Microsoft prototype camera designed
crn.com | at | by Mike
Microsoft is showing around a prototype product, called the Ring Cam, designed to make Web conferences more like face-to-face meetings. Combined with Web-conferencing software that Microsoft acquired this year, remote-meeting participants would be able to view and hear a live, 360-degree image of participants in another location.
Few details are known about when products might result from the prototype. A Ring Cam--actually multiple FireWire cameras--would stitch together images from its surroundings. Software would isolate the audio and image of whichever participant is speaking, says Amit Mital, general manager of Microsoft's real-time collaboration unit. That technology likely would be incorporated in Microsoft's Office Live Meeting 2003 service, which is based on products it acquired with the recent purchase of PlaceWare Inc.