Here is a great new tool that Microsoft has released and I think it is just splendid.http://lync.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/unified-communications.aspx
It is a unified messaging system. It integrates many options for collaborating and communicating. It has instant messaging, Video conferencing, screen sharing, and document sharing. All helpful tools for communicating in today's instant world. There are so many features and they all run side by side with each other really well. You can jump from an IM right to sharing your screen. Scheduling conference calls is easier than ever. Not to mention the great integration with Outlook.
With all these great features there are some things that are bound not to go the way you want them to.
One of the big things I don't like is how audio can't be shared through your computer. Lets say for instance that I had a power point with an embedded video and I wanted to do an online collaboration with my PowerPoint. The audio simply won't transfer from your computer to any other computer. This is a known issue and apparently they are working on it but there isn't any software out there that is setup to share audio through your computer to another computer at the same time.
If they did have that option it may get a little hairy. Imagine if you were on an online meeting using the speakers and mic on your computer to communicate. It would actually be a huge distraction to other people if they hear your computer keep playing a sound every time you got a new message. You would have to design it so that you could isolate the audio and send only what you want. This is a huge programming cluster and I am glad I am not in charge of it. To write the code for this you would have to be dedicated and surely insane. It would take a lot of time and who knows if anyone really wants to do that. You would almost have to change the whole way a computer works. They are designed to use just a single audio source and play any and all sounds through the same device. You would have to then change how audio came out your computer and find a way to assign a different audio output for every audio device.
Think of it this way. If you are on your cell phone and you make a call, most smart phones have multi-tasking, and you want to open up an app while on the call. You're not going to get audio to come out because an audio source is already in use and there aren't multiple output devices on your phone. You most certainly wouldn't be able to play a song and have the person on the call able to hear it, unless you had another audio output.
So the simple conclusion is that you just can't share audio when you already have on audio source outputting. I imagine they will find a way around it but I would get a headache just thinking about it. In fact I think I will go take some aspirin.
