Web conferencing
Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-level web meeting context, in an attempt to disambiguate it from the other types known as collaborative sessions.
It offers data streams of text-based messages, voice and video chat to be shared simultaneously, across geographically dispersed locations.
Software may run as a web browser application (often relying on Adobe Flash, Java, or WebRTC to provide the operational platform).
Other web conferencing technologies require download and installation of software on each participant's computer, which is invoked as a local application.
Depending on the technology being used, participants may speak and listen to audio over standard telephone lines or via computer microphones and speakers.
Vendor-hosted web conferencing is usually licensed as a service based on one of three pricing models: a fixed cost per user per minute, a monthly or annual flat fee allowing unlimited use with a fixed maximum capacity per session, or a sliding rate fee based on the number of allowed meeting hosts and per-session participants (number of "seats").
Renderable files (in formats such as PDF or Microsoft PowerPoint) can be displayed by the presenter uploading them and a computer server converting them into a form convenient for streaming.
Early usage referred purely to transmission and consumption of streaming audio and video via the World Wide Web.
[6] The planned deliverables of xcon include: Web conferencing is available with three models: hosting service, software and appliance.
The PLATO computer learning system allowed students to collaborate on networked computers to accomplish learning tasks as early as the 1960s, but the early networking was not accomplished via the World Wide Web and PLATO's collaborative goals were not consistent with the presenter-audience dynamic typical of web conferencing systems.
[18] At the time, Microsoft called NetMeeting "the Internet's first real-time communications client that includes support for international conferencing standards and provides true multiuser application-sharing and data-conferencing capabilities."
In November of that year, PlaceWare Auditorium was described in a public talk at Stanford University as allowing "one or more people to give an interactive, online, multimedia presentation via the Web to hundreds or thousands of simultaneous attendees; the presentation can include slides (made in PowerPoint or any GIF-image editor), live annotation on the slide images, real-time polls of the audience, live audio from the presenter and those asking questions, private text and audio conversations in the auditorium's "rows", and other features.
[24] The press release said "customers can access familiar Web browser interfaces to view live and pre-recorded corporate presentations, along with synchronized slides.
[34] A trademark for the term WEBinar (first three letters capitalized) was registered in 1998 by Eric R. Korb (Serial Number 75478683, USPTO) and was reassigned to InterCall.
[37] At the same time this new form of teaching also demonstrated the advantages of moving these events online, as virtual conferences were found to be more inclusive, more affordable, less time-consuming and more accessible worldwide, especially for early-career researchers.
[38] Providing a great opportunity to identify best practices for designing intentionally inclusive online events, so the positive advantages of these can continue when in-person conferences resume.
