[From GigaOm; more details are in a press release here]

MondoPad: A giant tablet for video conferencing and collaboration

By Simon Mackie Jun. 8, 2011

Want a high-definition video conferencing system for your meeting room, but don’t have the budget for a costly room-based telepresence system? You might want to check out the MondoPad, which has been launched by Portland, Ore.-based InFocus, a company most well-known for its digital projector products. It’s a huge 55-inch, 1080p multi-touch LCD display that’s effectively a giant tablet computer designed for videoconferencing and collaboration.

The MondoPad is based on Windows 7 Pro, and comes with several touch apps built-in, including a whiteboard, video conferencing tools and a document viewer. Additional Windows apps can be added to the device by administrators. Video conferencing is powered by Vidtel, a cloud video conferencing service provider; the Mondopad has a built-in front-facing camera and sound-bar and can handle simultaneous 720p video calls with up to 12 people. MondoPad users don’t need to invest in any additional videoconferencing hardware, as the Vidtel service can connect to SIP and H.323 standards-based endpoints and a variety of proprietary videoconferencing platforms, including consumer apps like Google Chat and enterprise telepresence systems from Polycom and Cisco.

Collaboration apps provided by the MondoPad include document annotation tools and a whiteboard for brainstorming; multiple Mondopads on the same network support collaborative multi-party whiteboard sessions. The document viewer offers support for many popular file formats, including PowerPoint, Word, Excel, JPG and Adobe PDF. Picture-in-picture functionality means that more than one app can be displayed on the screen simultaneously so that, for example, the whiteboard and videoconferencing apps can be used at the same time. Remote meeting participants aren’t left out, either: they are able to see what’s on the display via a web page served by the MondoPad, with access for mobile devices catered for by a mobile-optimized web page.

The MondoPad has a recommended price of $5,949, with video conferencing available for a monthly subscription cost that will vary depending on requirements, but is likely to be around $60 per participant, according to InFocus’s Director of Marketing Scott Niesen. The device is scheduled to become available in July.