The Virtual Meeting for Macintosh

The Virtual Meeting system is a low cost alternative to real-time video or mixed media conferencing. Used with a simultaneous audio conference call over regular telephone lines, it adds the ability to centrally control the simultaneous presentation of text, graphics, images and video on every participants screen from one location. Computers at participating sites are linked together by our Conference Server application. The connections between conferencing locations can be made using modems, the Internet, a Local Area Network or a Wide Area Network.

The Virtual Meeting system allows people with ordinary desktop computers and modems to visually communicate while talking on an ordinary audio telephone call. The person who has the floor in a Virtual Meeting can control the simultaneous presentation of slides, QuickTime movies or video clips, live sketching, World Wide Web documents or the documents that were created with any Macintosh or Windows application.

The system consists of a suite of applications which create an interactive Multimedia communications environment that can be used to conduct meetings, lectures and presentations between participants in many geographically dispersed locations.

The system 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. A meeting participant can electronically raise his or her hand at any time. When the meeting moderator recognizes their request, they give that person the conference floor and their photograph is displayed in each participant's Current Speaker Window. The meeting protocols supported are moderated and un-moderated meetings as well as circle and round table discussions.

You can use The Virtual Meeting with Distributed or On Demand Multimedia objects. When using the distributed style multimedia and document files are distributed to each participant before the conference. The time required to access any file is minimized because all the files are local during the conference. The on demand style of conferencing employs a Web Browser like Netscape Navigator to download the multimedia and document files from a file or web server just as they are needed. The time required to access any file is dependent on the file size and network bandwidth. this style works best if the multimedia files are small or if Web pages are used to view the material. .

Cross Platform Features

Cross Platform Between Mac And Windows

The Virtual Meeting client and server are available for both Macintosh and Windows computers. Meetings or Conferences can be made up of participants using either type of computer system. Meetings held on either type of Conference Server can be attended by a mix of Macintosh and Windows users. Most all of the features of TVM are available on both Macintosh and Windows computers.

Conference Gateway

The Conference Gateway manages communications between your computer and your collaborators computers. For Two party conferences a modem or network connection can be made between yourself and your collaborator. In multi-party conferences network connections can be made with our Conference Server application or the built in terminal emulator can be used to connect with collaborators in the private chat areas of on online services like Delphi, Compuserve, or Genie. Once a connection is established the terminal emulator window can be hidden so the screen can be used for multimedia presentations. The Conference Gateway controls which Macintosh Applications are launched on each collaborators computers. The conference Gateway also handles communications with some Macintosh presentation and document viewer applications (see list below). For example Netscape Navigator can be launched and controlled on each collaborators computer and instructed to display any web page or multimedia document on the network.

WhiteBoard

For the live creation of graphics on everyone's screen in real time the electronic WhiteBoard application is used 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. Graphic elements from PICT files can be easily imported. The WhiteBoard can be used to view and annotate on top of PICT or SCRAPBOOK files that have been created by other applications. A Macintosh print driver has been provided so you can create scrapbook files from the Print Command in virtually any Macintosh application. An electronic pointer is provided so that objects on the WhiteBoard may be referenced in conversation. The WhiteBoard is a collaborative application that allows more than 1 participant to work simultaneously.

QuickTime Movie and Slide player

The QT Movie 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 presenter may point to objects of interest in the Movie or Slide presentation. This action will cause an arrow shaped pointer to be displayed at that same spot in everyone's QuickTime window. Facilities are provided to convert presentations created by any of the standard presentation packages like Microsoft PowerPoint or Aldus Persuasion to the QuickTime file format. Shareware tools are available that allow any application to print to QuickTime files. Utility programs are also available that convert Microsoft .AVI files to the QuickTime format.

Adobe Acrobat

Using Adobe Acrobat Exchange and Exchange LE with The Virtual Meeting allows all conference attendees to simultaneously navigate and view Acrobat PDF documents together. TVM's Acrobat Plug-Ins allow free hand sketches to be added to any Acrobat PDF document. These annotations can be viewed by all users as they are sketched by the conference leader. These changes can be saved by any conference attendee using Acrobat exchange if desired.

Web Conferencing

Using a World Wide Web Browsers like Netscape Navigator with The Virtual Meeting allows everyone in the conference to follow along while the meeting leader surfs the World Wide Web. When the current conference leader goes to a new location on the web so does everyone else. If the leader clicks on a reference to a QuickTime movie or slide presentation that file will be downloaded to everyone's computer and it will be opened by TVM's QuickTime movie player helper application. Once the QuickTime movie or slide show has been loaded the conference leader will be able to control the presentation of the movie or slide show and the built in electronic pointer.

Cyber Link Web Conferencing

Cyber Link is a utility that allows you to use the Finder and its icons to gather, organize and keep track of all the locations on the World Wide Web you want to visit in a web conference. Using Cyber Link with The Virtual Meeting allows the conference leader control all the other conference attendees web browsers. When the conference leader double click on a Cyber Link files icon in the finder, Cyber Link will not only tell the conference leaders web browser to go that location it will broadcast a message to all the other web browsers in the conference telling them to go to that location as well.

Netscape WEB Helper Applications

Besides the WhiteBoard and QuickTime Player remote controllable helper applications described above, almost any Macintosh Application can be controlled by a web browser in order to synchronize the viewing of its special type of documents. A standard spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel can be used to display the same Excel spreadsheets on the screens of all participants simultaneously. Once launched however most applications will not provide any further synchronization of document contents UNLESS they are recordable and scriptable by AppleScript.

Macintosh Specific Features

AppleScript Conferencing

Using recordable and scriptable applications with The Virtual Meeting allows everyone in a conference to view documents as they are being created and modified by the person who is currently leading the conference. When the leader types or makes other changes to a document these changes are replicated to on each users computer screen. Any user can save the document locally if desired.

Scrapbook support in TVM and WhiteBoard

The TVM WhiteBoard can open Macintosh ScrapBook files and display the multi paged documents contained inside them. The WhiteBoard's drawing tools can be used to draw and annotate on top of them as well.

Customizability

You can customize The Virtual Meetings User Interface by adding Macintosh resources to the TVM Preferences file. New menus and menu commands can be added to The Conference Gateway application. When a menu command is chosen a TVM script is executed. TVM Scripts can contain any of the TVM script commands or any AppleScript commands. Control panels have buttons or icons that can also run TVM scripts. Added control panels can be displayed using one of the TVM script commands. Tools like ResEdit and ViewEdit can be used to create the necessary menus, control panels and script resources.

Extensibility

Alegiant's SuperCard (cross platform), MacroMedia's Director (cross platform), Apples HyperCard or Apple's Guide can be used by end users to create customized multi user groupware applications utilizing the communications services provided by the Conference Gateway. These auxiliary applications can be used for Voting, Group Response, Courseware, Testing, Presentations or Auctions, the possibilities are endless. Traditional development environments like MetroWerks MPW, MacApp, and Symantec C++ can also be used to create add on applications. Developers kits and consulting services are available to assist you in these areas.

Communications with Microsoft Windows

The WhiteBoard and QuickTime movie and slide player can be used to communicate with collaborators using Microsoft Windows. Document sharing and viewing can be accomplished using a cross platform document viewer like Adobe's Acrobat Exchange, No Hands Software's Common Ground or Word Perfect's Envoy.

Specifications

The Virtual Meeting System supports the following Macintosh standards.

Communications Devices

Connection Types

Graphics Types

Compressed graphics and movie support thru QuickTime

Web Browser Support

The Virtual Meeting uses AppleEvent to monitor and control web browsers in a conference. Web browsers have built in support for some document types and can be extended indefinitely by adding helper applications to view new document types.

AppleEvent Support

AppleScript Support

External Code and Helper Application Support

Configurations

The Virtual Meeting is available in several standard configurations. Configuration changes between different Editions are always easy to perform by adding Special configuration Extension files to the system.

TVM For Macintosh Standard Edition: A generic Multimedia Teleconferencing systems that can be used for conducting meetings, telepresentations, classes, and brainstorming sessions.

TVM For Macintosh Classroom Edition: A special version of The Virtual Meeting system that has been customized for Interactive Distance Learning.

TVM For Macintosh Telemedicine Edition: A special version of The Virtual Meeting system that has been customized for Medical collaboration.

TVM For Macintosh Auction Edition: A special version of The Virtual Meeting system that has been customized for a Live Auction

TVM For Macintosh Electronic Town Hall Edition: A special versions of The Virtual Meeting system that have been customized for electronic town hall meetings and voting.

Typical Users Configuration

The Virtual Meeting For Macintosh Standard Edition
Each users TVM installation includes the Following Components:

In addition the conference moderator would have the Moderators Extension installed on his computer.

Optional Components:

For conferences with more than two participants a data bridge of some kind is required to broadcast the data to each person. The Conference Server application runs on a Macintosh and allows several people to participate in a conference. Textual conferencing facilities available on on-line services like Delphi or BBS systems like FirstClass can also be used as a data bridge and can accommodate TVM conferences.

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TVM The Virtual Meeting

Visual Communications Software for Macintosh and Windows Computers


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Copyright 1996 by Seth Snyder All Rights Reserved