Web conferencing
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Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings or presentations over the Internet. In a web conference, each participant sits at his or her own computer and is connected to other participants via the internet. This can be either a downloaded application on each of the attendees computers or a web-based application where the attendees will simply enter a URL (website address) to enter the conference.
A webinar is a specific type of web conference. It is typically one-way, from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be very collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, pointing out information being presented on screen and the audience can respond over their own telephones, preferably a speaker phone. There are web conferencing technologies on the market that have incorporated the use of VoIP audio technology, to allow for a truly web-based communication.
In the early years of the Internet, the terms "web conferencing" was often used to describe a group discussion in a message board and therefore not live. The term has evolved to refer specifically to live or "synchronous" meetings.
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[edit] Features
Other typical features of a web conference include:
- Slide presentations (often created through PowerPoint)
- Live video (via webcam or digital video camera)
- VoIP (Real time audio communication through the computer via use of headphones and speakers)
- Web tours - where URLs, data from forms, cookies, scripts and session data can be pushed to other participants enabling them to be pushed though web based logons, clicks, etc. This type of feature works well when demonstrating websites where users themselves can also participate.
- Recording (for viewing at a later time by anyone using a unique web address)
- Whiteboard with annotation (allowing the presenter and/or attendees to highlight or mark items on the slide presentation. Or, simply make notes on a blank whiteboard.)
- Text chat (for live question and answer sessions)
- Polls and surveys (allows the presenter to conduct questions with multiple choice answers directed to the audience)
- Screen sharing/desktop sharing/application sharing (where participants can view anything the presenter currently has shown on their screen. Some screen sharing applications allow for remote desktop control, allowing participants to manipulate the presenters screen, although this is not widely used.)
Web conferencing is often sold as a service, hosted on a web server controlled by the vendor, either on a usage basis (cost per user per minute) or for a fixed fee (cost per "seat"). Some vendors make their conferencing software available as a licensed product, allowing organizations that make heavy use of conferencing to install the software on their own servers. Some web conferencing software is distributed free for hosting on the MC's server. There is also software available that is installed on the MC's computer and does not require server configuration software.
An important capability of web conferencing software is application sharing, the ability for one party in the conference to share an application (such as a web browser, spread sheet, etc.) from their desk top with every one else in the meeting and pass the control of the application to someone else in the meeting.
[edit] History
Real-time text chat facilities such as IRC appeared early in the internet's history. Web-based chat and instant messaging software appeared in the mid-1990s. In the late 1990s, the first true web conferencing capability became available and dozens of other web conferencing venues followed thereafter.
In May 1998 Eric R. Korb [1] was first to use the term "webinar "(web-seminar) to brand the online meeting service for his company ComLinx, LLC. Korb received a registered trademark (Serial Number 75478683) by the USPTO on April 18, 2000. Korb successfully defended the mark several times, but widespread use of the mark without his permission flourished throughout the internet making it very difficult to monitor and defend. Korb eventually transferred ownership of the mark when the dot.com boom failed and ComLinx was forced to shut down in 2001 due to lack of funding. The mark has subsequently been abandoned.
The first commercial 100% computer base web-conference (webinar) product called StarLive was delivered by Starlight Networks in 1997 (acquired by Picturetel in 1998).[citation needed] StarLive combined multicast video (MPEG1 on Intranets along with RealVideo on the Internet with slides and chat and support tens of thousands of simulataneous users across different countries.[citation needed] This type of Web conference became mainstream a few years later mainly thanks to WebEx (acquired by Cisco).[citation needed]
[edit] Standards
Web conferencing technologies were not standardized for many years, a significant factor in the lack of interoperability, platform dependence, security issues, cost and market segmentation. In 2003, the IETF established a working group to establish a standard for Web conferencing, called "Centralized Conferencing (xcon)" [2]. Mechanisms for privacy and security are important requirements for the resulting protocols.
The deliverables of xcon, listed as part of their charter include creating:
- A basic floor control protocol. This was published in 2006 as RFC 4582: Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP)
- A mechanism for membership and authorization control
- A mechanism to manipulate and describe media "mixing" or "topology" for multiple media types (audio, video, text)
- A mechanism for notification of conference related events/changes (for example a floor change)
CONFiance is an implementation of the XCON framework and BFCP licensed under the GPL and Academic Free License.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
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