Unified Communications in the Car

OK, I don't really think that most people are going to be having video conferences in their car in the near term, but just to prove how well Microsoft's Unified Communications platform works for remote workers, I decided to try it out in the FJ Car Computer.  I'm running Office Communicator R2 on a pretty low-powered Vista machine in my car.  The camera is an off-the-shelf webcam, and I'm connected to a nearby WiFi network.  As you can see the video frame rate and quality is great and it worked just fine.

You can see at the beginning of the video that I had started the conference as an IM session using Office Communicator.  I could see Angela's presence information and that she was available, so I IM'd her and asked if she had a minute to talk, and then I asked if we could go to video.  I clicked on the video icon and within a few seconds we were having a video conference.  (It's good manners to ask, but Angela could have denied the video request if she wanted to.)

I was using one hand to take the video and I was balancing the wireless keyboard on my lap - that explains the fumbling at 1:05 and the inadvertent video of myself!

Deploying Unified Communications is an important part of what my company does, and I believe we'll be creating all sorts of new applications in the future.  It's already changed how I work, which reminds me, it's time to revisit my Office of the Future post and give an update.  We're making some progress.  One person suggested we not even have offices, which lead to my Wireless in the Wilderness post.

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