The Snapshot Composer: The MRD's Multimedia Messaging Facility

The Middle Road Demonstrator (MRD) is a system for communication support within cooperative work settings. It supports cooperative work by allowing users to share applications independent of time and space. The MRD supports both synchronous and asynchronous communication modalities realized through it’s desktop conferencing facility and it’s multimedia messaging facility, respectively.

The Snapshot Composer is the application within the MRD which empowers the system with it’s multimedia messaging functionality. The Snapshot Composer supports the composition, reconstruction and presentation of multimedia messages. It does not involve itself with the transmission of multimedia messages — that job is performed by standard e-mail services.

This paper briefly presents aspects of the MRD as a whole, then focuses upon the functionality within the Snapshot Composer. The paper closes with a scenario-based description as to how the Snapshot Composer is used.