Argo: A System for Distributed Collaboration

The goal of the Argo system is to allow medium-sized groups of users to collaborate remotely from their desktops in a way that approaches as closely as possible the effectiveness of face-to-face meetings In support of this goal, Argo combines high quality multi-party digital video and full-duplex audio with telepointers, shared applications, and whiteboards in a uniform and familiar environment. The shared applications can be unmodified X programs shared via a proxy server, unmodified groupware applications, and applications written using our toolkit. Workers can contact each other as easily as making a phone call, and can easily bring into a conference any material they are working on. They do so by interacting with an object-oriented, client/server conference control system. The same conference control system is used to support teleporting, i.e. moving the desktop environment from one workstation's display to another (for example, from office to home). This paper describes the ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1994
• Where: MM
• Authors: Hania Gajewska, James J. Kistler, Mark S. Manasse, David D. Redell
• Keywords: Control System, MM 1994, Multi-party Digital Video, Multimedia, Unmodified Groupware Applications