RoundTable Enhances Web Conferences

A new audio and video device for conference rooms called RoundTable will make Web conferences more closely resemble face-to-face meetings. RoundTable captures a panoramic image of the conference room in which it is installed and can determine which person in the room is speaking. The product will interest geographically dispersed organizations that rely on videoconferencing today, emulating some capabilities of traditional videoconferencing equipment at a fraction of the cost. However, to be most useful the device requires Microsoft’s Live Meeting 2007 client application used with either the forthcoming Live Meeting 2007 service or the recently released Communications Server 2007 product.

Panoramic Images, Speaker Detection

RoundTable will help make Live Meeting 2007 and Communications Server 2007 Web conferences more closely resemble face-to-face meetings. (For a graphic displaying the device, see the illustration “RoundTable Conference Room Device“.) Web conferences are real-time, multiparty meetings where users communicate over an IP data network rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Web conferences offer tools and services that can simplify the distribution of presentation materials, help presenters manage question-and-answer sessions, and provide more interaction between presenter and audience.