The Virtual Meeting for Macintosh and Windows

The Virtual Meeting System is a low bandwidth media rich multi user conferencing system and groupware development environment. It consists of a suite of applications which create an interactive Multimedia communications environment that can be used to conduct presentations, meetings, lectures and classes between participants in many geographically dispersed locations. The system is designed to be used concurrently with an audio conference call. The person who has the floor in a Virtual Meeting can control the simultaneous presentation of slides, movies, graphics, images, documents, sound or video clips using the system.

The Virtual Meeting is scalable. Virtual broadcasting networks can be built to support from two to thousands of simultaneous users using Local or Wide Area Networks, or modems. The modular system architecture allows two users to connect together using modems or Peer to Peer (person to person) over a network. Multiple users can connect together using a Client Server architecture. A Macintosh or Windows Computer on the Internet, LAN or WAN runs the TVM Conference Server application. Users can connect to the Conference Server using its internet domain name or IP address. The TVM Client software can connect to the Conference Server with direct, SLIP, PPP, or shell type internet access. Once connected Users computers are controlled by the user who has the floor in the conference (usually the lecturer or moderator). Users can raise their hands at any time and may be given the floor by the moderator. When they are given the floor their photograph can be displayed on each persons computer screen if desired. They can then use the tools in the WhiteBoard to draw or sketch to explain their point if necessary. Lecturers can use QuickTime Movies and slide shows, the documents created in any application, or multimedia objects on the Internet's World Wide Web in their presentations.

The system can support distributed or on demand access of multimedia objects. When using distributed access the large multimedia files are distributed to each user before the conference in order to reduce access times and network congestion. When using on demand access the multimedia files are located on a file server, FTP server or WWW Server and are accessed in real time on demand (when you are going to watch them).

Multi User Netscape Navigator - via The Virtual Meeting

Surf The World Wide Web with your friends and colleagues. Version 2.0 of The Virtual Meeting Conference Gateway interfaces with Netscape Navigator version 1.1 and allows one person in a conference to navigate the web while everyone else watches and follows along. If a QuickTime movie or Slide Show is included on a web page the person who has the floor in a conference will also be able to control and navigate the QuickTime movie on all conference participants computers using the QuickTime Movie and Slide Player application.

Shared QuickTime

The TVM QuickTime Movie and Slide Player application allows a conference participant who has the floor of the meeting to control the playback of an Apple QuickTime Movie or Slide presentation. Movies or Slide presentations may be Loaded, Cued, Started, Stopped, Advanced To The Next Frame, Backed Up to a Previous Frame, Enlarged, etc. A Pointer is included so the lecturer, moderator or any designated broadcaster may point to objects of interest in the Movie or Slide presentation. QuickTime content can be distributed or loaded in real time via Netscape.

Live Shared Documents

Simultaneously View and Annotate documents from any application. Adobe Acrobat Exchange LE can be used to navigate, view and annotate on top of Acrobat PDF documents. The TVM WhiteBoard application can be used to view and annotate on top of Macintosh PICT or SCRAPBOOK files or Windows Bitmap files that have been created by other applications. An electronic pointer is provided so that objects on the screen may be referenced in conversation. Graphics and document files can be distributed in advance or loaded in real time from a file server or web server. For the live creation of graphics on everyone's screen in real time the WhiteBoard application is used by the person who has the floor to broadcast sketches, drawings and text to all sites as they are being drawn. The WhiteBoard can also be used to create and save sketches for future broadcast to you collaborators. Object oriented drawing tools are provided and graphic elements from external files can be easily imported.

Shared AppleScript (Macintosh Only)

Version 2.0 of The The Macintosh version of The Virtual Meeting Conference Gateway acts like an AppleScript recorder to capture and forward events that happen in recordable applications. When these AppleScript messages are received by other TVM Conference Gateways the AppleScript is executed and sent to the proper applications causing the synchronization of activities on multiple computers to occur simultaneously. If a person in control of a conference types in a recordable word processor that action will be reproduced on all conference participants computers.

Multi User Director, SuperCard, HyperCard, Delphi ...

Director, SuperCard, HyperCard, Delphi , AppleGuide and a growing list of other end user application development environments can be used by users to create customized multi user groupware applications utilizing the communications services provided by the Conference Gateway and the Conference Server. These auxiliary applications can be used for Voting, Group Response, Courseware, Testing, Presentations or Auctions, the possibilities are endless. The Virtual Meeting Conference Gateway and Conference Server forwards Macintosh AppleEvents and Windows DDE Messages it receives from these applications to other copies of those same applications that are running on other conference participants computers

The Virtual Meeting is a software product for Macintosh and Windows computers and requires no special hardware.