

#Callnote not recording other caller portable
Conversely, audio and video capture and processing capabilities have recently been integrated into desktop and portable personal computers and workstations (hereinafter generically referred to as “workstations”). Thus, while such systems may be useful in limited contexts, they do not provide the capabilities required for maximally effective collaboration, and are not cost-effective. That is, they attempt to add computing capabilities to a videoconferencing system, rather than adding multimedia and collaborative capabilities to the user's existing computer system. However, such dedicated videoconferencing systems (and extensions thereof) do not effectively leverage the investment in existing embedded information infrastructures-such as desktop personal computers and workstations, local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) environments, building wiring, etc.-to facilitate interactive sharing of data in the form of text, images, charts, graphs, recorded video, screen displays and the like. It has also been proposed to augment such video conferencing systems with limited “video mail” facilities. 4,710,917 to Tompkins et al for Video Conferencing Network issued on Dec. It has been proposed to extend traditional videoconferencing capabilities from conference centers, where groups of participants must assemble in the same room, to the desktop, where individual participants may remain in their office or home. In this event, the expert must communicate “asynchronously”-to bridge time as well as distance. One or more of these other experts may be in a meeting, on another call, or otherwise temporarily unavailable. However, before making a decision to buy or sell, he or she will frequently need to discuss the information with other experts, who may be geographically dispersed, and with the client. Much of this information can be processed by the expert in isolation.

The expert requires immediate access to a wide range of potentially relevant information such as financial data, historical pricing information, current price quotes, newswire services, government policies and programs, economic forecasts, weather reports, etc. To illustrate the difficulties inherent in reproducing the beneficial effects of face-to-face collaboration in a distributed collaboration environment, consider the case of decision-making in the fast-moving commodities trading markets, where many thousands of dollars of profit (or loss) may depend on an expert trader making the fight decision within hours, or even minutes, of receiving a request from a distant client. In distributed collaboration settings, then, where the participants cannot be in the same place at the same time, the beneficial effects of face-to-face collaboration will be realized only to the extent that each of the remotely located participants can be “recreated” at each site.

This combination of spoken words, gestures, visual cues and interactive data sharing significantly enhances the effectiveness of collaboration in a variety of contexts, such as “brainstorming” sessions among professionals in a particular field, consultations between one or more experts and one or more clients, sensitive business or political negotiations, and the like. In addition to spoken words, demonstrative gestures and behavioral cues, collaboration often involves the sharing of visual information-e.g., printed material such as articles, drawings, photographs, charts and graphs, as well as videotapes and computer-based animations, visualizations and other displays-in such a way that the participants can collectively and interactively examine, discuss, annotate and revise the information.
