If you have been following my work on the web conferencing and collaboration fronts, you probably remember having read about my "dream system".

The "Dream System" was a major report, counting over three hundred pages, that I had prepared during 2003 for publication online. Though I kept announcing its near release the report never became available on my web site.

What happened?

In November 2003 one US conferencing company bought the exclusive rights to it for six months, and with it its right to read ahead of everyone else what I thought were the key needed features and functions needed in an ideal real-time conferencing/collaboration technology.

In the report, I had in fact collected not only well illustrated examples of all features and facilities one could ever imagine having in a top conferencing tool, but I also ventured into defining and describing in details over 100 new features and facilities presently missing from all of the systems that I have tested.

I am not patenting these ideas (yet) and I am rather inclined to promote and share their effective implementation by many, instead of having someone else by the rights to it for its own success only.

I have therefore decided, with the help of Francis Good who is now coordinating this project, to release new and updated chapters to the original "Dream System" reference report with a whole collection of dedicated, vertical, highly focused reports covering each one of the facilities I had originally included.

This excerpt from the first full Insider Report analyzes in detail the major features of an 'ideal' Web Touring and Co-browsing facility, the key benefits for users, and vendor best practices in implementation.

Here is a good excerpt from what you will be able to read inside of it.

What are 'Web Touring and Co-browsing' and why are they so important to a real-time conferencing or collaboration system?

Can you sell screen-sharing for Co-browsing, Web-Touring?
Is it the same thing?

What are the true advantages of Co-browsing over other solutions?

What follows is based on a detailed Kolabora Insider Report, which I am about to publish in the coming weeks.

Web Touring and Co-browsing
Web touring (also known as co-browsing or collaborative browsing) is the ability to drive multiple participants to access a sequence of selected Web pages simultaneously.

The presenter can synchronize all meeting participants to see exactly the same Web pages that they're accessing live on their computer.

For example, a customer having difficulty placing an order could call a customer service representative who could then enable co-browsing to see exactly what's on the customer's screen.

Web touring is implemented by way of broadcasting selected URLs to meeting participants and not by sharing the browser application. The latter entails repeatedly sending an updated image of the screen to all participants, which is both very bandwidth intensive and very slow.

The must-have features of an ideal real-time Web conferencing system Web Touring and Co-Browsing facility include:

• Push Web pages
  Pushing a Web page allows the presenter to force a specific Web page to appear on the end user screen. Pushing Web pages is the very basic level at which co-browsing can be carried out. Some systems force a new browser window on each participant’s computer. The use of this feature theoretically leaves participants free to navigate and independently interact with the Web page received.
• Follow-me / Sync-surfing
  Provides a simple means for the presenter/moderator to navigate from link to link and from one Web page to another one while automatically "driving" all attendees. In this fashion all participants’ browsers sync-up with whatever URL the presenter goes to. Systems missing this feature require the presenter to
  type and send out each specific Web page URL that needs to be accessed by the attendees.







• Favorites / Bookmarks
  The Favorites and Bookmarks feature allow the presenter/moderator to save and manage Web page URLs which need to be easily and rapidly accessed during a live session. In this way, the presenter needs not to type complex Web page URL "on the fly" and can be prepare ahead of time a list of Web page addresses that will need to be presented.



• Preview
  The co-browsing Preview feature allows the presenter/moderator to literally pre-view a Web page before broadcasting it to all of the meeting participants. This maybe very useful to check the availability of a page or the actual content being displayed before showing the page publicly.



• Hand-over control
  The Hand-over control feature allows the presenter/moderator in a co-browsing session to give control of the Web tour to any one of the participants in the session. This is very handy in events and presentations where multiple presenters need to take the stage. In most systems, presenters need to be assigned special passwords to access the moderator functions and a unique account must be created for them. The hand-over control feature simplifies this while providing the ability to easily hand-out without prior planning the co-browsing session control to anyone of the participants.
• Pre-caching
  The pre-caching feature allows the automatic and invisible pre-downloading of the Web pages to be viewed during a co-browsing session across all attendees. The content of the Web pages is downloaded during idle presentation times and is cached in the memory of each attendees computer. The operation takes place completely in the background, is completely transparent to the user, and can be optionally turned off by attendees. This approach allows very fast access to Web pages during a live presentation, and the ability to maintain greater synch with all attendees. This technical ability is presently not available in any web conferencing system available on the market and is one of the over 100 new features that I have identified and described in this new series of upcoming Insider Reports.
• Co-scrolling
  Co-scrolling is probably the most sought after advanced feature by end users participating in a co-browsing session. As the name implies, co-scrolling provides the ability to scroll Web pages simultaneously with all meeting participants. When the presenter scrolls a Web page, it simultaneously scrolls on all participants’ screens.
• Co-filling
  The co-filling feature originally pioneered by PageShare.com provides ability to fill out online forms, tests and other interactive documents in a collaborative synchronized fashion. The presenter can fill in fields of an online form live, and have the input appear on all attendees forms. Attendees can in turn fill in independently in their forms in the personal sections.
• Shared pointing tool
  A shared pointing tool allows the presenter to show the mouse cursor to participants in real time over the Web page being shown. This technique that is not presently adopted by none of the players in the market is a actually a combination of screen sharing and co-browsing. While this feature requires that all participants are forced to view the web page co-browsed in a window that is exactly the same size as the presenter, it does allow the presenter to show a light pointer (its appearance should be available in several formats: laser pointer, arrow, blinking dot, hand pointing, mouse cursor, etc.) moving live over the web page content being displayed.
• History of URLs browsed
  The history of URLs browsed further facilitates the presenter task of going back to Web pages presented during the current or preceding sessions. The feature should allow the history to be shared and be accessed/downloaded by any of the meeting participants.

Yes, ....there is more.

For more details on the upcoming Kolabora Insider Report: Web Touring and Co-browsing - Major Features, Key Benefits, Vendor Best Practices, please contact:
Francis.Good[at]masternewmedia.org (Please replace "[at]" with "@")