whiteboard

The electronic equivalent of chalk and blackboard, but between remote users. Whiteboard systems allow network participants to simultaneously view one or more users drawing on an on-screen blackboard or running an application. This is not the same as application sharing where two or more users can interactively work in the application. Only one user is actually running the application from his or her computer. In many desktop systems, the application is not viewable interactively. A copy of the current application window is pasted into the whiteboard, which then becomes a static image for interactive annotation as in the example below.

Collaborating Via Whiteboard

In this example, two people are collaborating on a drawing that one of them pasted into the whiteboard in a NetMeeting conference. Using the whiteboard's marker, a particular area of interest was circled.

LiveBoard

Whiteboards such as the LiveBoard from Xerox subsidiary, LiveWorks, Inc. allow simultaneous viewing of the application. The exceptionally clear large screens on these Pentium-based PC/whiteboards can be viewed close up and at wide angles. (Images courtesy of Palo Alto Research Center; Brian Tramontana, photographer.)