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Apple EU patent suggests iChat AV to add pro white boarding

Posted by Dennis Sellers Apr 24, 2006 at 12:51pm

It appears that Apple will be adding advanced “white boarding” capabilities into iChat AV for use by the enterprise market in their next iteration of Mac OS X dubbed “Leopard.” On April 24, the European Patent Office patent revealed Apple patent DE69634950T titled “Method and apparatus for establishing communication between two teleconferencing endpoints.” Although patent information points to the fact that Apple has been working on this since 1995, the emergence of the new European patent issuance would suggest that it’s now ready for prime time!

Patent FIG. 27a (above) shows a conference before a merge operation between teleconferences.

Patent FIG. 2 (below) shows a typical teleconferencing display that has both media and non-media sources displayed during the course of the teleconference

Real time file sharing

A teleconference display is shown at 200 at FIG. 2. In implemented embodiments of the present invention, there is a source window, such as 201, showing a monitor of the local media source, and there are other media windows, such as 202 or 203 for each other user with which a participant is having communication. In the illustrated example, each of the windows 201-203 provides media information, that is, real-time audio and/or video information for bidirectional teleconferencing. In alternate embodiments of the present invention, non-media information such as 204 may also be displayed within the teleconferencing display. As will become apparent in the description below, in addition to media and non-media information, messaging information may also be transmitted between stations. In addition, an auxiliary media source (e.g. audio or video information) may be transmitted with a specified conference. The details of this will be discussed in more detail below.

In implemented embodiments of the present invention, a general purpose computer system is used for implementing the teleconferencing applications and associated processes to be described here. Although certain of the concepts to be described here will be discussed with reference to teleconferencing, it is apparent that the methods and associated apparatus can be implemented for other applications, such as file sharing, real time data acquisition, or other types of applications which sends data from a first participant to a second participant or set of participants.

Background Information

Teleconferencing is increasingly becoming a popular application in personal computer systems. Such applications typically allow the transfer of audio and video data between users so that they can speak and otherwise communicate with one another. Such applications sometimes also include data sharing wherein various types of data such as documents, spreadsheets, graphic data, or other types of data, can be shared and manipulated by all participants in the teleconference. Different teleconference applications perhaps residing on different hardware platforms have different capabilities. Moreover, a wide variety of features has been implemented in different teleconference applications, and the proliferation of different types of computer systems with different capacities, and different networking media has created challenges for teleconferencing.

For example, for most teleconferencing applications, it is assumed that the sender and the receiver have certain minimum capabilities. However, with the wide diversity of systems having different computation capacities, and in addition, the wide variety of networking media, that certain systems may not have certain capabilities. For example, the first system may be a high performance workstation coupled to a high performance communication medium whereas a second system may employ an earlier generation processor, operate at a substantially slower clock rate, and/or be coupled to a lower capacity communication medium. Certain network capabilities such as multicast or other optimization features, may not be present in certain networking media. Thus, in order for some teleconference applications to function, the participants in the conference can only operate at the fastest possible configuration provided by any minimum system which may participate in the teleconference. Of course, this results in certain inefficiencies, especially if both of the participants are capable of transmitting in a higher capacity than the system with the least possible capability.

Another issue in teleconference applications is the ability of certain stations to participate in more than one teleconference. In fact, in certain circumstances, multiple individual conferences may be desired to be merged by a user according to operating circumstances. Due to the distributed nature of certain networks, during this merge operation, certain circumstances may change. That is, that while a single station is merging more than one conference it is participating in, a second station at a remote location may further have other operating circumstances changing (e.g., participants leaving, entering, or otherwise joining an on-going teleconference), and thus, the management of such merging operations becomes unduly burdensome.

Yet another shortcoming of certain prior art teleconference applications is the ability to associate an independent data stream with an on-going teleconference. For example, a source participant may desire to provide an additional data stream to other participants in a teleconference. This additional source may include, but not be limited to, video, data, audio or any other type of data available to the source participant. For example, such an additional source may include other audio information for a receiver. Other types of data may also be desired to be associated with an on-going teleconference, which may be accessible to other participant in the teleconference. Certain prior art teleconferencing applications lack these abilities.

Summary

An automatic method for communicating information, such as teleconference data between teleconferencing systems. A first endpoint identifies communication capabilities to a second endpoint via a first message. The first endpoint notifies the second endpoint of the desire to connect via a second message. The second endpoint notifies the first endpoint of confirmation to connect via a third message. The first and the second endpoint then establish communication according to the communication capabilities. The first and the second endpoint can optimize transfers of teleconference data according to the identified communication capabilities.

The method can further include the step of the first endpoint identifying application capabilities to the second endpoint prior to the step of identifying communication capabilities. The application capabilities can include required, desired, optional, or negotiated capabilities. The method can also further comprise the steps of the second endpoint retrieving a timeout value from the second message and dynamically responding to the first endpoint according to the timeout value and a current context.

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