Microsoft Office Live Meeting

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Microsoft Office Live Meeting is a web conferencing service operated by Microsoft. Live Meeting includes software that is installed on client PCs, and uses a central server for all clients to connect to. Currently, those servers are under the control of Microsoft, but Microsoft has said that it will release a server application that can be run privately.^[1]

1 Overview
2 History
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Overview

There have been 2 versions of Live Meeting: Live Meeting 2003 and Live Meeting 2005. Microsoft Office Live Meeting is a separate piece of software which is installed on a users PC (Windows Based Meeting Console). The software is available for free download from the Microsoft website. There is also a JAVA based console which has antecedent release functionality. This also operates in a Mac and Solaris environment.

Live Meeting is convergence software: ie allows integration with an audio conference. Using the web you are able to control PSTN lines (mute all parties except your own, eject parties etc). User accounts are grouped together in Conference Centers (a unique URL) which starts with: www.livemeeting.com/cc/.. or www.placeware.com/cc/.. . Users pay nothing to join a Live Meeting sessions. Charging for Live Meeting is done on an account basis. Supply of accounts is mostly done by resellers (Global Telecoms companies) who supply on a pence per minute or monthly standing charges. Telecoms companies also make a lot of money from dial-in teleconference charges.

[edit] History

Live Meeting was originally a separate company: PlaceWare. Microsoft wanting to improve their own webconferencing technology of the time (Netmeeting) bought out PlaceWare. They subsequently dropped development of Netmeeting.