Microsoft has re-branded the online conferencing and collaboration application suite that it obtained through the acquisition of PlaceWare. The functionality is now part of Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2003 and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003. The Live Meeting application will also become part of the Microsoft Office family that is anticipated to be released this fall. Live Meeting is a browser-based application that can be used to conduct real-time, interactive presentations and meetings over the Internet. Live Communications Server provides presence-awareness, instant messaging (IM) and real-time communications capabilitieshttp://www.microsoft.com
- Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired PlaceWare, a provider of Web conferencing services. The PlaceWare service is aimed at businesses wishing to conduct real-time, interactive presentations and meetings over the Internet. The service currently supports large-scale meetings with up to thousands of attendees.
- PlaceWare got its start in 1990 at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) initially as a multi-user game known as LambdaMOO. The technology later became the foundation for a collaborative computing system for the U.S. Department of Defense.