ShareVision provides document sharing, live video and audio over standard phone lines

In a technology announcement that it hopes will wreak havoc with our frequent-flyer accounts, ShareVision Technology, Inc., of San Jose, CA, has unveiled plans for producing the first “desktop visual communications” system that offers two-way communication — including digital video and audio, collaborative document sharing and an interactive white board — that uses “plain old” telephone service over standard copper phone lines.

Based on signal compression techniques and a proprietary technology ShareVision calls “vector adaptive transform processing” (VATP), the company claims it can turn ordinary Macintosh computers equipped with NuBus slots into videoconferencing systems with no special service requirements.

The technologies, demonstrated during the keynote address at this month’s Macworld Expo in Boston, are likely to be incorporated into a product that includes a screen-based telephone (using an earphone, which has a uni-directional microphone) that mixes digital voice and video in a single bitstream, as well as software that allows both voice and video Email, a shared whiteboard, real-time document sharing and mark-up, motion video and high-resolution still-image capture, built-in send-and-receive fax capabilities, a V.32 bis data modem and a sound digitizer.

The company hopes it will be able to ship the conferencing product for less than $4,000 before year-end. That price would include two NuBus boards for audio and video, an inexpensive video camera, software and telephone hardware. Marketing vice president Dean Tucker claims ShareVision’s setup is equal in quality to systems costing $50,000.

Products that compete with ShareVision, he says, such as Northern Telecom’s VISIT system, require customers to use Northern’s own telephones, switches and central office.

FROM THE LOINS OF APPLE ATG

ShareVision was founded in 1991 by four Apple Computer scientists, three of them from Apple’s Advanced Technology Group and one from Apple’s Video Product Group. They include Lung Yeh, president and cofounder, who handled research and development in the area of image and video compression algorithms at ATG; Dan Wright, also from ATG, an expert in real-time image compression; Frank Chu, who helped develop video compression algorithms for implementing MPEG video compression at ATG; and Mike Mruzik, who was heavily involved in digital video compression and custom chip design while with Apple’s Video Group.

Their technical expertise, combined with an elegant software interface, may have created a new product category — desktop visual communications — with an almost frightening potential for increasing productivity in business.

For instance, if ShareVision’s “collaborative document sharing and screen-based telephone hardware and software” live up to the company’s promise, users will be able to share and edit documents with colleagues based in sites as remote as the Pacific Rim — or as close as coworkers in the next cubicle — with the same ease they can send E-mail messages today.

YOU CAN HAVE IT OR NOT, IT STILL WORKS

If the recipient of a ShareVision video phone call does not have a ShareVision system installed in his or her Macintosh, the software simply reverts the call to analog voice. But if both have ShareVision systems, then the computer becomes a fully functional, screen-based telephone, answering machine and collaborative work tool.

Video E-mail can be stored and forwarded, and video conversations can be recorded for later playback, either as ShareVision’s proprietary bitstream or transferred into QuickTime format for distribution to non-ShareVision users.

Using ShareVision’s proprietary software for compression, preprocessing and filtering of images, each of the two parties involved (at this point the technology is for two-way communication only) will appear in a scrollable video window (2½×2½ inches is the largest it can be) that runs at up to 10 frames per second, depending on what other data is being manipulated at the same time. While the video may be a bit choppy, the digital audio operates in real-time.

“Video conferencing by itself isn’t a compelling enough application,” says Tucker. “But we believe people will spend $3,000–4,000 to get ease of use and multiple functionality over ubiquitous phone service.”

Janice Maloney and Denise Caruso