JAVA Technology and Wide Area Collaboration
Paper: 228
Session: D (talk)
Speaker: Doughty, David, Christopher Newport University, Newport News
Keywords: mobile computing, networking, Java, world-wide collaboration, WWW applications
> JAVA Technology and Wide Area Collaboration
>
> David C. Doughty Jr. and David P. Heddle
>
> Christopher Newport University
> 50 Shoe Lane
> Newport News, VA 23606 USA
>
A NOTE TO THE COMMITTEE:
We are in the process of forming a company to commercialize
this software. As premature disclosure of this product
and our software plans could be detrimental, we would
appreciate it if the committee would avoid wide-spread
disclosure (outside the committee) of this information
until the abstracts are generally released. Thank you.
Current Status:
The chat, whiteboard, Email with appended sound
and images, and the slide show all exist today.
In fact, the slide show was used for a talk at the
DAQ 96 conference in Japan by Dave Doughty.
Additional features are being rapidly added.
This is real software, not vaporware.
The Abstract:
JAVA Technology and Wide Area Collaboration
We have developed a software system using JAVA technology
for wide area collaborative work and distance learning.
The revolutionary idea of this sytem is that once the
server application is begun, anyone with a JAVA enabled
browser has access to all features of the system via
the World Wide Web.
These features include a standard set of collaborative
tools including public and private chatrooms and
whiteboards, and Email and private newsgroups with appended sound
files and images (in GIF, JPEG, or whiteboard format).
In addition, this software also provides an easy mechanism for
distributing and accessing notes in either HTML or text format
using frames and the browser.
One of the most unique features of this software is the
ability to produce slide shows (a la Powerpoint) and
have them be simultaneously viewable by anyone anywhere
in the world.
Additional features for scientific analysis including
histogram viewing and annotation are being added.
This software system will allow many collaborators to
simultaneously interact with each other, discuss
collaboration business, share data, and debate analysis options
in a more natural and real-time manner than they can
now using Email and faxes, at a cost far lower than
videoconferencing.
We will discuss our use of JAVA technology and demonstrate
the capabilities of this software.