free html hit counter Peak Oil Debunked: 203. HALO TELECONFERENCING SYSTEM

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

203. HALO TELECONFERENCING SYSTEM

Telework is an obvious technique for eliminating oil consumption due to car and air travel, and the technology is rapidly improving. The latest development is a teleconferencing system called "Halo" developed by Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks and HP:
In an effort to cut down on travel and boost productivity, Mr Katzenberg looked into videoconferencing in 2001 and found it clunky, unreliable and fiddly. So he asked his boffins to devise their own system. They teamed up with HP and the result, launched this week, is called Halo.Source
The system is expensive ($18,000/month for single Halo room), but apparently the quality is outstanding. It's catching on in the corporate world, and already eliminating unnecessary travel:
"It's designed to create 'as though you were there' collaboration," says Mr Katzenberg. Instead of travelling to his office in Britain every three weeks, he now goes every four months. Halo is, in short, the videoconferencing equivalent of flying in the corporate jet.

DreamWorks now has nine Halo rooms, HP has 13, Advanced Micro Devices has two and PepsiCo has five. Procter & Gamble and Novartis have also signed up. HP hopes to sell more than 100 Halo systems next year. Users say that while previous videoconferencing equipment was rarely used, their Halo rooms are in use around the clock. Hector Ruiz, boss of AMD, says Halo has cut travel between his firm's facilities in California and Texas. Steve Reinemund, boss of PepsiCo, says that every chief executive to whom he has shown the system has decided to buy it, too. (Source: same as above)
-- by JD

6 Comments:

At Wednesday, January 4, 2006 at 6:57:00 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There is an other option available: MSN messenger, or one of its competitors. It costs maybe 50$ to buy the camera and the microphone (especially if you have multiple people participating a good microphone is important), and you need a good connection to the internet. But DSL will do.

I would assume this will catch on first.

 
At Wednesday, January 4, 2006 at 7:36:00 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The internet is why I'm against airport expansion. The Airlines claim that it is needed for the ecomony. The reality is, more and more business should be done over the internet and we should be restraining flights and car use, not increasing it. We have the technology.

 
At Wednesday, January 4, 2006 at 10:06:00 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

halo shmalo. people still need to eat, drink, be merry and every year we add 200 million of them. no internet. no msn. no peak oil is going to stop this petri dish from exploding.

 
At Wednesday, January 4, 2006 at 10:06:00 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

peak oil attracks all kinds, sheesh

 
At Thursday, January 5, 2006 at 2:40:00 AM PST, Blogger Jan-Willem Bats said...

I am so totally gonna research this further and make a post about it on my own blog.

Great find, JD.

 
At Thursday, January 5, 2006 at 8:05:00 AM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It seems as if you doomers see only two options:

1. Status quo of exponential growth.
2. Dieoff.

Come on, you can do better.

 

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