Telepresence Getting Attention - the Halo Effect

Uber blogger Andy Abramson had a short post yesterday about Halo, Hewlett Packard's high-end telepresence system. He noted what I would call a Halo citing from a blogger who has experienced Halo first hand.

It's worth sharing because it's a bit like catching a celebrity citing. You see and read about these rarified creatures (whether real or imagined - that's another topic...), but you never actually see them.

Well, this is especially important for something like telepresence, because you have to experience it first hand to know if it's any good, and if it lives up to the hype. And of course, this is doubly true because anybody buying one of these things is going to be spending the better part of $1 million.

So, it was great to see Andy share a post from a blogger who's probably new to most of us - Gil Zino. Welcome, Gil - I'll have to drop you a line so we can compare telepresence notes. I didn't know of Gil until this post, and he's posted his thoughts after seeing Halo first hand. I see he also blogs about baseball, so we have even more to talk about. Red Sox spring training is less than a week away - I'm getting excited....

I have not seen Halo first hand, but I have seen Cisco's, and ever since their launch, I've been following the telepresence space pretty closely. My take on Cisco is not much different than Gil's take on HP, and if you haven't seen either, the closest you may get is the video clip I shot of the Cisco demo when they launched here in Toronto recently.

Quick sidebar - all my video clips are posted on YouTube, and I see there now that my Telepresence clip is one of the most frequently watched of my clips.

It's a fascinating space for sure, but we'll have to save the details for another time. I just wanted to amplify on Andy's posting since we don't hear much from people who actually get in front of this very cool technology. Good stuff, Gil!

For additional perspective, I can also steer you to a webinar I listened to earlier this week on telepresence. If you're interested in Halo, you'll definitely want to check this out. It was sponsored by Tandberg, and they spent a fair bit of time talking about their recent alliance with Halo to co-market each other's telepresence solutions. It's a bit of a strange marriage, but it does work for both parties.


Technorati tags: Telepresence, Jon Arnold, Andy Abramson, Hewlett Packard Halo, Videoconferencing, Tandberg, Gil Zino, Cisco