Audio narrowcasting and privacy for multipresent avatars on workstations and mobile phones

Our group is exploring interactive multi- and hypermedia, especially applied to virtual and mixed reality multimodal groupware systems. We are researching user interfaces to control source->sink transmissions in synchronous groupware (like teleconferences, chatspaces, virtual concerts, etc.). We have developed two interfaces for privacy visualization of narrowcasting (selection) functions in collaborative virtual environments (cvEs): for a workstation WIMP (windows/icon/menu/pointer) GUI (graphical user interface), and for networked mobile devices, 2.5- and 3 rd -generation mobile phones. The interfaces are integrated with other CVE clients, interoperating with a heterogeneous multimodal groupware suite, including stereographic panoramic browsers and spatial audio backends & speaker arrays. The narrowcasting operations comprise an idiom for selective attention, presence, and privacy- an infrastructure for rich conferencing capability.