Volume 7, Issue 4 — February 19, 2021

AV Buyers.Club — Volume 7, Issue 4

February 19, 2021 | Volume: 7 | Issue: 4

Welcome home! Oh, you never left? Well, there’s a plethora of new products coming to make your WFH (work from home) experience better, theoretically. My favorite is one called FLEX from a company called Newline. I just did a live launch of it using our virtual event platform, LAVNCH, yesterday with the president of the company — you can watch the recording of its global debut here: https://lavnch.com/lavnch-and-learn/newline/register/.

So, what is it? It’s a dedicated UCC appliance (for the home) that works with MS Teams, Zoom, BlueJeans, Google Meet, Webex and/or Pexip. Yes, you can set it up to work with all of them — or just one of them. It includes a touch-enabled 27” screen, is Windows or Mac compatible, consists of a built-in mic array, speaker, a 4K resolution camera and you can annotate — live — during a meeting using your fingers! Oh, and it can be used as a second desktop monitor, too.

More to come.

Also, last week, we held LAVNCH WEEK 3.0 — a three-day online experience that saw more than 10 new product debuts, including a 100” LCD monitor from Sony, an interactive (touch) 100” display from Planar, the Pexip for Healthcare announcement (a HIPPA-compliant on-call UCC-based Doctor/patient service) and a new series of temp-taking tablets form Aurora to help retail and schools re-open safely. All of it is archived on one page here: https://lavnch.com/lavnch-week/lavnch-week-three/ in case you might want to watch.

Finally, check out below, as we bring you one of the biggest issues we’ve ever had of AV Buyers.Club. Many new products and new technology are debuting in 2021, and we will always be your one-stop news source for AV, Digital Signage and UCC gear! So, read it all below AND consider following us all over social here: https://www.ravepubs.com/rave-pubs/social/.

Have a great day!

— Gary Kayye

COLUMNS

+ Crew Call: It’s a Jungle in Here [Joel Rollins]

Every environment has its own homegrown bugs, and videoconferencing is no different. Whether you are running the meeting, or simply sitting still, hoping your RAF (Resting Attentive Face) has convinced the meeting organizer you are paying attention, it’s a good idea to know the creatures that are waiting for you in the virtual meeting biosphere.

+ Securing AV: The SolarWinds Attack of 2020 (Actually 2019) [Paul Konikowski]

While most Americans are still processing the recent attack on the United States Capitol building, many cybersecurity researchers and professionals believe the real war began online back in 2020. Some are calling it the “cyberpandemic” as forewarned just six months before at the 2020 World Economic Forum.

+ Lessons From the SolarWinds Hack [Scott Tiner]

In mid-December, news broke about a massive cyber breach that occurred through SolarWinds software. There is a chance (I hope not) that many in the AV community briefly looked at this, decided it was an IT issue and moved on. If you did, I think that was a mistake — and want to tell you why.