eBay originally bought Skype shortly after sending an email to Meg Whitman about my Internet collaboration software/service startup Vemics Inc. that was perfecting its Vemics LiveAccess solution.
Vemics LiveAccess was a live collaboration solution featuring integrated VOIP audio, real-time video (broadcast quality 28 frames per second video), and content sharing solution over the private Internet. It was superior to Skype audio and a fully secure integrated collaboration solution. Vemics LiveAccess was created by one of the software engineers that created the original Patented Polycom Videoconference technology. It actually used a free Microsoft component as part of the solution with their permission.
All participants used simple downloaded client software and connected to a central web meeting site. Each participant had a JETC approved tunneling connection (highest government security status then) for a totally secure that could not be broken.
Up to 90 live endpoints could participate in an online interactive meeting with 5 live videos, audio channels, and sharing content (live software, internet site with a color pen during an online meeting. Meeting control was passed by a single click and the up to 5 live audio/video participants could be changed by a few clicks. You could also invite a Videoconference system participant with audio/video only to your live meeting by simply entering their Videoconference address.
All participants received the audio/video/content simultaneously in virtual real-time.
I remember doing many online meetings from Starbucks around the country and from my hotel room in Singapore.
I was a volunteer for a United Nations Group for accessibility and allowed poor countries who could not afford the trip to New York to participate and make presentations to the UN group. It was also used for military families during the Christmas Holidays to connect live with their families thanks to Fox and Friends getting the military to free up VSAT satellites at safe locations in Iraq.
You could do everything that can be done in an onsite meeting, except you could not touch the person.
