Audio conferencing is used widely to involve remote participants but if documents, spreadsheets or other presentation material are involved these have to be distributed before the meeting - a clumsy, inflexible and inconvenient process.
A new Internet-enabled teleconferencing device called WebStation enables remote participants to watch a live presentation over the Internet at the same time as a local audience.
WebStation connects to any standard conference data/ video projector and can display documents and presentations such as those created using Microsoft PowerPoint, which are transferred to the device from a PC using browser software. This allows anyone, regardless of location, to transfer a presentation to WebStation.
The local audience sees a PC quality presentation, while remote participants can access it by entering a web address into a standard Java-enabled web browser. Once they have joined the web conference they can view the slides being displayed at the central location, or even give a presentation remotely from their own computer to everyone else in the conference.
WebStation costs £2,150 and is available from Oxford-based Polyspan, (www.polyspan.com)
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