TY - JOUR

T1 - Exploiting available Internet tools for multimedia applications

AU - Scott, Andrew

PY - 1997/1/24

Y1 - 1997/1/24

N2 - The rapidly increasing number of tools available on the internet is changing the way people view software systems. People are now used to downloading plug in helper tools in order to decode and display different types of media within web browsers. The ease with which this can now be done is a far cry from the days, quite recently, when data had to be manually processed by a number of obviously independent software packages. Using the tools available to simply decode and display new data formats in only one way in which such software can be used, one could even consider a web browser as just another tool. Compete new applications could be constructed by selecting a suitable range of tools and supplying minimal glue software. This paper describes, as an example of this approach, a collaborative application supporting synchronous audio-visual communication and collaborative web browsing. The system develop is designed to make use of a wide range of freely available tools with no modification of existing web servers or clients. Alternative implementation strategies are discussed, followed by a detailed description of the approach chosen for this implementation. A technique allowing small to medium sized groups World Wide Web users to be tracked and their location to be presented to people with similar interests is then explained, followed by details of a mechanism allowing the information gained about such groups to be shared among arbitrary of similar groups.

AB - The rapidly increasing number of tools available on the internet is changing the way people view software systems. People are now used to downloading plug in helper tools in order to decode and display different types of media within web browsers. The ease with which this can now be done is a far cry from the days, quite recently, when data had to be manually processed by a number of obviously independent software packages. Using the tools available to simply decode and display new data formats in only one way in which such software can be used, one could even consider a web browser as just another tool. Compete new applications could be constructed by selecting a suitable range of tools and supplying minimal glue software. This paper describes, as an example of this approach, a collaborative application supporting synchronous audio-visual communication and collaborative web browsing. The system develop is designed to make use of a wide range of freely available tools with no modification of existing web servers or clients. Alternative implementation strategies are discussed, followed by a detailed description of the approach chosen for this implementation. A technique allowing small to medium sized groups World Wide Web users to be tracked and their location to be presented to people with similar interests is then explained, followed by details of a mechanism allowing the information gained about such groups to be shared among arbitrary of similar groups.

U2 - 10.1117/12.264301

DO - 10.1117/12.264301

M3 - Journal article

VL - 3020

SP - 282

EP - 294

JO - Proceedings of SPIE

JF - Proceedings of SPIE

SN - 0277-786X

T2 - SPIE 3020, Multimedia Computing and Networking

Y2 - 8 February 1997

ER -