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Web conferencing is used to hold group meetings or live presentations over the Internet. In the early years of the Internet, the terms "web conferencing" and "computer conferencing" were often used to refer to group discussions conducted within a message board (via posted text messages), but the term has evolved to refer specifically to "live" or "synchronous" meetings, while the posted message variety of discussion is called a "forum", "message board", or "bulletin board". In a web conference, each participant sits at their own computer, and is connected to other participants via the internet. The most basic feature of a web conference is screen sharing, whereby conference participants see whatever is on the presenter's screen. Usually this is accompanied by voice communication, either through a traditional telephone conference, or through VoIP, although sometimes text chat is used in place of voice. A webinar is a seminar which is conducted over the World Wide Web. It is a type of web conferencing. In contrast to a Webcast, which is transmission of information in one direction only, a webinar is designed to be interactive between the presenter and audience. A webinar is 'live' in the sense that information is conveyed according to an agenda, with a starting and ending time. In most 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 speakerphone. The word 'webinar' is an example of Portmanteau, combining web and seminar.
Features Other typical features of a web conference include: Some web conferencing software allows conferences to be recorded for later playback. There is a growing trend for web conferences to incorporate VoIP (Hot-Conference) and live video via web cams. Hence, the boundary between web conferencing and videoconferencing is blurring and may eventually disappear. Web conferencing is most 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"). Hot Conference has no phone charges and there is no charges for seating. Also, 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. Hot Conference does it all! HC is also Peer to Peer, meaning it does not overload a central server! And the best part, it's just $30 a month. 16:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)RF 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 later 1990's, Microsoft introduced a true web conferencing application, NetMeeting, a free download that used peer-to-peer communication. (NetMeeting used DataBeam's T.120 toolkits.) DataBeam started the commercial web conferencing server market in 1996 with neT.120 Conferencing Server 1.0. For Linux desktops, Workspot introduced a live desktop-sharing service in 1999, based on Virtual Network Computing. Dozens of other vendors later entered the conferencing market, including Placeware, Elluminate, Batipi, Cisco, Glance, GoToMeeting, Interwise, Macromedia, Premiere Global Services, Oracle, WiredRed Software, AccuConference, and many others. In 1998, IBM (via Lotus Software) acquired DataBeam to create Sametime. Webex Communications is a well-known player in the enterprise application area of the industry. In 2003, Microsoft acquired PlaceWare and renamed it Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and began phasing out support for NetMeeting. As of 2006, the market continues to expand as web conferencing becomes a more widely accepted alternative to face-to-face meetings requiring travel, and as a richer form of communication than voice-only telephone conferences. Web conferencing technologies have not been standardized, a significant factor in the market segmentation. In 2003, the IETF established a working group to establish a standard for Web conferencing, called XCON: Centralized Conferencing Working Group. The goals of XCON, listed as part of their charter include creating: See also | ||||||||
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