Smart Computing Article - Never Miss A Meeting

January 2000 • Vol.6 Issue 1 Add To My Personal Library Videoconferencing, the ability for two or more individuals or groups to send images and sound back and forth to one another in real-time (live) from separate locations, has been possible for more than 30 years. Ever since Bell Systems demonstrated its Picturephone at the 1964 World's Fair, videoconferencing has been a practical possibility. The technology was awkward at best, but it helped lay the groundwork for companies to develop complex videoconferencing systems in the 1980s, which were used most often by large corporations and educational institutions. Unfortunately, these videoconferencing systems cost anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 or more, depending upon the network, and the average person simply couldn't afford them. The need to own a videoconferencing system has been swept away over the past decade, as personal computers have become sophisticated enough to support the technology needed for videoconferencing. The Internet has helped to bridge the gap as well because it offers an easy way for individuals to send video and audio signals back and forth. To get this awesome technology working for you, you need to get the right hardware. Think of yourself and your meeting attendees as miniature television studios. In order to create and transmit live television programs, a studio must have a camera and a microphone to record them, a processor to coordinate them and prepare them for broadcast, and some sort of transmitter with which to send them. Now, if those television studios were interacting with each other, they would also need some method of receiving the information and playing it out. The same is true with desktop videoconferencing. First, you'll need a PC-ready video camera (often called a "Web cam") and microphone to record your images and speech, as well as a video capture