Xerox Corp has launched its electronic blackboard, LiveBoard, in Europe, with added videoconferencing facilities. LiveBoard can now link up to 31 sites around the world so that participants can all write on the blackboard at the same time. This launch is version 3 of the technology developed by Xerox’s subsidiary LiveWorks Inc in Palo Alto, California. Version 2 of LiveBoard was unveiled last year in the US (CI No 2,171). Xerox is marketing the product as a means of keeping executives in their offices rather than having to fly them around the globe to meetings, but the company says LiveBoard also has potential as a training tool, a means of making meetings more productive or creating an auditorium in an office. LiveBoard is a stand-alone system with a 67 full colour rear project display screen developed by the company, a personal computer with an 80486 processor, which is upgradable to a Pentium chip and a wireless pen; it supports all Windows-based applications and recognises handwriting; it has a full audio system and universal video input, enabling the screen to act as either a full video screen or just a video window. The wireless pen enables people to write directly on the screen or, using the infra-red capabilities, wave a pen from a distance. No matter how many people are connected to the system, all users can write on the screen. It can be used as a flipchart with up to 50 ‘sheets’ available at any one session. Use of the screen is very flexible: the squence of sheets can be reordered; written information can be shifted around; colours can be changed; and so can the width of the lines drawn on the screen. Two sites can be linked directly or if a bridge is used then up to 31 sites can be linked. If videoconferencing is not used then ordinary telephone lines suffice for connections. If video images are desired then Integrated Services Digital Network lines, at least, are required. The whole lot comes in one unit which is on castors and so can be moved around. It is UKP33,500, which Xerox reckons is a bargain when compared to the cost of a travel, accommodation and lost executive time when people have to fly to get to meetings held overseas.
