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[ Scenarios ]
[ Components ]
[ Software ]
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[ Scenarios ] [ Components ] [ Software ] |
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Welcome to our DMC research page
Business processes and distributed collaboration have been changing radically over the last years. Business environments demand increased flexibility, interconnectivity, and autonomy of involved systems as well as new coordination and interaction styles for collaboration between people. The latest trends in distributed and mobile collaboration technologies allow people to move across organizational boundaries and to collaborate with others within/between organizations and communities. The ability to query the company's distributed knowledge base and to cooperate with co-workers is still a requirement, but new paradigms such as Service-oriented computing (e.g. Web Services), increased pervasiveness, and mobility enable new scenarios and lead to higher complexity of systems.
Some questions we are interested in include: How to enable users to retain their ability to cooperate while displaced in a different point of the enterprise? What is the role of context and location in determining how cooperation can be carried out? How to provide support for ad-hoc cooperation in situations where the fixed network infrastructure is absent or cannot be used? How will Service-oriented computing change collaborative software?
Software architectures for distributed and mobile cooperative communities must support the fundamental requirements for distributed cooperation: efficient information sharing across a widely distributed enterprise environment; constant and timely update and placement of the distributed knowledge base with many different sites acting both as potential users and potential providers of information; shared access to a set of services. The approaches and technologies for supporting these new ways of work are still the subject of research. Nevertheless, they are likely to "borrow" concepts and technologies from a variety of fields, such as workflow systems, groupware and CSCW, event-based systems, software architecture, distributed database systems, mobile computing, and so on. A particularly interesting line of research is exploring a peer-to-peer paradigm enriched with sharing abstractions in which each network node is both a potential user and provided of information for the rest of the community.
| Scenarios |
This section briefly summarizes some (still growing) scenarios we envisage for Distributed and Mobile Collaboration.
- Description
- Video conferences between two or more desktop PCs is nothing new today. But with the emergence of the latest Pocket PC generations, Bluetooth, and wireless LANs, new application areas are explored. Visual telephone over IP with Pocket PCs is one of those. We are interested in the current available software tools and current possible quality of service.
- Conclusions
- Currently a lot of video conferencing tools are available for desktop PCs and nearly all operating systems. For Pocket PCs (running Windows) we only (so far) found Microsoft Portrait, which only allows direct connections between two participants using IP addresses. MSN Messenger is also availably for Pocket PCs but without a possibility to receive/send video.
On the other hand, Pocket PCs are currently not fast enough to join video conferences with more than two participants. Even with our configuration (see below) the video quality was only acceptable and audio was always delayed by about two seconds. Higher video resolutions are availably but could not be processed by the Pocket PC.
- Components
- 1 DELL Desktop PC, 1 Sony EVI-D30/D31 Pan/Tilt/Zoom Color Video Camera, 1 OSPREY Audio/Video capture cards, 1 DELL Beamer, 1 Bluetooth/wireless LAN Access Point, 1 wireless microphone, 1 Hi-fi system, 1 iPAQ Pocket PC h3970, l PRETEC CompactFlash Digital Camera and Video Card for Pocket PCs, 1 LifeView FlyJacket i3800 for Pocket PCs
- Software
- Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Pocket PC 2002, Microsoft Portrait
- Configuration
- The Video Camera and the Hi-fi system output (the wireless microphone is connected with the Hi-fi system) are connected to the OSPREY Audio/Video capture card at the DELL Desktop PC, and the audio output of the desktop PC is connected with the Hi-fi system.
The Pocket PC is equipped with the LifeView FlyJacket and the PRETEC CompactFlash Digital Camera and Video Card. The Pocket PC uses the Bluetooth Access Point to join the Internet and receive an IP address.
Microsoft Portrait allows only conferences between two participants using IP addresses. Therefore one of the participants is connecting to the other by using the current IP address (must be known). To enable video, a checkbox has to be activated in the desktop version of Microsoft Portrait, and "Capture Video" must be set at the Pocket PC. Audio is enabled similar at the desktop but at the Pocket PC the "Talk" button must be set to enable audio. Files can easily be transferred during the conference using the "Send a file" property of Microsoft Portrait.
To demonstrate the Pocket PC display to the auditorium the VGA output of the LifeView FlyJacket could be used in combination with the LifeView Shadow software and the second beamer.- Hints
- - select the used video input source (S-Video)
- select the used audio input source (Osprey)
- use adequate video and audio quality (less than 128kb)
- Description
- During talks of students or invited speakers, it often occurs, that notes or comments are made to slides or that even slides are made during a talk (e.g., process flow decisions, or defining software architectures). In those cases it is very useful to make the notes directly on those slides (where they are presented by the beamer) and not at a desktop or notebook. The SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard provides this functionality in combination with Microsoft Power-Point presentations. The whole presentation can be recorded as video in real-time, which is only reasonable when the presentation is very interactive, or each slide and its notes can be saved separate as image.
- Conclusions
- The real-time recorded video can be boring if nearly no notes were made at the time between two slides is very long. Otherwise is the explicit storing of each slide a little bit disturbing, particularly when further notes where made after a previously stored slide (different versions).
The SMART Board software should be able to cut out inactive times of the video, or to store only slides with notes (replacing previously saved versions of the slide). A integration of the SMART Board in other software tools besides Microsoft Power-Point or a public API to write own applications would be desirable.- Components
- 1 DELL Desktop PC, 1 DELL Beamer, 1 SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard
- Software
- Microsoft Windows XP, SMART Board Software 7.1.3
- Configuration
- The desktop PC is connected with the SMART Board and the beamer. The desktop PC also has to run the Power-Point presentation.
- Hints
- - maybe the SMART Board has to be calibrated before the presentation
- Description
- Meeting protocols or designs of software, architectures, ... are often written or drawn on ordinary paper in place of directly at a computer. Often it is easier and faster to draw on paper than on computers, or a computer is currently not available and a Pocket PC would be to intricately. The InkLINK Handwriting system allows to write/draw on paper and transfers each line and point concurrently to a computer (desktop/laptop/Pocket PC).
- Conclusions
- The InkLINK Handwriting System is a very useful tool in many private/business situations, especially in combination with Pocket PCs. This allows users to make notes wherever they are on ordinary papers and be able to manage them also on computers. We also tried out this system in combination with a beamer to make decisions observably to a group. We used the default InkNote Manager screen view for the beamer. Unfortunately the zoom returns to 100% every time something is written, which makes the view a little bit too small.
Also a handwriting recognition software integration would be very useful, when writing more text then drawing pictures.- Components
- 1 DELL Desktop PC or1 DELL Notebook or 1 iPAQ Pocket PC h3970, 1 Seiko Instruments InkLINK Handwriting System
- Software
- Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 (Compaq iPAQ Infrared Bugfix), InkNote Manager 3.2
- Configuration
- The InkLink Data Clip is clipped at the top of any ordinary paper. It can be connected with a desktop PC, laptop, or Pocket PC running the InkNote Manager. desktop PCs and laptops uses the USB cable, while Pocket PCs uses the IrDA transceiver. The running InkNote Manager recognizes the first movement of the InkLink Electronic ball-point pen and creates a new InkNote file automatically.
- Hints
- - iPAQ Pocket PCs h3970 running Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 must install the Compaq iPAQ Infrared Bugfix
- adjust the IrDA transceiver on the right side (not at the middle of the Pocket PC)
- On some Pocket PC 2002 models it might be necessary to do the following:
o Open the Start menu and tap Settings.
o Tap the Connections tab and then tap the Beam icon.
o Remove the check from the Receiving check box.
- Description
- Today nearly every presentation is given by using computers, beamers, and Microsoft Power-Point or similar software. As desktops are not availably everywhere and laptops can be heavy or too expensive, Pocket PCs could be another solution.
- Conclusions
- A Microsoft Power-Point presentation using a Pocket PC is nearly as good as a presentation using a desktop PC or laptop. Problems only exist when high resolutions and/or animations are required. The currently availably Pocket PCs are still not able to perform this amount of performance.
- Components
- 1 iPAQ Pocket PC h3970, 1 LifeView FlyJacket i3800 for Pocket PCs
- Software
- Microsoft Pocket PC 2002, Microsoft ActiveSync 3.5, IA Presenter 2.01
- Configuration
- The Microsoft Power-Point presentation is created with the Microsoft Power-Point. When transferring the completed presentation to the Pocket PC via Microsoft ActiveSync select the desired resolution (800x600 recommended, 1024x768 only for newest Pocket PCs). The IA Presenter must have been installed previously at the Pocket PC to transform the file in the right format. The IA Presenter is able to change the slide order, show and hide files, and perform a VGA slide show in the previously selected resolution. The remote Control/Pointer of the LifeView FlyJacket can be used to advance/return during the presentation and also contains a laser pointer.
- Hints
- - use VGA slide show instead of slide show of IA presenter
- reduce the resolution and avoid animations if slide browsing takes too long
| Components |
| Software |