The information has been structured     
now how can the telegroup access it for instant use?

Web pages are usually thought of as static displays. So how can the Web be used to deliver meeting maps in real time? How can the text and graphics on a Web page change dynamically in order to cover a live event like a telemeeting?

The answer is to think of the Web as another live networked visual medium, like television, only with higher resolution text and graphics and a lower refresh rate.

All visual displays (of scanned images, text and graphics) are static between refreshes! The only difference is the length of time between refreshes, and what the viewer has to do to cause the image updating (nothing for TV, manual intervention* for the others).

Consider these different visual media and how often the image contents can be "refreshed" or changed:

display	refresh rate
Telephone book	once every year
TV Guide magazine	once every week
Newspaper	once every day
Web page	once every 30 seconds
Television image	once every 30th of a second

If the telefacilitator is writing a new version of the Web page to the net every minute or so, then members of the telegroup can update their images simply by hitting the "RELOAD" button in their Web viewing application. The Web thus becomes a source for refresh on-demand text-graphics.

* Automatic refreshing is possible thanks to a Web technology called "server side push." Under this scheme, whenever the content of the Web page changes, a new version is "pushed" to each browser tuned into that page. This results in automatic refreshing and increased convenience for the members of the participating telegroup      they can simply have their teleconference and the meeting map is refreshed automatically every time the telefacilitator updates it.

   
© 1997, 1999 PGC