Fade the Butcher
01-02-2006, 08:08 PM
We need to get Stan one of these.
Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20060102/tc_infoworld/73476;_ylt=ArGvHybc__NrSu0yL5pcJr4jtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--)
San Francisco (InfoWorld) - Once just a sci-fi fantasy, wireless communicator badges like those from the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” TV series are now being used in the workplace.
The crew of the science-fiction show’s starship Enterprise wore small devices on their chests that they could tap to communicate instantly with their colleagues. Devices from Vocera Communications, making headway in hospitals, hotels, and other fields, are uncannily like those science-fiction gadgets. Vocera’s voice-activated devices can be carried around users’ necks, allowing them to talk with coworkers anytime, anywhere within range of an enterprise’s Wi-Fi network.
The Vocera Communications System consists of the communicator devices, plus Vocera software and a Nuance Communications speech-recognition engine on a server. The system uses VoIP to send calls across the enterprise Wi-Fi network, but those calls can also be transmitted via a WAN between offices.
Organizations looking to use a VoIP system such as Vocera’s have to make a commitment to a ubiquitous, high-quality Wi-Fi LAN, said Bob Egan, an analyst at the Tower Group. That requires site surveys and ongoing work to monitor interference, which can be expensive, Egan said.
Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20060102/tc_infoworld/73476;_ylt=ArGvHybc__NrSu0yL5pcJr4jtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--)
San Francisco (InfoWorld) - Once just a sci-fi fantasy, wireless communicator badges like those from the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” TV series are now being used in the workplace.
The crew of the science-fiction show’s starship Enterprise wore small devices on their chests that they could tap to communicate instantly with their colleagues. Devices from Vocera Communications, making headway in hospitals, hotels, and other fields, are uncannily like those science-fiction gadgets. Vocera’s voice-activated devices can be carried around users’ necks, allowing them to talk with coworkers anytime, anywhere within range of an enterprise’s Wi-Fi network.
The Vocera Communications System consists of the communicator devices, plus Vocera software and a Nuance Communications speech-recognition engine on a server. The system uses VoIP to send calls across the enterprise Wi-Fi network, but those calls can also be transmitted via a WAN between offices.
Organizations looking to use a VoIP system such as Vocera’s have to make a commitment to a ubiquitous, high-quality Wi-Fi LAN, said Bob Egan, an analyst at the Tower Group. That requires site surveys and ongoing work to monitor interference, which can be expensive, Egan said.