This morning, HP Halo has announced an alliance with Marriott to make HP Halo telepresence systems publicly available at Marriott properties. HP Halo also announced the new customers AstraZeneca, Dow Chemical and Toshiba, who are now available on the HP Halo Video Exchange Network (HVEN), which now extends to 22 countries on 5 continents. The new announcements from HP do not end there; they now offer a new executive / small group telepresence system called The HP Halo Collaboration Center. On top of all of this good news, HP revealed that 80% of HP Halo clients have purchased additional systems. After the jump, get Human Productivity Lab President Howard Lichtman's thoughts and analysis on the announcement.

Masha Zager at Broadband Properties did a superb article on the need for and challenges of publicly available telepresence. Human Productivity Lab Board of Advisor member and former CEO of telepresence pioneer TeleSuite, Tom Jackson, is interviewed and Powwow Virtual, the Human Productivity Lab's business model for publicly available telepresence is mentioned. One of our early designs for a telepresence conferencing center is featured in the article as well with HSL's Thoughts and Analysis.

The European edition of CXO Magazine published an interview with Human Productivity Lab founder and Telepresence Options publisher Howard Lichtman in their January issue.  In the interview Howard discusses the differences between telepresence and videoconferencing, how enterprises can measure the ROI of telepresence conferencing, publicly available telepresence, telepresence Community of Interest Networks, and the future of telepresence.

March 16, 2007 - Regus (LON: RGU), the world's largest provider of outsourced workplaces, is delighted to announce that it will be the first to offer its clients and the public the facility to have real time meetings across the globe using Cisco TelePresence.

A veteran of the local communications scene is raising $25 million to develop a chain of videoconferencing facilities with new technology championed by several industry heavyweights.

Howard Lichtman, a former vice president with Internet protocol applications company Savvis Communications, had been advising clients on so-called "telepresence" technology, which uses high-definition audio and video feeds and life-size images to simulate face-to-face contact for business meetings or even medical consultations. He left Savvis in 2001, and after a series of other jobs in the industry launched Ashburn consulting firm Human Productivity Lab.