open your web browser and access the Jitsi Meet using the URL https://your-server-ip:8443/. You should see the following screen:

Provide your meeting name and click on the GO button. You will be redirected to the following screen:

Click on the Allow button to use your Microphone and Camera. You should see the Jitsi Meet dashboard in the following screen:

Of course, you dont have to install Jitsi Meet on CentOS 8, if you use one of our Managed CentOS Hosting plans, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Jitsi Meet on CentOS 8 for you. They are available 247 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post on how to install Jitsi Meet on CentOS 8, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

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How to Install Jitsi Meet on CentOS 8 - RoseHosting

Former RingCentral COO Dave Sipes will become the new 8x8 CEO, a move that brings a leader with proven strengths in effectively managing business operations to the video conferencing and call center company, analysts said.

It was announced last week that Sipes will replace outgoing CEO Vik Verma. Sipes oversaw RingCentral's business operations as revenue grew from $10 million to $1 billion in 12 years.

"It was the smart choice," said Zeus Kerravala, founder and analyst at ZK Research. "They need an execution person, and Sipes led [RingCentral] through its biggest years of growth."

Verma did well with product development, but he was weak in sales and marketing, analysts said. Sipes will likely energize the latter.

"They were doing really well on the product side," said 451 Research analyst Raul Castanon of 8x8. "Now they really need to balance that out."

During Verma's tenure, 8x8 updated its communications platform by acquiring video conferencing company Jitsi in 2018 and communications-platform-as-a-service provider Wavecell a year later.In 2017, the company bought Sameroom for its messaging tool that was interoperable with apps from different vendors.

Sipes's experience with several RingCentral partnerships could prove useful in bolstering sales operations as the new 8x8 CEO, Castanon said. RingCentral partnered with Avaya last year and Atos and Alcatel-Lucent this year to bring its UCaaS offering to companies still using its partners' legacy on-premises UC products.

"What gets my attention the most is the trajectory in the last two or three years in terms of what RingCentral did with partners on the business side," Castanon said. "[Sipes] was not the only one involved in that, but he was probably very influential in that strategy."

Sipes' initial challenges as 8x8 CEO include reversing the company's slowing revenue growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the small and medium-size businesses upon which 8x8 relies were hit hard economically.

See the article here:
New 8x8 CEO expected to improve business operations - TechTarget

What if there was a way to communicate with your riding buddies where you didnt have to worry about hardware compatibilityorBluetoothrange limitations? Better still, what if said moto communications solution was free? No, Im not talking aboutDiscordI'm talking about an app solution calledHelmChat.

By this point in the global pandemic, many of us are more familiar than wed like with Zoom.HelmChatuses the open-source videoconference software Jitsi, which some prefer over competitorZoom due to privacy concerns. As long as you havecell signal on your smartphoneand older smartphones are totally fine to use here, tooyou should be able to talk to yourHelmChatgroup via audio-only conferencing.

Presets inHelmChatare optimized for conditions unique to riding, such as noise-cancelling for loud helmets. If you have speakers in your helmet, thats obviously helpful, but if you choose to use wired or wireless earphones inside your helmet instead, no problem.HelmChatis hardware-agnostic, so your buddy with theSenacan talk to you with your earbuds with no problem.

Regarding privacy, heres what theHelmChatwebsite has to say:

Jitsiuses DTLS-SRTP encryption for all of its communication. 1-to-1 chats are connected directly between phones. Group chats do use our server asacentral point, but the contents are never stored to any persistent storage and only live in memory while being routed to other participants in the meeting.

Cell reception can obviously be an issue, but its one thatHelmChataccounts for. If your cell signal drops while youre in a chat, it should immediately reconnect once you have signal again, and a notification tone will soundto let you know. You will require a data plan on your phone, since chatting via theHelmChatapp (which is available for both Android and iOS devices) requires around 30MB of data per hour, with a 6-hour ride taking roughly 200MB intotal.

If this sounds great to you, youre not alone.The good news is, you can check it out without having to shell out any money, and see if its right for you and your friends.The person behindHelmChatgoes by u/doflnlon Reddit, andis quite responsive to questions, concerns, and commentsin this Reddit threadaboutHelmChat.

Sources:HelmChat,Wired,Web Bike World

View post:
Is HelmChat Free Helmet Comm Solution A Good Alternative? - RideApart

For the fortunate few who can work from home, the pandemic has brought an abrupt end to workplace mingling. Gone are the days of pausing in the office hallway to catch up. Farewell to the gossip dispensed at the break room coffee machine. There was a time not long ago when colleagues would chat as they walked to the conference room; now they log onto Zoom meetings and hit mute.

But not everyone is ready to give up on smalltalk until lockdowns end.

I got tired of reading article after article where people said we have to go back to the office because we need to have the kinds of in-person interactions that we can only get there, said MIT management professor Thomas Malone. Theyre wrong. You can get quite a lot of it online with what turns out to be some fairly simple technology.

Malone thinks he can prove it with a piece of videoconferencing software he built with collaborators at Northeastern University and Seoul National University, called Minglr. (Yes, it is a videoconferencing tool meant to solve a problem with videoconferencing.)The open-source toolwhich connects to Jitsi, another free videoconferencing platformis meant to be used before or after an official meeting. As participants trickle in or out, theyre placed in a virtual lobby, where they can see who else is milling about before the meeting or lingering after it has ended. If two people want to chat, they each indicate their interest and are whisked into a video call to shoot the breeze for a minute or two.

Malone conceived of Minglr with academic conferences in mind. The most important part of conferences by far is what happens in the hallways, he said, not what happens in the meeting rooms. But the loss of casual conversation has real impacts across professional life.

Informal interactions have been shown to boost cognitive functioning and raise employee morale. Nottingham University Business School researchers found that chatter between healthcare workers at British hospitals played a crucial role in spreading important but sensitive informationfor example, which doctors tend to work most quickly, or have the shortest tempers, or seem to be on the edge of burnout.

It is important not to see these instances of communication as simply gossip, said Justin Waring, one of the Nottingham researchers, who is now a healthcare organization professor at the University of Birmingham.They take numerous forms and have a really important role in group dynamics.

Chance conversations also play an important role in advancing individual employees careers. Romy Newman, president of career advice site Fairygodboss, said having the chance to deliver an elevator pitch during random run-ins with big shot executives was crucial for her rise through the corporate ranks. Those impromptu interactions where you bump into a very senior leader are just gone, she said.

These missed opportunities can make it even harder for people who already struggle to get recognition at work. Even before the pandemic, race and gender divides excluded some workersbut especially Black womenfrom informal social networks, hindering their advancement. Populations or personalities that would have been marginalized in a live meeting are more likely to be marginalized in the virtual world, said Newman.

Companies have taken different approaches to filling the chattering void. There are Slack discussions and Zoom bonding events. Microsoft offers a sort of corporate Facebook it calls Yammer. A startup dubbed Sococo wants companies to create digital office floor plans and invite their employees to control virtual avatars who can walk around and bump into each other in the hall.

Minglr intentionally did not try to simulate a virtual hallway for employees to chat in, but attempted to create digital analogs for human behaviors in the virtual world. In some cases, the team believes the digital format allows for super-human mingling thats even better than whats possible in person. Online, you can simultaneously indicate your interest in talking to several different people, for example, while at a real life cocktail party you can only lurk on the fringes of one conversation at a time.

All of these imperfect attempts indicate that theres something missing from the Brady Bunch grids through which remote workerscurrently face the world. In a real life happy hour, there isnt just one mega-conversation everyone is forced to take part in. Youre allowed to privately turn and make a face for the benefit of a trusted neighbor, or start a side conversation when someones droning on about something terribly boring.

I expect most video conference systems will include features like this in the future, said Malone. In the meantime, he plans to use Minglr to give his fall semester students the chance to chat before and after classes. As long as we still do some of our meetings online, well have a need for something like Minglr.

Correction: Romy Newman is the president of Fairygodboss, not its CEO.

Read the rest here:
How to recreate water cooler moments in the virtual workplace - Quartz