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from the coming-to-a-conference-room-near-you dept.
Google has announced Jamboard, a 55-inch 4K touchscreen not unlike Microsoft's Surface Hub. In fact, Microsoft's version of the interactive whiteboard concept comes in two sizes - 84 inches (2160p) and 55 inches (1080p):
Tools like handwriting and shape help streamline the process and worked quite well in my own hands-on time with the product. The board also has 16 levels of pressure sensitive touch and nice little animations that bring small things like erasing to life, as you watch the text flake and fall off the display. The system runs on a highly specialized version of Android that features a built in browser and Google Maps among other features, along with opening it up to potential third-party apps. It also has Google Cast built in, so you can also use it as a big video display, complete with speakers that face down into the magnetic tray that holds the styli and eraser. The speakers, from what I heard aren't great, but they're plenty loud and will do the trick with teleconferencing audio. You can also just use the built-in Bluetooth to run it all through a speaker.
[...] All of the collaboration occurs in real-time, making it possible to monitor the board on a mobile device with minimal latency. And once a project is finished, it can be shared with the team as a PNG or PDF. [...] The board can be mounted to a wall or users can choose to buy the optional stand. All said, it should run less than $6,000 when it launches next year.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by iamjacksusername on Thursday October 27 2016, @08:50PM
Google needs to follow through with at least one of the many products they have released that are not search. I deployed Google Apps for customers a few years ago and am now migrating them off the platform because it is a joke product for any company that is not tech focused. It is one of those mea culpa momnents I have had with clients. The tech works "maybe" and, if you reach out for support, they just eventually fall back on "use the Chrome extension" or "we will submit it as a enhancement request." No, the 60 year old receptionist who sometimes gets confused about how to turn on her computer is not going to "just use the Chrome extension" to setup a conference call.
I know this seems unrelated but my point is I cannot get excited about anything Google released because it it is always unfinished, half-assed and eventually abandoned. It is not worth the effort to learn how to do something, document all the issues for roll-out, package it for deployment and then have Google decide they are not going to use it anymore. There is a reason why their XMPP gateways still work for IM after umpteen different chat clients.
With a disciplined project leader Google could have had a real hosted-app stack for the small and medium businesses. Instead, they have a mish-mash of unfinished products that work together only reluctantly and whose use case cannot be articulated in dollars and cents. They have a bunch of statements about how they are "Ready to work with G Suite customers." Where are the tech articles explaining the nuts and bolts of how everything from authentication to certificate provisioning work? I know it is a pre-release program, but the tech groups who will most likely be the ones evaluating these units need this information to determine if it is even possible to deploy.
This kind of fire-and-forget seems endemic to Google and has not changed since it became Alphabet. Sorry for the rant. I may have had a difficult day Google Apps...