CU-SeeMe

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CU-SeeMe is an internet video-conferencing client written by Tim Dorcey of the Information Technology department at Cornell University^[1]. It was first developed for the Macintosh in 1992 and later for the Windows platform in 1994. Originally it was video-only with audio added in 1994 for the Macintosh and 1995 for Windows. CU-SeeMe's audio came from Maven, an audio only client developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.^[2]

The commercial licensing rights were bought by White Pine Software in December 1998 and the product was then released a commercial product. Unfortunately, White Pine Software ignored the original hobby market of CU-SeeMe users and attempted to compete against hardware assisted video-conferencing companies. They were too early for acceptance as audio/video quality was an issue at the time (excessive latency) and thus the product was only useful to hobbyists.

White Pine Software was subsequently bought by First Virtual Communications and at some point the client was renamed simply CU and was made part of a fee-based video chat service called CUworld. The client evolved further, was renamed "Click To Meet" and became the major offering of First Virtual.

First Virtual filed for bankruptcy on January 20, 2005 and the assets were acquired by RADvision on March 15, 2005. RADvision continues to offer the product through clicktomeet.com.

There is still a small but active community of users who continue to use CU-SeeMe. Although there had been no releases of software from the various incarnations of White Pine since around 2000, there are freeware alternatives available for both Windows and Macintosh platforms. A search of the web will quickly locate the CU-SeeMe "reflectors" that are still operational.