Zoom Has Games You Can Play With Others In A Call

Conference calls are a daily reality for many who are now working from home. With Zoom being a commonly used software for that, it is now integrating a number of games that you can play with others in a call.

There are nine games in total for now, and they are all of the multiplayer kind. These range from LGN Poker, which should be self explanatory, to one called Heads Up! It’s been on iOS and Android for awhile, and is described as “charades with a twist”, and is apparently made by TV personality Ellen DeGeneres.

Zoom integrating games is quite the odd one. On one hand, it’s easy to imagine this being useful for those who sign into a call early. These games can then be used to kill time, and wait for the actual meeting to start, or while waiting for the late ones to show up. It can also be used for team building, if your boss is so inclined. But on the other, games by their very nature will usually drag on, derailing the meeting.

At any rate, the option to play games with others in a Zoom call is now available. Maybe you can just casually call up a bunch of friends to play them. But more than likely, if you have friends for that, you’ll probably be hitting up a proper multiplayer video game on Steam or something else.

Zoom Posts Amazing Earnings, Questions Remain About Future Growth

Zoom, the video conferencing company that catapulted to popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, has reported a revenue of US$882.5 million (~RM3.6 billion) in the last three months of 2020 – a 370% jump compared to the same period the year before, the BBC said.

To understand the magnitude of this change, consider that Zoom’s profit in 2019 only amounted to US$21.7 million (~RM88.1 million). The following year, it rapidly ballooned to US$671.5 million (~RM2.7 billion). According to the BBC, the company’s total revenue in 2020 was US$2.6 billion (~RM10.6 billion) or an astounding increase of 326%.

But with even those numbers, Zoom can hardly rest on its laurels. People around the world are being vaccinated and lockdowns are being slowly lifted. Analysts question whether the platform can maintain its meteoric growth if work from home happens to be only a momentary trend.

And there are some ominous signs for the company. According to CNBC, Zoom finance chief Kelly Steckelberg conceded that the company was losing customers at a higher rate than before the pandemic – though it also lost fewer customers than expected.

Analysts say the company is also facing stiffer competition from Microsoft, Google, and Cisco now. Time will tell if Zoom has what it takes to tango with the big boys.

Zoom to set up R&D centre and hire hundreds of engineers in Singapore

Zoom Video Communications Inc said on Wednesday it would expand its presence in Singapore by opening a research and development centre and will immediately hire hundreds of engineering staff for the new operations.

The video-conferencing services provider said in a statement that is also doubling its data centre capacity in the country. The San Jose, California-based company launched the Singapore data centre, its first in Southeast Asia, in August.

The company has seen a surge in users of its video conferencing service this year, with millions of workers and students using its video platform as they work and study from home due to the coronavirus-led lockdowns.

“We plan to immediately hire employees,” Velchamy Sankarlingam, president of product and engineering for Zoom, said while floating the company’s expansion plans.

Zoom said it would select the location for its new centre as pandemic-related remote-work mode subsides, adding to its existing R&D centers in the United States, India, and China.

Singapore in recent years has been ramping up its efforts to lure firms related to technology - including global players such as Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, and Chinese tech giants Tencent and Alibaba - a sector it hopes will power the city-state’s economic growth.

Last month, the low-tax global business hub announced a new work visa for foreign executives of technology firms, even as it tightens broader immigration curbs to try and assuage fears over competition for jobs due to rising unemployment.

Zoom has previously said its hiring plans for Singapore would include engineers and sales staff. The company said it has more than 3,800 employees globally, but did not provide a headcount for its Singapore operations.

While the share price has climbed about 500% in 2020, Zoom warned last month that margins would remain under pressure next year as its high number of free users makes it hard to offset a spike in costs to maintain growth.

Zoom Recordings Uploaded Online By The Thousands

Zoom recently came under fire when it was discovered that its video conferencing feature wasn’t as secure as it led people to believe. Now, to add insult to injury, thousands of video recordings have reportedly been uploaded online in the form of video clips.

According to The Washington Post, this was achieved due to the “identical way” each video was named. And then posted onto unprotected Amazon Web Services (AWS) buckets. Simply put, viewers can find recordings of meetings, therapy sessions, and business meetings – among many other kinds of videos – with the use of specific keywords.

Zoom supposedly uses TLS encryption for its video conferencing, which is similar to HTTPS sites. In effect, the encryption still gives server owners access to your data, but it’s still not true end-to-end encryption. On a related note, another report found that Zoom was allegedly issuing encryption keys to meeting participants in the US via servers situated in China.

While some may brush this away, the implications behind this could be far greater, especially when you consider the fact that China can order any company with a base in the country to hand over critical information to its government, if deemed necessary.

At the time of writing, Zoom has put patched up security issues on both the macOS and the Windows OS. At the same time, it has also announced that it has implemented a 90-day feature freeze in an effort to tackle the mounting privacy and security issues.