Welcome to the No Jitter Roll, the regular round-up of news about collaboration and communication. In today's edition, we cover the latest updates to Zoom Webinars and Meetings around third-party apps and a device with AI-based meeting capabilities from Owl Labs.
Zoom Extends Zoom Apps to Webinars, Makes Updates for Meetings
This week,
Zoom revealed several updates to its third-party app ecosystem, Zoom Apps. First, the company announced that select Zoom Apps will be available for use with webinars, including:
- Applause Studio: With Applause Studio, users will be able to use live reactions like hearts and applause and share GIFs to a webinar stream.
- Pigeonhole Live: Pigeonhole Live provides webinar hosts the ability to conduct live Q&A and send out multiple-choice polls and quizzes.
- Wordly: The Wordly App for Zoom allows webinar hosts to offer live translation in over 20 languages.
- Mentimeter: The Mentimeter App for Zoom Webinars app can be used to capture real-time reactions through polls, Q&As, and quizzes.
- Linkando: Linkando App for Zoom Webinars allows webinar hosts to add and manage formal meeting invitations and share the webinar agendas.
Additionally, Zoom Apps can now be used to personalize a participant's video stream with Zoom's Virtual Backgrounds and Virtual Foregrounds. Among some of the Zooms Apps that users could leverage to customize their video stream include Donations by Pledge for creating a live donor feed for fundraising, Warmly for adding GIFs and other content into a video stream, employee engagement tool Funtivity by Hermis for employee engagement quizzes and activities, and more.
Owl Labs Releases New Device
Videoconferencing device provider
Owl Labs launched the Meeting Owl, a videoconferencing camera with built-in AI capabilities. The Meeting Owl 3 is a Wi-Fi -enabled 360-degree camera and is USB-C compatible. A new Expansion Mic device can also be used with the device to extend the audio range by 5.5-8 meters. The Meeting Owl comes with several built-in AI-based features, including facial recognition capabilities and an automatic speaker tracking.
“Hybrid is now the way that teams expect to work, and we believe flexible policies are here to stay – but pre-pandemic technology to support hybrid work was an afterthought," Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs, said. "While smaller and medium-sized businesses have been faster to adopt and support a hybrid format, we’re also seeing the world’s largest companies choose similar, flexible models and seeking more immersive technology to power the transition.”
The Meeting Owl 3 is currently available through the company's website, Amazon, and third-party resellers for approximately $1,250. The Expansion Mic is available for approximately $300.
