204 results about "Web conferencing" patented technology

A collaboration architecture supports virtual meetings, including web conferencing and collaboration. Presence information is aggregated from different types of communication services to provide a generic representation of presence. In one implementation, collaboration lifecycle management is provided to manage meetings over the lifecycle of a project. Audio options include voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and conventional PTSN phone networks, which are supported in one implementation by an audio conferencing server.

Individual adjustment of audio volume and video properties in a computer network conference environment is provided. For audio adjustment, a buffer collects incoming streams; a stream decoder decodes the buffered audio streams, a gain adjustment applies a gain increase or decrease to the individual audio stream, and a mixer combines each of the individual signals together. The gain adjustment module receives input from a user interface control associated with each participant, and adjusts the volume of that participant's stream accordingly. If a requested increase in gain would cause an overflow of the signal, only a gain increase that will avoid such overflow is applied. Video properties such as brightness, contrast and saturation are also adjustable. Properties of the user's transmitted audio and video streams are also adjustable.

A networked conferencing system is described wherein multiple moderation of conferences is accommodated by permitting a conference moderator to designate one ore more alternate conference moderators. Each alternate moderator has access to at least a subset of conference moderation functions, thereby permitting any alternate moderator to take at least partial control of conference proceedings in the absence of the “main” or “primary” moderator.

Methods and systems for assisting individuals (101) arrange meetings such as networking meeting with other individuals (101) at a specified time (or within a specified time range) and / or at a specified place (or within a specified geographic region). More specifically, methods and systems for allowing individuals (110) to post an invitation to for a meeting on an on-line network and for allowing one or more other individuals (101) to accept such invitation.

A networking conferencing and collaboration tool utilizing an enhanced T.128 application sharing protocol. This enhanced protocol is based on a per-host model command, control, and communication structure. This per-host model reduces network traffic, allows greater scalability through dynamic system resource allocation, allows a single host to establish and maintain a share session with no other members present. The per-host model allows private communication between the host and a remote with periodic broadcasts of updates by the host to the entire share group. This per-host model also allows the host to allow, revoke, pause, and invite control of the shared applications. Subsequent passing of control is provided, also with the hosts acceptance. The model contains no fixed limit on the number of participants, and dynamically allocates resources when needed to share or control a shared application. These resources are then freed when no longer needed.

A method and system for providing role-based renditions of a shared document during a Web conference, in which different renditions of the shared document are provided to different Web conference participants based on the participants' roles in the conference. A participant with sufficient privileges, such as a presenter, is allowed to associate different participant roles with corresponding renditions through a user interface. The disclosed system further operates to dynamically adjust to the changing roles of participants during a Web conference, such that the rendition provided to any given user is changed in response to that user's role changing during the Web conference. The role of a Web conference participant may be based on any specific information obtained regarding that participant, such as information in a user profile in a user database, or other user information. The disclosed system further operates to provide shared document renditions that are specific to individual user attributes, such as user accessibility settings. A user interface provided to the presenter or other privileged participant allows that participant to indicate which participant roles are to be provided which renditions, e.g. which participant roles will be provided with renditions including additional metadata. Such metadata may, for example, include speaker notes, rendered on the presenter's screen, but not on the attendees screens.

A networking conferencing and collaboration tool utilizing an enhanced T.128 application sharing protocol. This enhanced protocol is based on a per-host model command, control, and communication structure. This per-host model reduces network traffic, allows greater scalability through dynamic system resource allocation, allows a single host to establish and maintain a share session with no other members present, and supports true color graphics. The per-host model allows private communication between the host and a remote with periodic broadcasts of updates by the host to the entire share group. This per-host model also allows the host to allow, revoke, pause, and invite control of the shared applications. Subsequent passing of control is provided, also with the hosts acceptance. The model contains no fixed limit on the number of participants, and dynamically allocates resources when needed to share or control a shared application. These resources are then freed when no longer needed. Calculation of minimum capabilities is conducted by the host as the membership of the share changes. The host then transmits these requirements to the share group.

The present invention is a network conference system and method based on three-dimensional technology, which belongs to the field of virtual reality technology, the field of three-dimensional technology, and also belongs to the field of electronic commerce. This system conducts meetings in a virtual space, which solves the problem that the video network meeting lacks the sense of meeting scene and interaction, and easily leaks the image privacy of the participants. At the same time, it does not rely on video data, and avoids the problem that the meeting effect is easily affected by the network. The feature of the system is that the participants control the virtual characters to enter the 3D virtual meeting room to participate in the meeting through the Web browser, and complete the real meeting through the control of the 3D characters and items and UI (User Interface) operations, including construction, switching dynamic The meeting room environment, the nature of construction meetings, dynamic sharing of files, synchronous operation of 3D objects with complex structures, etc. The system is easy to use and highly secure, providing an instant and three-dimensional conference platform for participants distributed all over the world.

The present invention is a system, method and apparatus for converting a slide show presentation for use within a non-presentation application such as a Web conferencing or virtual classroom application. In accordance with the present invention, a slide show presentation in its native format can be processed to extract slide title information for each slide in the slide show presentation. Additionally, important text within slide further can be extracted. Each slide in the slide-show can be converted to a raster image and disposed within markup. The markup can be annotated with the important text and both the markup and the slide title can be provided to the non-presentation application for use in concert with the non-presentation application. In this way, the context of each slide can be preserved for use within the non-presentation application as can an image of each slide itself.

A computer implemented method and apparatus for sharing the contents of a presentation in a web conference through automated identification of documents for selective sharing with web conferences comprises launching a web conference in which an application or an entire desktop view of a conference presenter is caused to be rendered as content viewable on the displays of all conference participants. The method detects that one or more documents are being accessed by application(s) executed concurrently with the desktop sharing application and identifies documents having a supported format as including viewable content available for rendering to the display of the presenter. Automatically, or after presenter confirmation, the content is uploaded to a web server and converted into a format that can be distributed to and cached at the respective participant computers.

A web conferencing system which, in one aspect has time-shifting capabilities. Session content is recorded so that participants are able to observe the session in real-time, delayed while the session is still in progress, or after the session has completed. Participants are also able to observe the session at normal, slower, or faster speeds, while maintaining substantially consistent perceived audio quality.

The present invention provides a method, system, and computer program product for web conference participant display render acknowledgment. The method comprises: providing shared information to at least one participant of a web conference; determining a screen rendering status of the shared information in a web browser of each participant of the web conference; obtaining the screen rendering status of the shared information from each participant; and displaying information regarding the screen rendering status of the shared information to a moderator of the web conference.

An apparatus and mechanism to manage multi-modal real-time or quasi real-time sessions such as voice, video, instant messaging, or web-conferencing across multiple devices through a simple subscription to a session management service. A user can subscribe to the service from many devices (e.g. mobile device, desk phone, personal computer, internet appliance, internet TV, communication terminal, etc.) and through the service seamlessly move sessions back and forth between subscribed devices. In a preferred embodiment, a user utilizes a “virtual slider” in a simple “two touch” procedure to effectuate the movement of a communication session from one device to another device via the service.

In order to minimize the delay of the video images viewed by a network conference attendee, an intelligent buffering process (IB process) selectively discards video frames from at least one point, and in an embodiment, many network points, such as at “in” and / or “out” buffers of clients, servers, routers, etc. Packets of video frame data arrive at a buffer, which can fill to a predetermined limit if the packets cannot be forwarded due to delays or slow connections. To forward the most current video images, old frames in the buffer are discarded rather than forwarded. In a particular embodiment, when the buffer is full, the next arriving delta frame packet is discarded. To avoid distortion, each subsequent delta frame is discarded until a new key frame eventually arrives. If the buffer is still full when the key frame arrives, the buffer is purged and the new key frame is added.

A web data conferencing system is coupled to a video server to provide the output video signal of the video server as the video portion of the web conference. The video server is configured to receive video signals from multiple sources and to interactively provide the video signals as an output signal to the web conference.

In a server-client network conference system having a conference server 100 and a plurality of conference terminals 140a to 140n through a network 130, a conference data storage section 120 creates a real-time conference data file 123 and an index file 122 containing time-of-day information and heading information while a conference proceeds. After the conference is over, edit such as voice stream merge processing, image thinning-out processing, etc., in the real-time conference data file 123 is performed to create a minute file 124 and the minute file 124 is managed with an index file 122.

In addition to a conference server 100, a record server 200 is provided. The conference data of a real-time conference is stored in a storage section 214 of the record server 200 (S2). A conference terminal 300a performs connection processing to the conference (S1) and then transmits a catch-up playback request to the record server 200 (S3). The record server 200 determines whether or not catch-up playback is enabled (S4) and then distributes the past conference data (S6), and notifies the conference terminal 300a that the catch-up playback end point has come (S7-1). Accordingly, the connection of the conference terminal 300a is switched to the conference server 100 (S9) and the conference terminal 300a is connected to the real-time conference (S10).

Methods and systems for assisting individuals (101) arrange meetings such as networking meeting with other individuals (101) at a specified time (or within a specified time range) and / or at a specified place (or within a specified geographic region). More specifically, methods and systems for allowing individuals (110) to post an invitation to for a meeting on an on-line network and for allowing one or more other individuals (101) to accept such invitation.

A methodology may be provided that automatically annotates web conference application sharing (e.g., sharing scenes and / or slides) based on voice and / or web conference data. In one specific example, a methodology may be provided that threads the annotations and assigns authorship to the correct resources.

A method, system and apparatus for the policy driven provisioning of a Web conference. A Web conference provisioning system can include a policy manager coupled to at least two different Web conferencing platforms over a computer communications network. The policy manager can have a configuration for processing a request for a Web conferencing from a communicatively linked end user to select one of the Web conferencing platforms to host the Web conference. Preferably, two of the different Web conferencing platforms can include a CPE based platform and a hosted platform.

In order to minimize the delay of the video images viewed by a network conference attendee, an intelligent buffering process (IB process) selectively discards video frames from at least one point, and in an embodiment, many network points, such as at “in” and / or “out” buffers of clients, servers, routers, etc. Packets of video frame data arrive at a buffer, which can fill to a predetermined limit if the packets cannot be forwarded due to delays or slow connections. To forward the most current video images, old frames in the buffer are discarded rather than forwarded. In a particular embodiment, when the buffer is full, the next arriving delta frame packet is discarded. To avoid distortion, each subsequent delta frame is discarded until a new key frame eventually arrives. If the buffer is still full when the key frame arrives, the buffer is purged and the new key frame is added.

A communication system and method for optimizing a network (or web) conference. A communication system in accordance with an embodiment of the invention includes a network conference server, at least one mail server, a moderator's client device, a plurality of participants' client devices, a network interconnecting the servers and client devices, a network conference application executed by the network conference server, and an email application distributed amongst the mail server and the client devices. The network conference application receives from the moderator's client device a first communication comprising a conference schedule, participant details and conference material and transmits to the email application a second communication comprising a network address, the conference schedule, the participant details and the conference material.

With the ever increasing size and the explorative growth of digital document and content, the traditional electronic information exchanging tool such as email and instant message, web-meeting etc. can not fully satisfy massive user's needs. With the development of central controlled distributed scalable virtual machine (CCDSVM) and the web-based computer user working (operating) environment (WCUWE), the problems mentioned above can be easily solved by introduce a common “dynamic work space” technology of this invention within frame work of CCDSVM and WCUWE. With “dynamic work space” technology, user can use conventional browser to instantly post or un-post messages, digital documents or contents or said resources without install specialized software, without size limitation, with security, and further to obtain capability of anywhere and anytime peer-to-peer exchanging information within organized user-group or in one-to-one fashion. In addition, WCUWE of CCDSVM provides each user a private work space and each group a common work space under the dynamic work space umbrella, therefore, WCUWE provide users of CCDSVM a safe secure infrastructure hierarchy for users or group of users to efficiently manage, sharing, and access the right information in time anywhere on the network.

Access to online collaborative resources such as an online meeting, web conference, online chat room, an online video conference, an online audio conference, a collaboratively edited document, a collaborative browsing session, an online social networking group, or a web site is secured by providing a first user-specific URL to a first user for addressing collaborative resource; responsive to the first user accessing the first user-specific URL, granting by a computing system access to the collaborative event to the first user; and responsive to a second user accessing the first user-specific URL, preventing by a computing system access to the collaborative event to the second user. Optionally, time criteria for accessing the first user-specific URL may be used to invalidating the first user-specific URL, wherein access to the collaborative resource is disabled.

A method and apparatus is disclosed for facilitating collaborative learning in an educational community via a web based educational system. In one embodiment, the method allows one or more of the educational participants to generate educational content, upload it to a document depository and teach it to other participants with the help of web based tools like web-conferencing, audio and video streaming, and web logging (blogging). The method also safeguards the quality of the generated educational content, by defining the role of the educational moderator and the access privileges that each class of participants has in using the web system's resources.