It's almost getting to be a foregone conclusion, but once again, there were plenty of exciting developments in the field of Web-based real-time communications (WebRTC) for us to take a look at. With the weekend now upon us, it's a good time to take a step back and run down some of the biggest events in the field, which is just what we'll do with our Week in Review coverage.
First, we had a closer look at the impact that WebRTC is likely to have when it comes to the telco market. A technology that allows users to make connections, rapidly, from their Web browsers is the kind of thing that has a lot of potential to destabilize telecommunications as we know them. But how are the telcos responding? How are technology makers responding to a separate technology that could be in everything from televisions to cars? An upcoming webinar set for February 20 at 12:00 p.m. EST called "WebRTC: The Browser Speaks, Telco's Listen" will examine that particular fact in greater detail.
Next we examined a new joint offering between Layer 7 Technologies and Voxeo Labs that will be making an appearance out at the upcoming Mobile World Congress show. The joint offering, a combination of Layer 7's API Management Platform and the Tropo and Phono APIs from Voxeo, looks to provide streamlined publishing, management and security for APIs. This in turn helps developers and carriers alike get more fully into the App economy, and do so with a greater level of efficiency.
A major development then stepped in from Google, who was looking to make its WebP image format a standard on the Internet. WebP is a spinoff from WebM, which was out to create a video codec that required no royalties and is in turn the kind of thing that would be very welcome for HTML5 and WebRTC projects. But moreover, the conversion to WebP is already paying off substantial dividends in terms of bandwidth savings; WebP images are currently saving the Chrome Web Store "terabytes" of data every day, according to reports from Google product manager Stephen Konig.
Finally, we had a closer look at PeerJS and its connection to WebRTC. While PeerJS is still something of a work in progress, working with a comparative handful of browsers right now, this technology has some significant room to grow. Its creators bill it as a way to "complete WebRTC" by providing a more standardized way to let browsers find other users and then establish connections from there. It's backed up by the PeerServer and PeerServer Cloud systems, and looks to make some significant expansion in terms of just how many different browsers overall can use PeerJS within the next three months.
That was the week that was in WebRTC, and it was a week that proved there's almost always something going on in the field of WebRTC. Our global online community is constantly in the hunt to bring back fresh news to discuss, so be sure to join us back here next week for more exciting news, and of course, every weekend for our Week In Review coverage!
