Bill Gates’ slip at the D conference was one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it slips that you probably wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t vaguely familiar with the product. His gaffe? The unintentional announcement of “RoundTable,” a research project we’ve been hearing about back in early 2006 when it was still called Ringcam.
https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-ringcam-360-degree-camera-174532
What it is, essentially, is a 360-Degree conferencing camera that’s made up of four individual webcams to capture everyone that sits around a table. Hence, RoundTable.
https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-360-degree-conferencing-cam-gets-prettier-of-183966
Microsoft even had a press release in October last year about the project—see here—that talks about how they’re going to integrate RoundTable into Office Communications Server 2007 or Live Meeting.
The price? Less than $3,000. Which is a buttload less than Cisco’s TelePresence 3000 which was featured on this (lousy) season of 24.
https://gizmodo.com/cisco-telepresence-3000-virtual-meeting-boredom-still-220713
As for the release date, we’re still not sure. After all, the announcement was just a slip by Gates.
Thanks, tipster!
