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On the State of Scientific Telecollaboration? 60

Posted by Cliff from the stuff-to-talk-about dept.
Douglas Arnold asks: "This summer I will take over as director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications in Minneapolis, one of the world's premier institutes in the mathematical sciences. (This year's program on mathematics in multimedia should interest many Slashdot readers) The IMA hosts visits by over a thousand scientists a year, mostly using Linux to meet their computing needs. I am interested in pursuing telecollaboration and teleconferencing at the institute, so a scientist there can work with a scientist off-site, carrying on a mathematical discussion as if they were at the same blackboard. What sort of hardware and software exists for this sort of application? Is there anything that works well under Linux? I am thinking of things like shared whiteboards, 'collaboratories,' networked graphics tablets (on which it is comfortable to enter formulas and do calculations), integration with audio or video conferencing systems, and so forth."
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On the State of Scientific Telecollaboration? More

On the State of Scientific Telecollaboration?

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  • NCSA Habanero (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The NCSA had a long-standing project for this, called Habanero. Implemented in Java, Habanero provided many tools for scientific collaboration over the 'Net,as well as a (fairly) straightforward way to make new ones. The full Java Byte code, and the vast majority of the source, were made available.

    The habanero project is now over, but it's still online at http://havefun.ncsa.uiuc.edu/habanero/, and may still be of value. It might be interesting to sdeee if it could find a new home, as well.

  • yep, I work for the IMA, and we are currently using the video equipment for recording today's workshop. the equipment is used by Unit.
    (ugh.. working on weekends)
  • back in february, the IMA hosted a talk by Bruce Schneier. It was a public lecture, so I was able to put up a copy of the lecture in mp3 format. (really apropriate considering the person, and what he talked about)
    link to the main page for the workshop: Here [umn.edu]
    and a link directly to the 64kbps mp3 [umn.edu] (other speeds are avaliable on the page)
  • I agree, partly. you really have to talk to the people who are going to be using the equipment/software are really going to want to use. the nice thing about the IMA is that allmost all of our users _are_ comfortable with linux. so the reason for looking for a linux solutions is good. but I want to know what types of conferencing techologies the people at, and visiting the IMA would like to use.
  • Don't ask a bunch of Linux geeks how to do "Math Stuff" on linux. Ask your customers the scientists what they need. While we can give you some interesting ideas we as a rule have no idea what you need, and therefore can't get you there.

    Or as a bumper sticker I saw said:
    We don't know where we are going, but we're making record time!
  • ... On the math side, recognizing mathematical notation will be very hard, and would require a lot of work in user interfaces.

    I dont have any suggestions for recognition, but display (and possible manipulation) could be MathML [w3.org]. The W3C page describes MathML as ...

    ....a low-level specification for describing mathematics as a basis for machine to machine communication. It provides a much needed foundation for the inclusion of mathematical expressions in Web pages

    Go to the MathML tools page [w3.org] for software tools and specs.
  • Electric-chalkboards are a dime a dozen - talk to your purchasing person.

    Frankly I'd not approach it from "I like Linux how can we use it" direction but rather from "What are my researchers comfortable with and how can I support that?" As you noted this is about collaboration; you're going to need to interoperate with a large number of systems not under your control.

    With that in mind your goal is likely to be platform independence, not Linux-specific solutions. Standard protocols, not specific "solutions".

    As part of that you'll presumably want a system that supports both pen-based graphics (the classic "scribbled on a napkin") as well as more structured mathematical layout (as used by TeX, MathML or Mathematica.) Really you'll need whatever folks express themselves most easily in. For voice the telephone is universal & standardized, video has a number of reasonable standards with some degree of interoperability.

    Personally I'd invest in a good computing infrastructure, encourage the researchers to network with their peers & discover solutions that suit them, or failing that undertake to write/sponsor an open tool that would facilitate the collaboration you're looking for.

    Whatever the case I'd wait until I was in place, see what's being used now, how effective it is and what directions present themselves. Your user base is likely to have some strong opinions and presumably has some experience with what works for them and what doesn't.

    (f it were up to me I'd look into some sort of Wiki system that supports mathematical notation - hit a search engines for details, here's one hit: http://allmyfaqs.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Math_symbols. That & again, good telephones.)

  • Ok, I just checked out TeXmacs. This is really cool, thanks for the pointer. And it does anti-aliased fonts! Is it using TeX rendering to render the entire user interface? The interface is really pretty. And it has CAS backends for Maxima and GiNaC! Wow!

    I have used LyX [lyx.org] also (front end for LaTeX), and it is quite good. It's math-entry and rendering is the best I've seen yet in a user interface. My girlfriend now uses it exclusively to write papers (beats the crap out of bloated M$ Word or Staroffice). I usually use straight TeX for my papers and presentations so I can manipulate things at a lower level, and use some macros developed by/for physics people.

    As to extending graphitti, I'd think that this would be a losing proposition. After adding strokes for the roman alphabet, greek alphabet, hebrew alphabet, numbers, and symbols, you might as well have just tried to recognize the symbols in the first place. I think for a tablet the easiest thing to do would be to have an "input" area that is very large (i.e. write very large) that then gets recognized and transferred to the document. The input area should draw a vector-graphic with your pen strokes, and after the stroke is complete, attempt to recognize it after-the-fact, allowing for you to correct it. (maybe tap on the incorrectly-recognized letter and have it bring up a list of nearest matches)

    I have found graphitti less than perfect for most of my needs. I prefer to type. I'm not sure how much extra work scientists would be willing to put up with in entering formulas. I mean, usually there's a "bigger picture" in the back of your mind, trying to work out the calculation. If you have to interrupt your thought process a whole bunch to enter the formula in a way the computer can handle, you've lost the advantage of putting it on the computer in the first place. Attempting to recognize existing math and notations would be a big win.

    --Bob

  • Tablets (Score:3)

    by mcelrath ( 8027 ) on Saturday May 05, 2001 @04:21PM (#243620) Homepage
    I've been having fantasies about a tablet computer for over a year now. I want something that isn't too much larger or heavier than a large tablet of paper, and combines pen-input with a computer interface. I'm talking handwriting recognition, gesture recognition, and most importantly, a headphone jack and mp3-playing software.

    The hardware exists...a 11" TFT LCD screen, Wacom-like pen input overlaid on top. It needs to have a high resolution (both the screen and input) for accurate handwriting recognition. Wouldn't need a very fast processor. Could sync to my computer over USB.

    As a theoretical physicist, I desparately want something like this. I'm a massive computer junkie, but currently, the highest-tech way I can do calculations is pencil and paper... On the math side, recognizing mathematical notation will be very hard, and would require a lot of work in user interfaces. In the short term, just recording the user's penstrokes and saving it as a vector graphic would be sufficent. In the long term, interface it to a basic Computer Algebra System. i.e. something that will check all those factors of two, negative signs, etc. In the very long term, have the interface do most of what I do by hand. For instance, apply a mathematical identity to an equation, and copy the new equation to the next line. Allow me to manipulate individual terms. Most of all, allow me to define new notations. Each sub-field of math, physics, chemistry, and engineering uses its own notation, and a rule-system should exist to check the validity of the input in the notation that is familiar to the user.

    Right now I use pencil and paper, some Maple [maplesoft.com], and computer programs to numerically evaluate things. Maple's interface is not well suited to a pen-based manipulation system. (don't mention Mathematica, I will not professionally support their absurd pricing and draconian licensing policies) I have high hopes that a viable open-source Computer Algebra System will evolve out of the existing Octave [octave.org] or GiNaC [ginac.de].

    *Sigh* if any of you entreprenuring business types are listening, WE WANT TABLETS AND WE WANT THEM YESTERDAY . And not those stupid web-browser tablets. sheesh.

    --Bob

  • Start simple. Try something like multimouse, which provides a shared pointer (a little triangular marker) for images on a web page. It's a trivially simple java application -- see the FICT [sourceforge.net] project page. You'd be surprised how much this alone can buy you. Especially compared to shared whiteboards with artistically challenged people trying to draw with their mouse.
  • For you graphic tablet needs, I suggest Wacom. Theres support for like every operating system, either by Wacom or by third party users. Intuos are excellent, and each person can have they're own 'pen' for personal use. The pen has a unique id, and you can store personal settings for each pen. Quite a handy feature, too bad I only have one :)

    ---
  • I was thnking abouth the same last night.

    The best solution I could come up with is not be one dedicated conference SW, but rather set of capabilities that enable to place any X client application into a conference , e.g. gimp, dia, wordprocessor or local webcam and its display.

    1. The first step would be to generate equivalent of HP SharedX [hp.com].
    This would allow to redirect an X-window not only to one X server, but to broadcast it to multiple X-terminals. This would be already workable solution, provided that there is a interface longing out all but one terminal at the time for keyboard/mouse input.

    2. The second step would be to multithread the conference enabled application, so that every mouse and keyboard could have its current position and could concurrently draw, paint, write text and do some limited commands.

    3. The third part would be to add voice input/output to the X protocol exchange. This is already a problem: You can play a game on a remote computer, but how do you get your sound back home?
    Are some people working on this problem?

    4. Mixing sounds. Currently under linux it is mostly exclusive, although some sound mixing software exists. Conference audio needs to make two or three preferred speakers audible and suppress the noise from other places.

    5. Adding some moderator control pannel, so that he can suppress some participants that shout while other are speaking or otherwise disturb the conference.

    Does anyone know anybody working on such a thing?

    Petrus Vectorius
  • email! Seriously, because this encourages asynchronous activities and so long as you can embed links to a web-site containing the uplaoded work. However, if you are looking for specific code, google Groupkit, NCSA Habanero (sp?), and NPACI scientific workbenches (still under dev). My observation is that there is a wide gap between what is state of the art (effectively compsci R&D) and what is widely used. You are much more likely to find shared tools amongs projects such as genome markup/annotation, community weather model, etcs ... anywahere which there is a shared common task and people cna break it down into smaller parts. Generic conferencing tools tend to be inadequately utilitarian compared with their setup and learning costs.

    Identify the tasks, then give your tools and help them refine what they want.

    LL

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday May 05, 2001 @11:30PM (#243625)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What would be better is an extension to the Xnest X Server to allow it to act as a proxy for the X Commands being sent to itself from the X Client applications. This would allow remote Xnest instances to connect to the central one which would provide their input streams.

    The remote X Client's inputs (mouse, keyboard etc) would be sent to the main instance in order to provide remote control.

    To remove the reliance on Xnest, the project should be built as simply an X Proxy with no display its own.

    It may even handle the connections from remote X Severs over XDMCP allowing any current X Server to use the proxy, rather than just a hacked XFree Xnest.

    The remaining issue of how multiple input is handed - whether to merge each set of input streams into one, or to provide for instances of each one (multiple mouse pointers on screen for example) is best thought about more closely I think. There is no current way that much of the X Window System would handle multiple keyboards on the same Screen, or rather for Window Managers to hold 'focus' for each specific input source, although not strictly necessary for this task, I think this could have some interesting effects on how people use and work with computers in groups of two or more.
  • Sure, although VNC is rather heavy over a network compaired the how small compressed X can be. VNC is just a networked framebuffer.

    It would be kinda cool to have massive bill board sized Digital Canveses in train stations so people can grafiti them (using the trackball on their mobile phones as input devices from the ground in front - each with their own brush on the display), just as an example from the top of my head.

  • http://www.emsl.pnl.gov:2080/docs/collab/ [pnl.gov]
    i worked on this as undergrad, its been along going steadily for years. There are other DOE notebook projects at Berkeley and Oak Ridge--they all supposedly can share data with each other.
    ...in the post preview section slashdot seems to be peeling off the :2080 in my URL for some unknown reason. If you can't get to the site paste the link in and it should work.
  • IBM recently made available a tablet-notebook PC. I believe it does tablet handwriting capture, if not recognition (i.e., digitizing). Since you sound like you know what you want, in some detail, and have real linux based applications waiting for satisfaction in the academic/scientific community, I would expect that the folks at IBM's labs might be glad to correspond with you.
  • NetMeeting is just a standard H.323 client, so rather than using VMWare it'd be more obvious just to run a native Linux H.323 client such as OpenH.323 or CUSeeMe.

    http://www.openh323.org/
  • Out of interest, something I noticed when I was working on math (simple stuff, 2nd year university style) was that there isn't a lot in the way of computer software that will validate and speed up the creation of formulae.

    As a programmer, I have a vast number of tools available to speed up writing software, from cut&paste editors, to testing suites, libraries of pre-built modules for specific purposes and optimising compilers. Math doesn't seem to have much in the way of that from what I've seen, but I could be wrong.

    I am aware of Maple, although I never really did a lot with it, but are there other programs doing more advanced things? the thought occurs that software in collaboration with something like MathML could create libraries of common formulae in much the same way that libraries of common software are available now, for the express purpose of making the initial creation of new formulae faster and less error prone.

  • I've got a similar question: are the any IM clients (or GAIM plugins) that will convert equations in messages from text into a graphical representation of the equation? I.e., if I send someone a message containing "Integrate[x^2, {x, a b}]" (using Mathematica notation), is there something that will properly render it on the receiving end?

    It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to do using LaTeX or something like Lyx's rendering engine. I was just curious about whether or not it has already been done...

    -Chris

  • You seem to be looking for something like Dynabooks. The term Dynabook ("A dynamic medium for creative thought") was invented decades ago by Alan Kay.)

    Have a look at the activities of Mark Guzdial and the Collaborative Software Laboratory [gatech.edu] at Georgia Institute of Technology.

    And - yes, they are using Squeak [squeak.org], an open source implementation of Smalltalk-80 which is lead by many of the original Smalltalk inventors including Alan Kay [rheingold.com].

  • You have already received a number of great suggestions. Some things to consider with collarboration are how you are going to get the users to use it. For customers who have never used collaboration software, the tools may be perceived as more of a hindrance than a help. Also, it may be difficult for them to express their needs until they become familiar with distance collaboration as a process. My suggestion is start simple, start cheap and don't make a big investment (of dollars or time) in a tool(s) until your customers have had a chance to experience distance collaboration.

    With that said, a great tool that we are using is from http://www.mimio.com. It is a win/mac driven product today, but I would not be surprised if they offer linux drivers soon. What we think is great about it is the integration with Netmeeting (which is free with M$ IIS). It is replaced in Win/Exchange 2K with M$ Communications Server.

    We are currently looking at Infoworkspace http://www.infoworkspace.com. We have also used the Collaborative Virtual Workspace developed by CMU. Good luck
  • Beyond the technical details (which are, of course, important), there are a number of important issues in building a collaboratory. Knowing whether video or a shared editor or presentation tools are important for a particular task is important. Also, understanding the interpersonal dynamics between users makes a difference (e.g., a system for teaching is different than one for research). Providing the right types of forums for communication and archiving is also useful.

    One of the most active groups involved in the development of scientific collaboratories is CREW [umich.edu] (the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work) at the University of Michigan. It's an interdisciplinary team that has worked on a number of successful Projects [umich.edu] including Collaboratories for Space Physics, AIDS Research, and Breast Oncology.

  • Telecollaboration needs more than just one tool. You need to make use of a range of cooperating tools in order to provide effective telecollaboration. Videoconferencing is only one piece, and arguably the least useful one. You need:


    Document sharing

    Real-time communication

    Long-term communication

    Audio and video are good, but only on an "it-would-be-nice" basis. Mitre Corp. produced just such a tool, failed in the marketplace, and opensourced the result. It's available as Collaborative Virtual Workspaces [sourceforge.net].

    Unfortunately, for reasons beyond my ken, that site is totally broken at the moment. If the site ever gets fixed, give it a try.

    The U.S. Government, being more than somewhat peeved at Mitre for some reason, decided everyone should be using InfoWorkSpace, IWS, by good old General Dynamics. Snappy little Act of Congress there: if you like their money, then you are informed you love IWS. IWS represents a collection of similar tools, but unlike CVW, they're not really bound together, and don't interoperate. Still, it's a pretty good system if you can stand to use it.
  • Actually, they did try to sell it. Some believe that that's why some nameless Congressional staffer took a wild hair and wrote IWS into some legislation. The original version of CVW contained proprietary 3rd-party code (sound familiar?) and required a license. When Mitre first opened it up, they distributed binaries and generated a license key for CVW free upon request.

    Opening it up to an open-source level required rewriting the whole thing from scratch. Quite an effort. I hope they get the SourceForge site fixed. It'd be a crying shame if the whole effort just went *poof*.

  • MuSE (Score:2)

    by mattr ( 78516 )
    You might want to check out <a href="www.musetech.com">Muse</a>, a synthetic environment which allows collaboration, video conferencing, and multidimensional data mining from a UFO deck. Used by oil researchers, nasa (the ISS) and boeing among others.
  • VNC can share a screen with multiple people (when set up in shared mode) so that everyone sort of shares the same keyboard and mouse. You'd have platform independence that way, and you could either use a sound server on each client's machine or other audio-conferencing tool to supplement the video interface.
  • Didn't I see a Scientific Install option for Mandrake 8.0...?

    How much is in that?

    Is anybody actually using it? How's it going?

  • Get VNC running on a server and both connect to the same desktop... Open up whatever application you want to share... something as simple as a text editor would work fine as far as I can tell but you might also want something like dia, or some other program instead.

    For video and audio simply use Q-SeeMe. Obviously the video conferencing is high bandwidth, while text communication with VNC would work over a modem smoothly.
  • On a somewhat related topic, is there a programming IDE that lets people work on code together (over the web)? This could be seriouly fun.

    I disagree with the moderator's opinion on this one that it is redundant. The original query on which the story is based was about scientific collaboration using a product like NetMeeting on Linux.

    A collaborative programming IDE would be quite a bit more complicated and different. As far as I know no such thing exists on Windows or Linux. In fact this could be an excellent marketing opportunity for any entrepreneurs out there.

    Specifically I am interested in a collaborative IDE that allows eXtreme Programming style pair programming to occur. Where the two people sitting on different edges of the internet could pass keyboard control back and forth and look at each other's live-edits to the code on the screen. Also it will need to make sure that the code base was synched between the two different users.

    Collaborative programming could be a boon to open source as well as to distributed commercial teams.

    Also this is a much more tangible and doable problem than doing math on the web (which the original story asked for). A net meeting drawing board is too flimsy and feeble compared to a real drawing board and is a poor substitute for live face-to-face mathematics.

    For programmers on the other hand, code is thought. And so much more interaction could occur through a collaborative IDE.

    --
    Exit here.

  • You could try putting together a maths specific tool for the Groove [groove.net] P2P network.

    There are quite a few useful whiteboard type tools already. This would get the best of both worlds in that you wouldn't be foistering a pre-packaged solution on the scientists but you would be working with a robust, open platform that would be available both on site and off site.

    James
    Nothing to do with Groove

  • Try to distinguish between communication and collaboration: Netmeeting doesnt seem to be a
    bad choice for online communication, while
    the structuration of information takes the main
    role in collaboration.

    There are quite some companies around offering
    collaboration tools, such as
    http://www.eroom.com/ (commercial) and
    http://www.arsdigita.com/ (free, Linux).
    All of these tools provide searchable blackboards,
    handling of large numbers of users etc.

    In my company were using a combination of the
    two: Netmeeeting and ArsDigita.

    Frank

  • There are a number of open projects on the net for mimio products under Linux (http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=mimio [freshmeat.net]) and a scan of Deja for "mimio Linux" bring up some articles showing that Mimio itself has been cooking something up:

    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mimio+linux&btnG =Google+Search&hl=en&lr=&safe=off [google.com]

  • Their software (for Linux) isn't that great, but the hardware at Smart Technologies [smarttech.com] is excellent.

    I saw a demo of their first generation whiteboard at about 3 years ago, and it was fantastic. They used a serial protocol (though I'm not sure if they publish it). They do have driver software for Linux. One interesting advantage to using a low data rate serial protocol is that you can record anything that people have written (and erased), so you don't have to worry about screen captures or other low-resolution saves before erasing stuff. You can also replay things later.

    They even have rear projection whiteboards and plasma panel overlays.

    As for software, there have been several suggestions already, and I would think that a group of Linux-savvy scientists should be able to convince this cool hardware to work with some of that cool software. (at least in theory :)

    Have fun.

  • As a person heavily involved in the implimentation and use of teleconfrencing I must urge you, do not spend a lot of money on this just becuase it is "cool" right now.
    The reason I say this is that in both areas that I am involved in teleconfrencing and it's use as a teaching tool has been a big failure.
    As a student my college has had to impliment a policy that local students at the college must wait until after the distance sites register becuase it was claimed that the local students were taking all the seats before the distance student got a chance. They implimented their hold policy and guess what. Students at the distance sites are still not registerring. It was not that the seats were being taken by local students but that distance students were plain not registerring for classes. This has caused my college a lot of wasted money that they do not want to admit to (they built a building especially for this at the cost of several million dollars.) Add to this the fact that you are hurting your future alumni in order to do this and you get a long term recipe for disaster. It's makes no sense to penalize a student because they made the mistake of singing up at your school to take a class.
    I also happen to work for a company trying to introduce the H323 teleconference equipment to public schools. When we first announced the initiative we would have 2 to 3 distance sites a class. The deal was we taught the class for free on a subject teachers needed (how to use power point etc.) and we would take the equipment they needed to them and set it up for free and let them use it to see how well this works. The problem turned out to be the usual thing stopping most of these types of adventures. Bandwidth! The schools did not have enough available bandwidth to broadcast at anything but the worst speeds and frame rates causing all the conference to suffer audio and video problems. Interest quickly disipaited for the project and we have not had any distance site participants in the last 7 times we have tried to offer this teaching expereince.
    My point is that you may want to evaluate very carefully the need to teleconference before you start spending money. How did professors collaborate before now? is what you are offering a better solution or does it add layers of complication that will cause them to ditch the new stuff and do it the old way. Remember: just because it's new does not mean it is better, that's why people sell antiques.

  • Check this out!: http://isabel.dit.upm.es/ [dit.upm.es]
    It will surely meet all your needs.

    The ISABEL CSCW application is a group communication tool for the Internet

    Summary of features:

    free of charge

    widely used (since July 1993)

    yeah!, works under Linux (recommended RH 7) and there are versions for Solaris & IRIX

    Not only Teleconferencing (Video + Audio), also Shared WhiteBoard, Slides, Chat, ...

    Several distinguishing features over standard videoconferencing

    ISABEL was also mentioned here a long time ago: Ask Slashdot: Can Linux do Video Conferencing? [slashdot.org]

    It was developed at the school where I studied (Telecomm. Engineering School, Madrid: etsit.upm.es) and some people I admire contributed at it.
    Isn't it a project to be proud of?
    Hope you like it

    --
    ACid [intersaint.org]

  • If you are looking for a job as director, you might want to improve on your interpersonal skills. Information obvious to you, yet not obvious to another, can be related in a less abrasive manner.

    Your premise is flawed because the actions of one director does not give an accurate portrayal of the situation in Minneapolis. How many other directors are there in the city? How effective are the directors? Does the city need better ones?

    Your conclusion could be more substantiated with proof as to why you are qualified to become director.

  • I realized your statement was sarcasm, I just felt your comments could have been relayed in a more constructive manner. Things are not as obvious to others as they might be to you. Maybe some patience and understanding will be exercised before your next post.

  • Get in contact with ideaFocus - www.ideafocus.com

    They are working on a whole new concept of this (idea sharing and teleconferencing).

  • Groove [groove.net] has this capability. However, I am not sure what operating systems it is available for.
  • I meant MS's Netmeeting - oops

  • videoconferencing - qVIX (Score:3)

    by mojo-raisin ( 223411 ) on Saturday May 05, 2001 @03:30PM (#243654)
    See here [sourceforge.net] for qVIX/cu30, a GPL'ed videoconferencing program put out by Cornell that is superior in quality and bandwidth requirements over Netscape's Netmeeting.

    Though it seems to require some extra work for the integration you have in mind.
  • Hey, that link thing is pretty clever. It had me fooled, seriously. Good thing I run Lynx ;/
  • There is an excellent p2p project sharing client for windows at groove.net [groove.net] from the people that did lotus notes. Sadly right now there is no linux client but the tech on display is pretty nice, it looks like a lot of it is in java so who knows maybe one day we'll see a linux client.
  • You may find the listings of software using RTP [columbia.edu] and SIP [columbia.edu] of interest, as both are widely-accepted Internet standards, with software running on just about any platform. The two sites list some of these Internet standards-compliant tools. For example, our own tool (sipc) integrates audio, video, whiteboard, screen sharing and text chat, using existing media tools.
  • It's amazing what google can turn up. [google.com]
    But, of course, we've already visited this kind of question on Slashdot. [slashdot.org]
    Minneapolis must be hurtin something awful for directors... maybe even I could get a job there now...

  • Overall, you make good points, but, in defense of Mr.Arnold, he's not approaching it from an "I like Linux how can we use it" direction. He specifically stated that most of the people who will be using this are already "using Linux to meet their computing needs". By looking for a Linux solution, he is trying to support what his researchers are comfortable with.

  • How funny, I am sitting in the third floor lab about 100 feet away from your IMA meeting!!! I don't know about the 3-180 room but the other two main CSCI lecture halls (3-210/220) have video conferencing build it!!! I would talk to building management and see what they know!!!
  • While I hate to mention it because they were so bad to me - my former employer Link Systems [link-systems.com], based in Tampa, FL, does things just like this. They work with some of the largest textbook publishers, and also host homework help for college students in subjects ranging from Chemistry to English.
  • http://freshmeat.net/projects/babylonchat/ is a java based program written under the GPL, and then http://freshmeat.net/projects/webwebx/ is a CGI script written under an artistic license. the rest of the matches didn't seem relevant to your question.
  • I think many people missed the real power of internet, a loosely connected system of networks on different platforms. Internet is not interactive in the sense of telephone and video came. It is not in real time as TV and radio. It is not a virtual world which simulates our daily life, but a great EXTENSION of our life.

    Tele-something tries to bring people in different places togather, at the same time like face to face. However, that is not necessary. For example, I would never read your post on this subject at the same time you sent it. But you can call me if you want me to read it immediately. (Don't forget to check the time zone before you call :-) That is the combination of real time telephone communication and internet. Here are some solutions available: 1. A web host which users can post text and image quickly and share with other people efficiently. I think solutions like briefcase.yahoo.com [yahoo.com] is very useful and reliable. 2. A system to digitalize images, videos and sound. Currently, scanner, digital camera and DV camera are the solutions. Pen-based computer will be the future. But the bottle-neck is the speed of scanning and the speed of putting the text and images on the host. (If I work on the LINUX computer sharing the filesystem of the web host, it is as easy as working on ~/public_html , some perl or shell scripts can streamline the process.

    Don't invest too much on fancy sophisticate real-time interactive system. It is very hard to build and maintain and not as useful as you imagine.

  • If you're willing to use the Mac OS or Windows, there's a utility called NetScrawl which is a "collaborative drawing tool". It might or might not work for your purposes. More information at http://www.kingdesign.net/hotlinesw/download/index .shtml [kingdesign.net]

    --
  • I meant to add- I was next door in the Tate building last summer, doing astronomy. It's a terrific campus, and a really nice town. Too long a walk from the building to the nearest place for lunch, in the summer heat, though!
  • CERN and Cal Tech put together a system [vrvs.cern.ch] that works pretty well. It's called VRVS, for virtual room videoconferencing system. The high-energy physics types, who often have several hundred people around the world collaborating on one experiment, probably have very much the same needs you do. And yes, Slashdot readers, it runs on linux!

    I don't know exactly how it will compare in price to other solutions, but it was intended to be low-cost. I used it to get a lecture from a prof when he had to head over to CERN once; we were all entirely too distracted by playing with the cameras, but it worked very well. We didn't use the whiteboard, though, just the "point camera at blackboard" method.

    Even better- I poked around a bit, and it looks like they might have an installation over at U of M [umn.edu] that you could check out, though it's not clear they're still using it. Good luck. Congrats on the position!

  • As a U of MN undergrad I must say that IMA is a wonderful program. The best thing about it is that almost anyone can walk into a presentation without an invitation, or even shoes. Since IMA owns a very large room it has the freedom to integrate a lot of cool hardware into the layout, including whole-audience teleconferencing for the applauses, but I hope their new teleconferencing equipment won't freeze out the interlopers who enjoy a glimpse of mathematicians socializing.
  • The Department of Energy has done quite a work for electronic collaboration between the big national labs. Do a google search for "DOE2000" - you'll turn up quite a few.
  • I am interested in pursuing telecollaboration and teleconferencing...

    What about teleportation?

  • The above issue (78) has an article entitled Distance Education Using Linux and the MBONE, by Kelly Davis, Dr. Tom Miller, and Charles Price, primarily focused on lecture (push) needs.

    However, it describes several tools including a whiteboard with clients for both windows and Linux, an A/V session recorder, etc, etc.

    The article includes an URL: www.engr.ncsu.edu [ncsu.edu]

    Good luck!


    (PS: I agree with the first author re Wacom, and disagree with the Trolls.)

  • I am an undergrad student in the Computer Science Department [unc.edu] of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [unc.edu]. I'm not all that familiar with the various graduate research programs, but telecollaboration is one area that we are researching. This page [unc.edu] has a list of some of these research projects. Although I didn't immediately find anything like what you're describing, you're surely welcome to try.

    Daniel Plaisted

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