Microsoft is showing around a prototype product, called the Ring Cam, designed to make web conferences more like face-to-face meetings. Combined with web-conferencing software that Microsoft acquired this year, remote-meeting participants would be able to view and hear a live, 360-degree image of participants in another location. Few details are known about when products might result from the prototype. A Ring Cam -- actually multiple FireWire cameras -- would stitch together images from its surroundings. Software would isolate the audio and image of whichever participant is speaking, said Amit Mital, general manager of Microsoft's real-time collaboration unit.
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