We present a distributed platform that provides support to multimedia collaborative environments encompassing applications with diverse characteristics. The platform is independent from the applications, supplying the session control and multipoint communication services through a uniform interface. In a collaborative environment, a variable number of users should be able to redefine their working spaces changing the number and characteristics of the shared applications. In this paper, we propose a distributed architecture to be used in such environments, discussing its requirements and mechanisms.
Antonio Carlos C. M. Almeida received the Licenciatura em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores in 1989 from the Technical University of Lisbon and the M.S. degree in Engenharia Electrotécnica in 1994, from the same University.
Currently he is at IST-Instituto Superior Técnico (Universidade Técnica de Lisboa), as a research assistant. He is involved on the study of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and multimedia systems. His main interests concern real-time communication protocols and mechanisms for synchronization of multiple inter-related data streams and multimedia system architectures.