Mediascape: A Web-Based Media Space

A mediaspace is an audio, video and computing environment that supports distributed groups in their daily tasks by providing awareness, communication and collaboration services. Building on previous work on the social and technical issues of mediaspaces, we have identified three important design principles: integrability, flexibility and privacy. In this paper, we show how Web standards and protocols can be used to create a software infrastructure and user interfaces consistent with these principles. We present Mediascape, our Web-based mediaspace, and videoServer, a component for digital video communication, and we show the benefits offered by this infrastructure to users and developers.