Harry C. Forsdick

MMConf: an infrastructure for building shared multimedia applications

Computer teleconferencing allows individuals scattered near and far to collaborate in writing a paper, negotiate over a budget spreadsheet, or cooperate in debugging a program. Our project focuses on applications that bring subject matter into a meeting, not on applications-such as voting or brainstorming tools-that aid the meeting process itself. We attempt both to support single-user applications running in the shared environment, and to provide a base for developing inherently shared applications.

Operating Systems for Computer Networks

The last decade has seen the rapid evolution of computer communication networks from research curiosities to operational utilities. The Arpanet,1for example, currently supports communication among more than 100 computer systems and is used daily by hundreds of users. Commercial networks, such as Telenet2in the United States and Datapac3in Canada, have very bright futures. One attraction of these networks is their ability to provide access to a wide variety of resources distributed among the connected computers.

Panel on multimedia computer mail—technical issues and future standards

A computer-based message system (CBMS) consists of computer facilities that expedite the creation, management, and nonreal time distribution of messages. These systems are increasingly being used for formal and informal communication, supporting the distribution of textual messages. However, nontext media such as voice and graphics are very important for human interaction, and are becoming more and more important in computer system applications. As a result, there is a growing need for the support of media other than text in CBMS. Before standards for multimedia CBMS can be implemented, there are many technical issues that must be addressed. These range from the design of new mechanisms for the distribution of multimedia mail, to the design of tools needed for editing nontext media. This panel will be discussing issues encountered in the development of multimedia CBMS and an outlook for standards for multimedia computer mail.