SURA/ViDe, March 2004

Program at:
http://www.vide.net/conferences/spr2004/program.shtml


* Tuesday, March 23

- ViDeNet Middleware for Global IP Video/Voice Conferencing

	Focused mostly on an overview of videoconferencing tech and H350 directory services.
	Videoconferencing Cookbook includes a mostly favorable review of the Access Grid:

		http://www.videnet.gatech.edu/cookbook.en
		http://www.videnet.gatech.edu/cookbook.en/list_page.php?topic=3&url=ag.html&level=1&sequence=5&name=Access%20Grid

    Hopefully our work in the next couple releases will cause them to modify this sentence:
    
        "Because the technology involved in an AG node is fairly complex, 
        most full-scale AG nodes are managed rooms that have support personnel 
        to run them."
        
- Wisconsin Public Television

    - They talked about processing captured video with speech-to-text to make searchable
      transcripts to facilitate location of interesting footage, a natural activity for
      television, but obvious functionality to consider for Voyager.

- High-X Videoconferencing, Milton Chen, Stanford

	- Interesting, lightweight conferencing through Internet Explorer:

	    http://www.vseelab.com

- Mystic Aquarium

	Robert Ballard (of Titanic fame) is behind this effort to outfit research vessels
	to enable conferencing between on-location researchers and roomfuls of researchers
	on land, over internet2.  Pretty cool application of tech to do real science (eventually).
    They're taking this to the Titanic, and likely webcasting it, as they did their dives
    in the Black Sea last year.



* Wednesday, March 24

- Data Collaboration

	- Todd Needham
		- Jay has FEC working
		- Probably going away from venues, to p2p, to avoid single point of failure
		- Client release in 4/04, could maybe be used with AG
			- integrated speech-to-text
		- ConferenceXP source available on net
		- Todd asked how many people had used the mbone tools; from a room of 40 or so,
		  I saw two hands (many more were familiar with AG, though, so they just didn't 
          know they were using mbone tools)
		- ConfXP prompts to open ports in personal firewall
		- Notebook camera, QuickCam Pro for Notebooks
          http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/US/EN,CRID=4,CONTENTID=5040

	- Les Finken, UIowa

		- Elluminate Live, web conferencing
        - Not much to report here, but he did refer to a rather comprehensive AG2 
          setup guide at:
	        http://www.cs.dal.ca/~jborwein/ag-guide.pdf

- SIP
	- Moderated by Tyler Johnson, from North Carolina, not very interesting
	- Many people use IM regularly, few regard it as mission critical
    - How many people use SIP?  Todd Needham, noone else

- AG/Multicast

	- Multicast, Marshall Eubanks, www.telesuite.com
        
		- Number one application is financial services, pushing stock data out to analysts, etc.
		- Multicast intro'd in 1992, before WWW
        - I talked to Marshall afterward, and he expressed some interest in
          building a bridge between TeleSuite (uses h.264) and the AG

	- AG

	    - He could have been more favorable; characterized the work to set up
          an AG node as somewhat difficult, jabbed about the claim 
	      "the technology fades into the background".  I pointed out that, in one of 
          his images of our workshop, the participants were entirely disinterested
          from the videoconferencing tech, and that we are working to simplify/eliminate
          the job of the operator.
          
          His primary points were:
            - A considerable amount of equipment is required
	        - An operator is required
	        - Uses DPPT instead of SharedPresentation
	        - Audio levelling is difficult (but the UK Support center
              will help you level)