Title :
Multimedia and multi-party desktop conference system (MERMAID) as groupware platform
Author_Institution :
C&C Syst. Res. Labs., NEC Corp., Kawasaki, Japan
Abstract :
Describes a multimedia and multi-party desktop conference system called MERMAID (Multimedia Environment for Remote Multiple-Attendee Interactive Decision-making) which was developed as a groupware platform through the effective integration of computer and communication technologies. It allows a group of widely-dispersed users to conduct a meeting from their desktop workstations or personal computers. Participants can jointly view and process the multimedia information (including text, graphics, images and handwriting) they are sharing, and they can simultaneously interchange voice and video. Thus, they can make a presentation and hold a discussion while interactively interchanging full media information in real-time. This system has already been used for daily research work, such as remote technical discussions, distributed software development, cooperative remote simulations, joint system design, joint document editing, etc., for more than 5 years. This paper first introduces MERMAID´s functionalities and applications, and then provides some user experiences and evaluation results
Keywords :
group decision support systems; interactive systems; multimedia communication; multimedia computing; real-time systems; technical presentation; teleconferencing; MERMAID; desktop workstations; graphics; groupware platform; handwriting; images; interactive real-time information interchange; meetings; multi-party desktop conference system; multimedia environment; personal computers; presentations; remote discussions; remote multiple-attendee interactive decision-making; research work; text; user experiences; video; voice; widely-dispersed users; Collaborative software; Collaborative work; Communications technology; Computer graphics; Decision making; Microcomputers; Multimedia systems; Programming; Video sharing; Workstations;
Conference_Titel :
TENCON '94. IEEE Region 10's Ninth Annual International Conference. Theme: Frontiers of Computer Technology. Proceedings of 1994
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-1862-5
DOI :
10.1109/TENCON.1994.369214