CyberOffice Communicator Technical Information

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This page is intended for readers who are seeking more technical information on SmartWin's CyberOffice Communicator software product. The deployed technology is patent protected (Australia Patent No. 695645). They may not be used elsewhere without explicit, written consent from SmartWin Technology.

• What is it
• What do you need
• What will be installed
• Corporate call center
• Site maintenance
• Security
• Performance
• Intellectual properties

SmartWin acknowledges that some information presented here might be imprecise or obsolete (in the sense that it does not reflect accurately the current status of the Internet, due to the highly dynamic nature of the industry). We will be updating this document in a near future. However the fundamentals will remain the same.

CyberOffice Communicator (formerly "SmartWin CyberOffice") is, in essence, a distributed network of dynamic Web sites, which we call it CyberOffice Network. It is an innovative technology consisting of a suite of existing and new applications that enables each participant to host a full functional Web site (running database applications with unlimited disk space and etc.) on a desktop PC (at no additional cost to the participant, say from its local ISP). Since the PC is where one would probably conduct everyday business, CyberCommunicator introduces unprecedented built-in human interactive power to the world of Web technology - featuring direct, instant online contacts with visitors through their browsers (no third parties). All these can be accomplished by simply adding a link to your existing Web pages. In short, CyberCommunicator turns an everyday PC into the most powerful business tool that one can ever imagine. And it is probably the least expensive solution for small business to enjoy the full power of Internet technology.

If you ever managed to post a Web page or a virtual Web site on the Internet, you would probably have suffered from many limitations and inconvenience imposed by your ISP. You simply can't do what you set out to do. For example, you can't freely write your CGI scripts therefore your pages are virtually static. The only communication between you and the visitors is via email. How many people who read your pages ever bother to write you emails? Besides you don't really read your emails every minute. After a while, you might decide to pay more for running CGI programs or limited database applications to make your site appear interactive. You then need to download and upload the information through the low-speed Internet. Namely still can manage real-time access to your information on the site. There are also the data rate and other explicit or hidden charges that you have to pay to just keep the site alive. And if there are many virtual sites sharing the same computer, the access and response speed of your site is unfortunately very poor. Suppose you can live with all of these, you can hardly stand with the fact that the majority of the Web surfers do not come back to your site at all. This is simply due to the limited capacity you can get out of your virtual site when compared with some of the known sites on the Internet. So all your efforts have been wasted.

Here is the simplest and the best alternative, why not extend (or just host) your web site to (on) your desktop computer? CyberCommunicator offers a perfect solution that effectively overcomes all of the above difficulties. Note that you don't need a domain-name registration and a permanent link or IP address. Part of the CyberOffice Network operation, known, as the CyberCommunicator Engine is to make your site visible and searchable to the Internet. Comparing with the virtual Web site, it offers the following prominent features:

• Instant, multi-level human contacts with your site visitors.
• Unlimited disk space and maintenance free operation.
• Full functional Web services covering CGI scripts, Active Server Pages, and other data-awareness applications.
• Live accessing and updating to your site contents and the back-end database(s).
• Fast access and response speed for Web visitors.
• Extending your existing Web page(s) or virtual site.
• Compatible and can be upgraded to permanent Web site when business expands.

And all these can just happen while you are working/playing on your computer! More technical information can be found in the following sections.

One application of the technology, as used by many organizations, is to provide 100% anonymous and guided browser based live customer services / call centers over the Web. This is a core part of the system called CyberCommunicator. It adopts the same compression algorithm as used in mobile telephony.

Complex relationships, between various support vendors, in many different locations, can be seamlessly offered to Web users, by simply clicking the appropriate embedded 'button'.

CyberCommunicator is also ideal for facilitating flexible intranet and extranet systems for any purposes. It does Text Chat, File Transfer, Browser Redirection, Voice Chat, and is expandable to other means such as video transmissions etc.

To run CyberCommunicator applications, you need to register with a CyberCommunicator Engine. This will assign your PC a permanent virtual Internet address. You would also need:

An IBM Compatible PC running Windows 95, 98, 2000 or NT 4.0 with

• At least a Pentium processor,
• 100M free hard disk space or above,
• 32M RAM or above,
• 33.6 kbps Modem or above,
• Optional sound card, speakers, and microphone.

One or more Internet Service Provider(s) which is large enough to provide sufficient bandwidth and non-stop service for at least a few hours. Make sure that the ISP does not block you from running server program (such as accepting Internet phone calls from other parties).

(Optional) Microsoft Office 97/2000 (professional edition) for your own benefits to better serve your customers. Office applications automatically convert their native documents into standard Internet formats, including images. In addition, Microsoft Access or Excel provides the idea database tools for your Web site.

(Optional) Professional authoring tools such as Microsoft FrontPage 98, Microsoft Visual InterDev to develop your own power site.

CyberCommunicator Installation program, either from a setup CD or via online download, will require / install

Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) 4.01 or above. This is required even if you have configured another browser such Netscape Communicator as the default one. MSIE is provided by Microsoft free of charge and can be virtually found anywhere.

CyberCommunicator which includes a built-in Web server. This automatically configures your PC Web site and links it to the CyberCommunicator Engine (by default the one located on the SmartWin Web site). SmartWin provides the program free of charge to its members. Further distribution of the software without explicit permission from SmartWin Technology is prohibited.

Optionally, power users are recommended to install Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) to take the full advantage of CyberCommunicator. PWS can be found on the Windows 98 CD (\add-ons\pws\setup.exe) and is part of Windows NT Optional Pack.

SmartWin Technology provides automatic online software upgrades and unlimited online support to its members. Please always check the Microsoft Web site for more recent upgrades of the above products

CyberCommunicator system is ideal for Corporate Call Center implementation with no infrastructure changes. It is transparent to and caters for firewalls on corporate networks. The software itself has been designed with open system architect and can be fully customized for any particular uses. Below is a sketch of what to expect doing a call-center setup. Assume that you have a number of PCs (around the world) that are dedicated to the call center.

1. Register these PCs with the CyberCommunicator Engine under a special group.
2. Add one (or more) button to your Web site pointing to a permanent virtual Internet address on the CyberOffice Network.
3. A flexible number of PCs can log on to CyberOffice Network at any given time.
4. When a visitor clicks on the Button, his/her browser will be redirected to one of those PCs that are actively connected to the CyberOffice Network. The redirection will be uniformly distributed among available PCs. If none of the PCs is active, a preset page will be returned.
5. The visitor and the operator on the PC can conduct two-way communications through Web Browser in text and voice (i.e. Internet Phone). A plug-in mechanism is provided to transmit live-recorded video from PC to the browser if the PC has video facility. There are no third party servers. No requirements for visitor's personal information such as email address etc. No particular requirements on the visitor's system.

In addition to the above, these PCs are actually hosting very powerful Web sites, which can be configured in any possible ways.

There are step-by-step instructions which help you set up a simple site with CyberCommunicator functions in minutes. The simplest form of the site, if you use Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS), already includes a drop box for private messages and a guest book for public uses (It also has hit counts for your Web site). Using the built-in facility, you don't need email to communicate with your visitors. Furthermore, CyberCommunicator lets you conduct instant text-based or vocal on-line interactions with your visitors. This eliminates the need to write your own CGI scripts for simple uses of your site. However, you will need professional assistance if you make one step further to set up your own database application.

The actual site maintenance varies with the functions and complexities of your site. Certain knowledge of Web technology is desirable. Normally, there will be little problem if you are familiar with Microsoft Office product or a skilled PC user. In any case, SmartWin Technology offers a full range of services that cover every aspect of site maintenance and development.

Security is a very broad subject and is difficult to cover in a few paragraphs. Nevertheless, Windows 95 is a very simple machine as it is primarily designed to be clients of various network servers. Thus it is easy to put it under control when a Web server is the only server running on the PC. Namely you are not giving many channels that an Internet hacker could attack. The risk of running a Web server with limited functions is roughly the same as running a net meeting program (which is in fact another kind of client-server application). Windows NT, on the other hand, do provide a fairly rich set of built-in network services that need careful configurations. As a general guideline, these services should be kept at their minimum levels when the PC is exposed to the Internet (regardless of our CyberCommunicator application). In particular, you should disable any remote access services that allow an outsider to login as a local user. In reality, the battle ground of Internet security is on big sites running Windows NT Servers and other Unix types of machines due to the nature of their huge complexity. In fact you would probably be more concerned about how to attract more visitors than the security of your PC.

Could my PC be invaded by computer virus through Web operation? A Web site does not normally allow browsers to upload information to the server, apart from posting information via HTML forms that are fully controlled by the server. Note that it is important that you disable PWS Web Authoring through FrontPage Server Extension and FTP server for Windows NT before connecting to the Internet. Virus infection through normal CyberCommunicator operations is in general prohibited by design. To the best of our knowledge, there are no risks of contracting virus through running PC Web server provided you have a good control of server-side CGI programs (The latter is a general principle that is more vital for large Web sites). Of course you need to follow the common sense while browsing over and saving contents from the Internet.

Could someone steal confidential information from the PC? The answer is No unless you put confidential file(s) under a public section which is visible to the outside world. Normally, there is only one directory (and everything under it) in the PC that is exposed to the Internet. Other virtual paths can nevertheless be manually added to the Web site as you wish. So as long as there are no private files put under these directories (it would be very silly if you did), the PC is secured. Note that Windows NT's built-in security gives additional layer of protection for PWS via setting up user privileges. PWS on Windows NT or the built-in Web server also provide basic user-password login facility that may be used to limit access rights to certain directories (this is particularly useful if the site is intended for specific audiences).

Secure transaction is not possible for the PC site unless it is a permanent one and you have gone through a lengthy procedure to obtain the site certificate and other necessary components. After all, a PC server is not intended for transferring sensitive information. Items like credit card payments should be arranged through third party authorities that are commonly trusted by both sides, or taken by voice communications.

Microsoft Personal Web Server imposes a limit of 10 concurrent visits to your Web site. This is more than enough for a typical CyberCommunicator site. Upgrade to better servers is always possible when that limit is reached. In fact, there will be no changes whatsoever if you upgrade your operating system to Windows NT Server, which comes with the powerful Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). This is because PWS is a sub-set of IIS. At any given moment, the performance is determined by the lowest speed segment in both the client's and the server's localities. Since most PCs under your local ISP are likely running downloading operations (browsers), there will be little traffic congestion for uploading information (servers) from your PC. Therefore the speed is basically determined by the client's local traffic. Typically, users would not experience any differences between your site and any other big sites on the Internet. And believe it, very often yours is faster because there are not that many concurrent connections at your site.

Dr. Yong C. CHEN was the original inventor of this distributed and human interactive Web network. The deployed technology has been patented in Australia (Patent No: 695645) and is pending for patent in US (other countries in process). The CyberCommunicator software was developed and owned by SmartWin Technology. All rights reserved.

Dr. Yong C. CHEN &
SmartWin Technology
Australia

For further inquiries regarding this matter, please write to

Email Address: ychen@smartwin.net or info@smartwin.net