Contacts: Yiannis Baltopoulos, Computer Lab
Mentor: Shefaly Yogendra
More information: http://www.yiannis-online.com/projects/jMule/docs/roadmap/index.html
JMule is a suite of software for remote collaboration activities, such as distance learning. It was originally developed by a team at the University of Kent (details below), and at the time received significant commercial interest from a potential licensee.
Unlike the current webconferencing products, such as Microsoft NetMeeting, jMule was designed with an e-learning scenario in mind, with a number of features that make it ideally suited to that environment. The software was carefully designed and documented by the research team, and a functional system created. Features include the ability to annotate images and documents onscreen, view webcam images, and hold public debates and private side conversations. Additional development work would be needed to create a commercial-quality product that could be sold to customers.
The challenge for the i-Team is to investigate the market need for a focused product such as jMule, and identify whether or not the product is worth developing further and taking to a commercial release. The potential market is not expected to be for a generic webconferencing product, since that market is highly competitive with multiple existing solutions, but instead is expected to be for specific niche applications in certain market sectors which the i-Team should identify during the course of their project.
The original jMule development team consisted of the following people:
Dr. Peter Kenny, Supervisor – http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/pgk/
Hannes Ricklefs, Project Manager – http://www.german-efficiency.com/
Ioannis Baltopoulos, Software Architect – http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~ib249/
Robin Kilpatrick, Configuration Manager
Neil Saunders, Quality Assurance