IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May 2018 - 114

Product Reviews

The Evolution of Webcams
By Ziva Nissan

ot too long ago, office workers
all had a similar setup: sitting
in a cubicle, a corded deskphone
to the side and a personal computer (PC) for local documentation and
Internet surfing. Video conferencing
was mostly a fun commodity at home
to talk to your friends or your grandparents overseas. At work, you might
get lucky and be able to book a room
system well in advance, even for a oneon-one call.
How times have changed. Open
spaces are the new trend, fewer desks
have traditional phones, and every worker has a webcam on his or her monitor
with a headset to the side, ready for that
video call, whether it's scheduled or on
the fly.

SO HOW HAVE WE GOTTEN
FROM THERE TO HERE?
Video and audio quality are so much
better than they used to be. Both software and hardware have made great
improvements during the last few
years. We've moved from analog audio
and standard-definition video to highdefinition quality for both. Remember
the days when you needed to schedule 10 min before a meeting just to get
the video call up and running? Now, I
can finish one meeting, get coffee,
mosey to my desk, and join a call with
no problem.
The cloud has truly democratized
video calling, which is available to the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2018.2797759
Date of publication: 10 April 2018

114 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

In a world where social
media has become one of
the primary forms of socialization, webcams are
playing an increasingly
important role.

THE POWER OF FACE-TO-FACE
COMMUNICATIONS
masses, and it's becoming a de facto
standard of communication for our
younger generations thanks to the likes
of Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts. Not only is it easier than ever to
join these video calls, it's also free, or
in the case of some enterprise-grade
platforms, much less expensive than in
previous years.
There is tremendous power in faceto-face communication. People finally
get that, and not just as a means to

A Logitech C200.

may 2018

avoid getting on a plane (which is reason enough). Felicia Day, writer, web
series creator, and actress, once said
that "Social media is an amazing tool,
but it's really the face-to-face interaction that makes a long-term impact"
[1]. The use cases for video calling
are endless.

I recently conducted three first interviews for a position on our video collaboration team. Previously known as
the phone screen, we now invite the
candidate to a video call for the first
interview. Two candidates joined by
video in their interview slots, the
other by cell phone. Now, I don't want
to say that the nonvideo candidate was
at a complete disadvantage for not
being on video. But, I will honestly
say that the face-to-face communication was an added advantage for the
other two. Connecting with them visually, rather than as a voice out there
somewhere, I felt that the process was
much more personable.
I'll add another dimension to this
story: of the two candidates on video,
one was utilizing a universal-serial-busconnected webcam and the other an
embedded laptop camera. Although
embedded cameras have gotten better,
there was a distinct difference in the
quality of the external webcam as well
as in the distance and perspective. The
laptop-embedded camera angle was up
the candidate's nose with the light from
behind shining in my eyes, with little

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May 2018