In 2013, RCS unveiled the continuation of our mobile strategy. Previously, we had delivered some very helpful “native applications” for iPhone mostly, to help users get content into our products, and then to control NexGen. In the native application business, you have to maintain multiple code bases and when you add features you have to add them everywhere.
Where Zetta was built from the ground up this millennium, it has within it technologies that allow us to dream up all sorts of new game changing things. You’ll read about them in this space in many of the editions. The dream in this particular instance was to have mobile access to Zetta, but this time without having to install anything. Just go to a web page, sign in securely and, well GO! It is super easy to set up and configure Zetta2Go, and your IT team can sort out how to get you into it from the outside world. Some clients choose VPN, some choose what is called “port forwarding” which is to say they’ll allow your traffic into Zetta2GO through a single port which they can control.
At the NAB show in Las Vegas 2013, we demonstrated the first cut of this. This was controlling Hot Keys remotely from a tablet (or Blackberry, iPhone, Mac, Linux, desktop) browser. While modest in features, by the end of the year we built on that framework and had On Air, a first cut of Voice Tracking, and logs in there.
One of the challenges we have had is with Apple, and their tight control on iOS devices in browsers. While you could record voicetracks all day long with an Android Tablet, Apple would only allow playback natively in the browser, not access to the microphone. There has been hope that this limitation would eventually be lifted to put it on par with Android. That never happened and the clever folks that work for me came up with a helper application which we are in the final stages of getting released on the IOS app store. It goes against the “no install” mantra we started with, but the vendor has given us no choice. If you want to voicetrack on IOS, for now at least, we must go this route. We have submitted our helper application called “ZettaMic” to the app store for approval.
In the most recent versions of Zetta, you can also more easily get all of the modules working on any tablet, or iPhone. In Early versions of Zetta2Go, if you didn’t choose the “desktop view” you would only get Hotkeys to work, but now you can see all of the modules and can get the full experience.
In the past six months, we have doubled our development team on Zetta2Go and have been hyper focused on making voicetracking a much richer, smoother experience. We have also renamed it to “iVT” which is a tip of the hat to our Master Control history.
So the point is, that if you haven’t seen Zetta2Go lately, you haven’t seen Zetta2Go. Contact your local office for more information.