I first encountered the ’547 patent, “UTP based video and data conferencing” in 2004, when Avistar was challenging Polycom, and I asserted then that ’547 should not have been granted. Three years ago, Microsoft filed for ex parte re-examination of ’547. I speculated that ’547 would not survive re-examination.

Last week, the U.S. PTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences issued a decision on appeal, affirming in part the examiner’s final rejection of all claims of ’547.

Intellectual Ventures can appeal further, but maybe they will not.

From the decision’s conclusion:

“The Examiner established that the combination of Ensor, Ahuja ’88, Ahuja ’90, and known prior art renders obvious:

1. separate data and video paths arranged over unshielded twisted pair (UTP) wires as required by claim 1;
2. the limitations as required by claims 4 and 5; and
3. a combined mosaic video image as required by claim 10.

The Examiner did not establish that the combination renders obvious:

4. a system capable of the transporting audio and visual (AV) signals over a UPT (sic) AV path and reproducing spoken audio and visual images based on the AV signals, as required by claim 11.”

In 1996 I, when I was last active in IMTC, I participated in board meetings in Munich and London and the annual meeting in Boston. This time I participated in the IMTC annual meeting mostly from my home office, but also while driving, running errands.

The primary venue for the meeting was RADVISION’s SCOPIA Desktop, which also allows for participation by H.323 video calling and PSTN calling. The participation probably peaked at 30+ distinct callers, mostly calling by SCOPIA clients, a few calling by telephone, and at least one conference room calling, presumably using an H.323 system. Though there were glitches of various kinds at various times, the overall experience was surprisingly good.

Compared to flying to Boston or across the Atlantic for a three hour meeting, it was definitely better than physically being there. About two-thirds of the way through the meeting, I was interrupted and needed to leave my office and the SCOPIA client. But I had had a chance to browse materials in anticipation of the rest of the meeting, and listen in from my phone while I ran my errands. (Android doesn’t seem to be a client option yet, but perhaps it will be.)

On the other hand, there were no direct chances to get to know the participants outside of the Internet meeting. The 90s IMTC meetings were typically multiple day events, with hundreds of attendees and opportunities. None of today’s participants were people I knew from back then, so some informal contact would have been useful. And there was no opportunity to sample the attractions of Boston, London or Munich.

In the 90s, one of the major activities of IMTC was fostering the now irrelevant T.120, but IMTC was also at the forefront of fostering conferencing on packet switched networks, particularly the Internet. (Today there was a bit of nostalgic disparagement of T.120…) Now IMTC is fostering a much broader range of options, with many activity groups pursing topics across the spectrum from hand-held mobile devices to immersive “telepresence”.

There was much lamenting lack of interoperability, not that different from When will they ever learn?, but with commitment and plans to try to improve interoperability. There should be a recording of the meeting and copies of the presentation materials available soon at IMTC.org.

Though the song is about more substantive issues than interoperability of video calling solutions, that refrain comes to mind when thinking about all of the isolated islands of video calling solutions that seem to be proliferating instead of reconciling.

It’s hard to keep up with them, all the instances this year: Cisco umi Home Telepresence that won’t call other Cisco systems, the Logitech TV Cam that seems to only call other Logitech Vid instances, not Logitech’s LifeSize sytems, FaceTime that only calls other iPhone 4′s and iPod Touch, Qik that only calls between Evo and Epic, …

In July, I had hopes for fring, and that Skype would soon leverage the video capable hardware of Evo and iPhone 4. I actually succeeded with a fring to Skype video call just before fring stumbled out of sync with Skype when iPhone 4 launched.

For a while I was dismayed that Skype had not become available on Evo, with the Android Skype only available for Verizon phones. Skype lifted the Verizon-only limitation a few weeks ago, but so far Skype isn’t doing video on phones. Skype is moving in lots of directions, so patience may be necessary.

Impatient for something useful/usable, I started trying to setup a SIP environment that would allow me to use one of the SIP apps for Android. I’m still pursuing that, but it is much slower going than I hoped. That’s another story for another writing or two.

Tango seems plausible for phone to phone video calling, but there are no indications of interoperability beyond phones.

FaceTime may well become available for other Apple platforms, but will it ever call non-Apple systems?

For now, I’ll hope that Skype and Tango may become more useful on my Evo, and try to get things going with SIP, and wonder “When will they ever learn?”

The most-publicized caution, battery life, has been a non-issue for me.

The most-publicized feature, 4G via WiMAX, has also been a non-issue, because the coverage isn’t quite what I hoped.

Other than that, my concerns and anticipations of problems had been needless, and the surprises have been good. I’ve come to think of the Evo as the best (for me) pocket computer I can imagine in today’s marketplace, and a good mobile phone, as well.

Let’s get the two most talked about items, battery life & 4G via WiMAX, out of the way first.

Battery Life

The first data on battery life I saw was positive (“We know what you’re thinking, though: what about battery life? Amazingly, …”) in the May 19 Engadget review. However, the same day, Walt Mossberg was reporting Sprint 4G Phone Hits New Speeds, but Battery Lags. That day, still a couple of weeks from my own hands on experience, I accepted those as different experiences due to different usage and expectations.

Nothing since has made me think much differently. I was concerned about battery life, so I ordered a cheap second battery. While waiting for the off-brand battery, I tried to see how long the battery would go with minimal usage, just my normal phone usage. I was able to get three days out of a single charge. That’s not much worse than I was used to with my pocket phone (LG Muziq), so I started thinking that I would be OK with battery life.

After the extra battery came, I fully charged the original battery, set it aside to be my spare, and have used the off-brand battery ever since. With my normal usage habits, including powering down the phone when I’m sleeping, I usally go two days between charges. Only once, after a long day of heavy phone usage, camera usage and my grand-daughter’s game playing, has the phone asked to be recharged, after 13 hours use that day.

The most comprehensive review I’ve seen are the 13 pages from AnandTech on June 28. The page discussing battery life leads off “There’s no other way to put it: the EVO 4G has terrible battery life.” The data there doesn’t contradict my experience. But that reviewer wants perfection — the last sentence says “While I’d be willing to carry something the size of the EVO, I’d need it to be perfect in order to make that tradeoff.”  I’m not expecting perfection. With hardware in general, and certainly “phones” like these, one can always wait for something cheaper/faster/better. I don’t see anything currently available that would be better for me than the Evo. Droid X, though a littler newer, doesn’t seem any better. I ponder about the iPhone 4, but only ponder.

4G via WiMAX

Click on the top map above and you’ll see the coverage at my home, light green to indicate some WiMAX signal, but not the dark green to indicate strong signal, with big patches of white (no signal) nearby.  The other map is a broader picture of our part of town, mostly dark green, but noticeable patches of white and light green.

Though I can use and appreciate the WiMAX in some places, it is mostly artificial, in that I mostly would either not use my pocket computer in those places, or would choose WiFi over WiMAX in the places where I would use the Evo. Most of the places where I’ve really wanted to use WiMAX, the signal just hasn’t been strong enough.

Sometimes it seems the Evo is trying to use WiMAX when it should accept that the WiMAX signal is too weak and revert to 3G. To avoid that apparent phenomenon, I usually leave the WiMAX turned off, turning it on every few days when it seems like it might really be useful. Then I wonder why Sprint is charging me the extra $10/month for 4G, but rather than protest I hope for the day when the coverage here is comprehensive.

All the “little” things

To me some of these are a much bigger deal than battery and WiMAX concerns. They make Evo a good pocket computer for me.

Display

Both the size, 4.3″ diagonal and resolution, 217 pixels/inch, are a delight to me. I can’t imagine anything physically larger that would still be a pocket computer, until flexible displays become practical, if they do. I’m typing this report on a screen with 99 pixels/inch. Looking at photos and videos is so much more pleasant with the Evo’s higher resolution. The difference is dramatic enough to make me curious about the iPhone 4 “Retina” display, at 326 pixels/inch, but not curious enough to go looking for one.

“Keyboard”

I didn’t know what to think before I tried the on-screen keyboard. I didn’t think I’d miss having tiny physical keys and knew that a pocket computer couldn’t have big enough keyboard for touch typing. I’d gotten used to the on-screen keyboard of my i300 easily enough, without learning Graffiti, so I thought I’d be OK but clumsy without a stylus. Learning to use the keyboard, with just my fingers, has been faster than I expected, though I’ll usually rotate the Evo for landscape keyboard unless what I’m entering is very short.

Google integration, Android, HTC Sense

With Evo’s Android, I expect good fit with Google, and that has been true as far as I’ve explored. Besides search, I mostly use Google for Reader, and Reader works OK in mobile mode for skimming tens of headlines (actually groups of 15) at a time. I don’t use Gmail much, but will probably use Gmail a little more as time goes on and I become more dependent on the Evo. Having Google Maps in my pocket has been useful a few times. But I really haven’t explored Android or HTC Sense very much so far. That is an endorsement from my perspective — as an end user I haven’t had the need to explore the software much. Eventually I will, but because I want to, not because I need to.

Camera(s)

“Faster/better/cheaper” applies to cameras, in particular, cameras built-in to computers and phones. The Evo’s built-in cameras suffice for almost all my purposes. The still photos are about as good as the pocket camera I bought last year, with lack of optical zoom being the main limitation. For video, the Evo is definitely preferable to my “marvelous toy” (AIPTEK MPVR+) of three years ago. Optical zoom and 1080p are the main reasons I think of separate cameras now.

YouTube (Flash)

Browsing Android phones at a Sprint store earlier this year, I was dismayed about the absence/clumsiness of YouTube support. So I was expecting to have to deal with that when I got my Evo. But YouTube HQ was already in place, and works just fine. Other Flash video doesn’t work, but I don’t have much need for other Flash video, and will probably just wait for the Evo to have Android 2.2 and Flash 10.1.

Apps

My daughter was dismayed that I’d had the Evo for more than 24 hours and still hadn’t downloaded any apps. I don’t think she was impressed that I responded by getting ConnectBot (SSH client) and AndroidVNC (a.k.a. Android VNC Viewer). I hadn’t tried SSH or VNC on a phone since the i300. They both seem to work just fine. I’ve even tried using vi after logging in to a Fedora machine with ConnectBot, knowing that the on-screen keyboard would make it very hard to use vi normally. That I was able to use vi at all seemed worth celebrating. ConnectBot is mostly for SSH tunneling, at least in my current thinking, and handles that well to the extent I’ve tried it with VNC, IMAP and SMTP.

I’m still behind the curve in downloading apps. Since I haven’t explored many of the factory installed apps, and what I’ve explored has met my needs, I’m not likely to be much of an app consumer. I did download “Barbie in a Mermaid tale” for our grand-daughter — she and our daughter like to play that.

Mail

Ever since I’ve been handling mail servers for myself and others, I’ve been a fan of IMAP for mail servers. I’ve been less of a fan of most mail clients’ handling of IMAP. The only two clients I’ve ever really liked with IMAP, particularly with regard to handling of folders, are Netscape Mail and the Outlook Express lineage of Microsoft options, including the current form, Windows Live Mail. I’m pleasantly surprised by the handling of IMAP folders by the Evo mail client.

Multitouch

Reading about the lack of multi-touch in Android had been one source of trepidation, unnecessary trepidation in my Evo experience. Multi-touch may not be present in all of the apps, or as fully featured as in other environments, but seems OK in the browser and the PDF viewer. AndroidVNC doesn’t seem to have adopted multi-touch yet, presumably because the APIs are relatively new to Android, but does have discrete zoom buttons.

More to come

Froyo

Before I got the Evo, I thought I’d be impatiently waiting for HTC to update from Android 2.1 (Eclair) to 2.2 (Froyo), if for no other reason than to have Flash support. Since the Evo YouTube HQ support seems just fine, I’m simply curious about 2.2, not impatient. Now is probably a good time to start taking a closer look at how Android and HTC/Sprint software all fit together on the Evo.

Travel

I’ve not gone on any trips with Evo yet. I’m expecting that having a pocket computer will make me much less likely to bring out a laptop in airports, etc. On the other hand, the Evo’s (extra $30/month, so far not purchased by me) portable Hotspot capability may be attractive in terms of both convenience and avoiding airport and hotel WiFi charges.

Videoconferencing

I haven’t tried Qik video chat — I don’t know anyone to call with Qik! I’d really like to try Skype on Evo, but my impression is that Skype won’t be offering video calling on Android/Evo any time soom. I keep seeing intriquing reports about fring, and it appears that a production release of fring for Android is available, so I’ll have to give fring a try.

Development

I’m assuming I’ll have to build an app of my own for Android/Evo, if for no other reason than to say “Hello World!”, but it will probably be a while before I do so.

But right now, I need to respond to all the text messages that are making my Evo beep at me…

My skepticism dates back to first reading some of the patents in 2004 and the press releases Avistar produced regarding Microsoft’s requests for re-examination of some of the patents (see public display of dis-affection: Avistar patents & Microsoft and AVSR vs. MSFT: numbers of patents or patent numbers?).

In hindsight, it seems that Avistar chose to change course about the time that it brought Bob Kirk in as CEO last July. After that time, Avistar said little publicly about the patents, seemingly not saying anything about U.S. PTO actions or licensing progress. January 19, two days before the Intellectual Ventures transaction, Avistar sold a license to Skype for $3M.  If this had happened a couple of years ago, there would likely have been significant publicity. The only Avistar publicity about the Skype transaction appears to be the SEC 8-K filing.

In the January 26 press release, Bob Kirk is quoted as saying “This also removes what has been a significant distraction for the team and our operation in general, while providing us the capital to more aggressively invest in our business.”

It is difficult to say more without speculation. Avistar had announced licenses with many potential licensees, but, as far as I can tell, had not succeeded in negotiating licenses with Cisco, Hewlett-Packard or Microsoft — it is hard to imagine easy negotiations with those companies. I find it easier to imagine that those companies are some of the investors in Intellectual Ventures and receptive to this latest news. [Update February 26: Verizon Patent Case Marks a First for Intellectual Ventures lists both Cisco and Microsoft as Intellectual Ventures "members".]

Along with the promise have been ambiguity, questions and controversy. This is a brief recap while still waiting for some of the partners to make their moves.

For example, when Cisco announced plans to purchase Tandberg, the largest of the companies committed to ITU-T and SIP interoperability, would Cisco become part of the interoperable crowd, or would Tandberg become less interoperable? It seemed inevitable that interoperability would prevail, but until it happened, who could be sure? Then the real controversy emerged: enough Tandberg shareholders want a higher bid from Cisco that the deal may not happen. A November 9 deadline has been extended to November 18.

The long anticipated sale of Skype by eBay was announced in September in the midst of controversy over intellectual property, and prior announcements of Asterisk interoperability and SIP interoperability. Naysayers widely predicted the demise of Skype. Others, notably LifeSize, joined the dance. With Friday’s announcements resolving the ominous litigation, Skype’s forward momentum seems impressive. Skype hiring of SIP pioneer Jonathan Rosenberg bodes very well for future Skype interoperability.

Assuming Skype overcomes current lack of multi-point video calling, Skype should be able to win a few dance contests.

Yesterday I mixed the audio, used it in place of the camera’s audio track, and broke it up into segments for YouTube: Charlie Abbitt – Live at The Wellington May 22, 2008.

I’d hardly touched Cubase LE since August, and didn’t really remember much of what I had learned back then. What I did remember was sending analog output from the iO|14 to the audio input of another computer for mixdown. Though that memory was correct, that was not the best approach.

Fortuanately, I have been using Audacity frequently for simpler recording and sound processing. I routinely export processed audio from Audacity without involving a second system. My main learning yesterday was that Cubase does have export facilities (D’oh!), whch are quite usable and useful, such that a separate computer for mixdown was unnecessary (and potentially would have compromised audio quality).

Before the realization that a second computer was wrong headed, I thought about using the recently acquired iMac G4 pedestal. I thought I spied an analog input on the back next to the (“headphone”) analog output, but I was wrong — that connector is an Apple proprietary “Apple speaker minijack  for connection to Apple Pro Speakers”. OS X System Profiler and System Preferences tell me the only built-in audio input is the mic. Determining that was not easy, with only minimal info readily available from both apple.com & Google, but one of my Mac expert friends confirmed my determination. Even he had to stare at the back of one of his pedestals to be sure.

To try to end this rambling, but finish the story, this morning I wondered more about the 1/8″ combined analog/digital audio jacks on more recent Macs. The iO|14 has S/PDIF coaxial RCA digital input/output. The Mac jacks are S/PDIF optical, but not the typical TOSLINK, since those are different size/shape from the ubiquitous 1/8″ analog jacks. I finally found the explanation that the Mac jacks are “mini-TOSLINK”, that optical adapters are inexpensive, and that bi-directional coaxial/optical converters are not expensive. 

So the relatively public goings on between Avistar and Microsoft are more than curious. Comments on re-exam minutiae in Avistar’s February 25th press release, Microsoft Challenges Avistar Patents, seemed unnecessary within the usual rationale for such a release, investor relations. The March 26 release, Avistar Announces Cost Restructuring in Response to Patent Challenge by Microsoft was also successful in gaining trade press attention. This week’s Wainhouse Research Bulletin commented, “Avistar … published a rather odd press release (in our humble opinion) that the company was reducing its US and European workforce by 25% as a cost cutting measure prompted by Microsoft’s recent challenge to all 29 of Avistar’s US patents.” Also on Thursday, Redmond Channel Partner published Avistar’s Tale: Microsoft Shows Its Dark Side.

Is the venue the court of public opinion? If so, there may be Avistar detractors raising their voices. There are some in the videoconferencing a.k.a. “telepresence” industry rooting for Microsoft. They question the validity of U.S. patent 6,212,547, “UTP based video and data conferencing”, with an October 1, 1993 priority date, in light of a plethora of earlier systems including CU-SeeMe, the MBone, Intel’s prototypes, and the prior art cited by Microsoft’s re-exam request, the 1980′s Bell Labs “Rapport Multimedia Conferencing System”. They question the validity of 5,867,654, “Two monitor videoconferencing hardware”, in light of 1989 multiple monitor products from VTEL, and other historical practice, especially after last year’s KSR ruling.

An attorney representing Avistar visited me in 2004. He did not appreciate my opinion that the patents in question should not have been granted. I cringed later that year when Polycom paid Avistar $27.5M in a licensing agreement. A Polycom executive was apologetic when I questioned the amount. A Polycom competitor bemoaned Polycom’s unwillingness to stand up to Avistar. Last year RADVISION agreed to pay Avistar $4M, and Tandberg agreed to pay an undisclosed amount, probably about the same as the Polycom amount. So I do not see these re-exam requests as “Microsoft showing its dark side”.

Part of why video conferencing got sidetracked in the 1990s were the wasted, ultimately counter-productive, efforts associated with ITU-T Recommendation T.120, “Data protocols for multimedia conferencing”, an ambitious family of specifications, once seemingly essential to the industry, and now disdained.

I can both confess and disclaim roles in these efforts. It was important to integrate personal computers with (video) conferencing. However, data conferencing was not as important as many of us thought back then. There were and are lots of ways to have two-way data conferencing. Extending one or more of those to an asymmetrical multi-point paradigm would likely have met the real needs and survived. However, T.120 attempted much more, complex symmetrical multipoint data conferencing with many participants.

The primary requirement was and is for conference participants to view something a speaker wants to be seen. In physical conferences, this “something” is typically two dimensional, and might be letter sized paper, a marker board (“white” board), a flip-chart on an easel, a projection screen or a computer display. Though this “something” may be modified during the conference, and though more than one person may make modifications, the typical situation is that either there are no modifications or that the speaker is the only one making changes.

The seeming emphasis in the T.120 family of recommendations was in T.126, “Still Image Protocol Specification”. T.126, supported by the prerequisites in T.122-T.125, elaborately defines layers of two dimensional planes, a designated virtual pointer plane and multi-party annotation of the images. These capabilities are more than are needed in most situations, and more than most implementors want to provide.

T.120 was also over-reaching in defining file transfer protocols (T.127, “Multipoint Binary File Transfer Protocol Specification”), and program sharing implementation (T.128, “Multipoint application sharing”).

In 1993-96, when T.120 emerged as a seeming necessity, there were many networking options, including ISDN, analog telephone lines, TCP/IP, IPX/SPX and others, all addressed by T.120, particularly T.123, “Protocol Stack for Audiographics and Audiovisual Teleconference Applications”.

There have been very few T.120 implementations, probably no successful implementations except for the one from DataBeam. DataBeam’s implemenation was licensed by most companies that supported T.120, including Microsoft. Microsoft NetMeeting was the most prominent application supporting T.120, and often used in other conferencing products simply to profide T.120.

Microsoft abandoned NetMeeting and T.120 along with it. Conferencing vendors, especially more newly established companies, are avoiding and disparaging T.120.

In this decade, T.120 has been superceded by the simpler, sufficiently effective, notion of secondary video streams providing the “something a speaker wants to be seen”. Proprietary approaches have merged into the ITU-T Recommendation H.239 “Role management and additional media channels for H.300-series terminals”.

However, some see H.239 as not enough…