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, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

collaboration program developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

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, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

as a replacement for Windows NetMeeting and it enables

application sharing Application sharing is an element of remote access, falling under the collaborative software umbrella, that enables two or more users to access a shared application or document from their respective computers simultaneously in real time. Generally ...

collaborative editing 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 deals. Good choices i ...

desktop sharing Desktop sharing is a common name for technologies and products that allow remote access and remote collaboration on a person's computer desktop through a graphical terminal emulator. The most common two scenarios for desktop sharing are: * Remote ...

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 ...

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

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

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

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

. Meeting Space has the ability to automatically set up an

ad hoc ''Ad hoc'' is a List of Latin phrases, Latin phrase meaning literally for this. In English language, English, it typically signifies a solution designed for a specific purpose, problem, or task rather than a Generalization, generalized solution ...

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

if a connection to a network or the Internet is not available; it 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 communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...

. 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 publi ...

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 Engineeri ...

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 James Edward Allchin (born 1951, Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States) is an American computer scientist, philanthropist and guitarist best known for being a former Microsoft executive. He assisted Microsoft in creating many of the system plat ...

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 subnet, or subnetwork, 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 identica ...

, 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 Vista Peer-to-peer software

History

Overview and features

See also

References