from the jini-news dept. Virtual Ink is demonstrating the use of Jini technology to integrate whiteboards across networks and the Internet. The company has developed the mimio appliance, which consists of an attachment to a standard whiteboard that tracks the movement of special marker holders. Traditionally, the mimio needed to be attached to a PC. The Jini connectivity lets the mimio operate through a network without an attached PC.
The 14-inch-long attachment listens for coded ultrasonic signals sent out from special marker sleeves. By default, the sleeves support red, green, black, and blue, but you can also remap the colors in software. The Jini connectivity will turn these into a true whiteboard appliance. Yonald Chery, CEO of Virtual Ink, said, "It ends up being a true Internet peripheral where I can take what is on the whiteboard and transmit that to others. Now you just hook it up to a network, and there is one instance of the server and very little maintenance." The contents of a whiteboard can be printed out or shared with someone running Windows NetMeeting. "The neat thing," Chery said, "is that I can have any whiteboard on the network and can access that section live. I also have true whiteboard chat, based on Java and Jini." The system can enable whiteboard sharing over a 19.2 kilobit/s connection. "We see a huge opportunity with audio conferencing, distance learning, self-paced learning, and enabling people to automatically transcribe notes," Chery said. Eventually, Jini technology could be integrated with the mimio mouse, which can enable multiple people to share a virtual whiteboard. The mimio captures data from the holders and a video projector paints the lines onto the board. This lets people in multiple locations see and make changes to the same virtual whiteboard. Resources Virtual Ink: http://www.virtualink.com How to attach a user interface to a Jini service An in-depth look at the serviceui project from the Jini community http://www.sunworld.com/sunworldonline/swol-10-1999/swol-10-jiniology.ht ml Anything to everything Jini battles Microsoft and others for instant networking market http://www.sunworld.com/sunworldonline/swol-03-1999/swol-03-jini.html Draw the world: Create networked whiteboards with Java 1.1 Learn how to easily write a whiteboard using the new features of JDK 1.1 http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-11-1997/jw-11-step.html < | >
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