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Tesla vehicles will soon have Zoom video conferencing • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Enterprise, EV, Tesla, Transportation, zoomNo Comments

Zoom is working with Tesla to bring video conferencing into its vehicles. The announcement, made at the 2022 Zoomtopia conference, was light on details. But according to Zoom’s group product manager Nitasha Walia, the video conferencing feature “will come standard on all new Tesla models soon.” “You’ve been zooming from your home, your office, your phone, and even your TV,” Nitasha Walia, group product manager at Zoom Video Communications, said Tuesday. “We’re going to make it even easier for you to zoom from anywhere.” Image Credits: Zoom What’s unclear is what Zoom means by “comes standard on all new Tesla vehicles.” Will this integration require additional hardware in Tesla vehicles or can this feature be rolled out via a software update? And when? Tesla has continued to add features to its infotainment system designed to entertain its driver or passengers while sitting parked, likely at an EV charger. Its vehicles, all of which have large touchscreen displays, can stream Netflix and YouTube, has karaoke and offers a host of video games, including Fallout Shelter, Cuphead and Stardew Valley. All of these entertainment features as well as performance related improvements have been rolled out via wireless software updates.

Why watch a movie when you can watch your corporate all-hands meeting? • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in AMC Theatres, Media & Entertainment, zoomNo Comments

Movie theater attendance is down, largely thanks to the pandemic, but chains like AMC still need to make money. If meme stocks aren’t a reliable business plan, why not find another use for a giant room with a huge screen and lots of seats? In partnership with Zoom, AMC Theatres will launch a product called Zoom Rooms next year. Basically, you go to the movie theater to join a Zoom meeting with your company. Yes, you must commute to the movie theatre only to join a meeting with your colleagues across the country, who are also at an AMC movie theatre. If your company isn’t strapped for cash, you might even get some complimentary popcorn. These theatres, which range between 75 and 150 seats, will be available to book for three-hour blocks. “AMC has an abundance of attractive theatres at centrally located venues in city after city after city, each with ample seating capacity, especially so during daytime hours on weekdays when most meetings take place,” said AMC Theaters CEO Adam Aron. “Zoom Rooms at AMC broadens our scope, as we now can participate as well in the multi-billion [dollar] market for corporate and other meetings.” While the idea of one person sitting alone at a movie theater on a Zoom call is funny, that’s not what’s going on here. This technology is supposed to connect groups of people in different locations — so, for example, a New York-based team might meet at one theatre to catch up with a Los Angeles-based team at another theatre. But it remains unclear how you can actually tell who’s talking if you have dozens of people crowded into a theatre. Movie theatre popcorn aside, it seems like a technical nightmare to figure out how to actually conduct a meeting this way… and perhaps working from home and mailing your employees some nonperishable popcorn bags is a simpler alternative. “As hybrid work has become more commonplace throughout the United States, Zoom Rooms at AMC will enable companies and other entities with decentralized workforces and customer bases to bring people from different markets together at the same time for cohesive virtual and in-person events and meeting experiences,” a press release from AMC Theatres says. It feels like someone put a handful of publicly traded companies into a hat, picked out two randomly, and challenged them to create some kind of new collaboration. AMC floundered during the pandemic, since its core business was rendered moot by a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe. But even as vaccines become more widespread, people aren’t returning to the movies like the company hoped. Even though AMC’s quarterly revenue increased, the company still reported a quarterly loss this week. Meanwhile, Zoom is trying to broaden its scope by adding features like email and calendar as its unprecedented growth slows down.

Zoom’s adding email and calendar as it pushes harder to expand the platform • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 8, 2022Posted in Enterprise, Eric Yuan, hybrid work, online meetings, zoomNo Comments

At the height of the pandemic Zoom was the go-to application for meetings with people stuck at home in lock down. During FY 2021, the company was growing at an unsustainable triple-digit rate, peaking at a mind-blowing 369% growth in Q3 2021. By Q2 2023, its most recent quarter, it was down to single digit 8% growth (but with $5.5 billion in cash on hand). That’s quite a swing, and the company recognizes that it can’t rely completely on online meeting software. That’s why it has been looking to branch out beyond the core meeting service over the last couple of years by moving into areas like contact center, sales intelligence and phone, while expanding the meeting platform into areas like white boarding To push that idea even further, the company announced the beta of email and calendar software at its Zoomtopia customer conference today. Company founder and CEO Eric Yuan recognizes that there are people who spend a lot of their time on Zoom and he wants to provide all the tools to do that without task switching. “We are going to announce the beta of a Zoom email and calendar clients. Essentially, any user can download a new client to use our email and calendar,” Yuan told ZebethMedia. But on the back end, they can simply connect to a GMail or Microsoft Outlook account or server if they wish. “On the server side it could still be a Google or Microsoft integration for existing Google and Microsoft customers,” he explained. He expects that many customers who embrace the Zoom email and calendar apps, who are long time Google and Microsoft email and calendar customers will choose to use the clients with the back-end integration, but small business owners, who might not have formal IT teams may choose to let Zoom manage both the client and server side. That’s why the company is also announcing a hosted email and calendar. Among the features it will have is the ability to create a unique customer domain and end-to-end encryption. Zoom Mail interface Image Credits: Zoom He pointed out that the Zoom hosted service is not like consumer email like Gmail. It will be more like a private platform with a small group of people sharing email. That should help cut down significantly on junk and unwanted emails because only a limited number of people will have access to the platform. Whether the company can prevent junk completely remains to be seen, but the goal is to have an email and calendar application tightly integrated with the Zoom platform with limited access to outside parties. For people connecting to GMail or Microsoft Outlook, the service will be free for both paid and free tier Zoom customers. For those who want Zoom to run everything, it will be available as part of the Zoom One Pro or higher subscription plans, but at no additional cost. Other announcements While the email and calendar stand out, they aren’t the only announcements the company is making this week. The company is also announcing Zoom Spots, which is a watercooler kind of experience where people can drop in for a few minutes, have a spontaneous conversation and leave. It’s not unlike Slack Huddles, which Slack introduced last year for a similar kind of quick chat. “We are introducing a new service called Zoom Spots, which is essentially a persistent video where you can look around, see who’s there and you can join these conversations and you don’t have to schedule meetings. And it’s a pretty interesting concept to support hybrid work,” he said. The company is also introducing a couple of other tools outside the pure meeting sphere including a customer service chat bot for its contact center service, which is probably related to its acquisition of Solvvy in May. It is also introducing a new sales intelligence tool, which acts a virtual coach for sales teams, simulating various sales situations. The latter is part of the Zoom IQ for Sales toolkit announced earlier this year. The company is clearly working hard to move beyond its online meeting roots, and to find ways to keep people on the platform as it expands further into adjacent areas of the core meeting business.