Windows Meeting Space (codenamed Windows Shared View and formerly Windows Collaboration) was a

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

collaboration program developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

for

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

as a replacement for Windows NetMeeting and it enables application sharing,

collaborative editing __NOTOC__ Collaborative editing is the process of multiple people editing the same document simultaneously. This technique may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially improve the quality of documents and increase productivity. ...

, desktop sharing,

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

, projecting, and simple text-based or ink-based

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

across up to 10 users connected to the same network or across the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. Meeting Space has the ability to automatically set up an

ad hoc Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning literally 'to this'. In English, it typically signifies a solution for a specific purpose, problem, or task rather than a generalized solution adaptable to collateral instances. (Compare with '' a priori''.) C ...

wireless network A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and business installations avoid the costly process of introducing ...

if a connection to a network or the Internet are not available and also enables participants to invite other people to meeting sessions. It is the first application for the new peer-to-peer framework in

and hence requires

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...

. NetMeeting features such as

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and publ ...

support and the ability to set up audio or video conferences are not available. Meeting Space is included in all editions of Windows Vista, but its functionality is unavailable in the Starter edition; in the Home Basic edition, it only allows users to join—but not create—sessions. With the release of Windows 7, Microsoft discontinued Meeting Space and recommended

Microsoft Office Live Meeting Microsoft Office Live Meeting is a discontinued commercial subscription-based web conferencing service operated by Microsoft. Live Meeting included software installed on client PCs and used a central server for all clients to connect to. The service ...

as a replacement.

History

Meeting Space is a result of Microsoft's peer-to-peer collaboration efforts—with an emphasis on mobile computing—discussed during

WinHEC The Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) is a series of technical conferences and workshops, where Microsoft elaborates on its hardware plans for Windows devices. The WinHEC from 1992 to 2008, which stood for Windows Hardware Engineerin ...

2004 when Windows Vista was codenamed "Longhorn." At that time, it was reported that Windows Vista would enable users to create "ad hoc wireless networks for file sharing and to discover people who are connected nearby." Meeting Space relies on this functionality for its services. Meeting Space was later demonstrated by Jim Allchin and Darryn Dieken at PDC 2005 where it projected a shared PowerPoint presentation. Allchin said this demonstration was not to illustrate functions of the application itself—development of which was not complete—but to illustrate select capabilities of the peer-to-peer framework in Windows Vista. In a later interview with Paul Thurrott, Allchin expressed desire for developers to create applications supporting peer-to-peer capabilities. With the release of Windows 7, Microsoft discontinued Windows Meeting Space and recommended

as a replacement.

Overview and features

On starting a session, a workspace, which contains a presentation area, is displayed. A list of notes are also shown. A list of users in the local

subnet A subnetwork or subnet is a logical subdivision of an IP network. Updated by RFC 6918. The practice of dividing a network into two or more networks is called subnetting. Computers that belong to the same subnet are addressed with an identical ...

, with whom a collaboration session can be started, are automatically detected by using the ''People Near Me'' functionality, based on

WS-Discovery Web Services Dynamic Discovery (WS-Discovery) is a technical specification that defines a multicast discovery protocol to locate services on a local network. It operates over TCP and UDP port 3702 and uses IP multicast address or . As the name s ...

in the

networking implementation in Windows Vista. Users outside the local subnet must be sent an e-mail or file invitation to participate. Applications can be shared in the session, which will be local to that session only. When an application is shared, Windows Meeting Space switches into presentation mode so that participants can see what the presenter is working on and collaboratively edit or review the shared application instance.

References

{{Windows Components 2006 software Discontinued Windows components

Meeting Space Windows Meeting Space (codenamed Windows Shared View and formerly Windows Collaboration) was a peer-to-peer collaboration program developed by Microsoft for Windows Vista as a replacement for Windows NetMeeting and it enables application sharing, ...

Windows Vista

History

Overview and features

See also

References