DataPhone: an intelligent phone for data conferencing

Data conferencing is one of the more commercially successful conferencing applications, because of its effectiveness and relatively modest resource requirements. Existing data conferencing applications are built almost exclusively on IP-based packet switched networks. While they are very effective in office communications, their use in the home is still quite limited because data conferencing end-points are mostly personal computers and are thus not particularly people friendly. In contrast, many more people are quite comfortable with conventional telephones. The paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an information appliance, called DataPhone, that can be used both as a regular phone and a data conferencing device. A DataPhone consists of a touch sensitive screen, an SVD (simultaneous voice and data) modem and a microcontroller-based single board computer. DataPhone allows two parties to have a regular voice communications channel, as well as a shared whiteboard for sketching and document sharing. One of the key design decisions of DataPhone is that it runs directly on PSTN, and does not required any additional infrastructural support, such as ISP subscription, domain name service, routing gateway, etc., thus avoiding their associated configuration headaches. We have successfully built a fully functional DataPhone prototype and evaluated its usefulness through end user testing. Initial responses are both favorable and encouraging.