Where Did It Come From?

Web Conferencing History Through web conferencing, there is an opportunity to chat and communicate with c o-workers, even facilitate meetings, presentations and demonstrations. Web conf erencing not just offers communication exchange but also allows participants to trade documents, share applications, access desktops, use whiteboards and PowerP oint. How did this technology started? Lucy P. Roberts, author of History of Web Conferencing - Multifunction Conferenc ing Comes of Age (2004) traced the roots of web conferencing long before there is internet. The University of Illinois developed a system known as PLATO during the 1960s. This is for their Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL). This is just a small system supporting just a single classroom of terminals connected to one mainframe computer. In 1972, the terminals being supported by PLATO increa sed to over a thousand. Although PLATO was long before internet technology and it is mainly designed for computer-based education, it paved several communication features that became t he foundation for web conferencing and instant messaging. PLATO Notes, was the world s first online messaging boards, while Personal Notes is used for electronic mails. Talkomatic is used for real-time instant messaging or for chat. PLATO even developed a tool for monitor mode or remote screen sharing. David Wooley, creator of PLATO Notes in 1973, eventually designed Lotus Notes wh ich was released in 1989. Lotus Notes is mainly an e-mail client, but it can al so be used as an instant messaging client, browser, notebook, and calendar reser vation client. Roberts cited that Lotus Notes was the first commercially releas ed product that offered document sharing, user-created data-bases and remote loc ation communication. The PLATO technology gave birth to several communication tools that paved the wa y for web conferencing. But it wasn t until mid-1990s that the complete web confe rencing started to shape up and become available in the market. Roberts cited PlaceWare as one of the first companies to provide complete web co nferencing. It was developed by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1990s. I n 2003, Microsoft acquired PlaceWare and renamed its core product Microsoft Offi ce Live Meeting. Meanwhile, file sharing started proliferating the World Wide Web. Peer to peer (P2P) file sharing refers to sharing of file containing audio, video, data or an ything in digital format. With peer to peer file sharing, peers act as equals, the roles of clients and servers are merged. There is no central server that ma nages the network nor a central router. Peer to peer file sharing was seen as a way of hosting web conferencing, rather than running the application through a single server. With this P2P format, it is more dynamic and involving. Groove was the first to apply the P2P concept in web conferencing. It was relea sed on 2000 and was upgraded in 2002 with impressive results. WiredRed Software , in 2003, released the first web conferencing software that does not require si gnificant installation time. Most web conferencing providers offer packages that contains voice over IP,co-br owsing and application sharing, additional features that can be readily availabl e like polls, event management, PowerPoint presentation, playback, recording and live annotation and mark-up.

With a lot of web conferencing providers and vendors in the market today, web co nferencing is becoming more and more common. A lot of people are using this tec hnology in their businesses and companies. New development in the web conferenci ng system is inevitable due to competition and continuous technological innovati on.