Abstract: An online conferencing system that provides an automatic mechanism to broadcast an online conference. A video gathering component gathers video streams for each of at least some of the current participants in the online conference. A broadcast start triggering component allows one or more of the participants to trigger operation of a broadcasting component. The broadcast component that, when triggered, causes a resulting video stream comprising at least a composite of at least some of the gathered video streams to be published to a plurality of viewers. In some embodiments, pre-processing of the video streams to create the resulting video stream also occurs. Such pre-processing could include, for instance, composing a stream from multiple video streams, altering one or more of the video streams, applying augmented reality to the video stream, and so forth.

Abstract: An online conferencing system that provides an automatic mechanism to broadcast an online conference. A video gathering component gathers video streams for each of at least some of the current participants in the online conference. A broadcast start triggering component allows one or more of the participants to trigger operation of a broadcasting component. The broadcast component that, when triggered, causes a resulting video stream comprising at least a composite of at least some of the gathered video streams to be published to a plurality of viewers. In some embodiments, pre-processing of the video streams to create the resulting video stream also occurs. Such pre-processing could include, for instance, composing a stream from multiple video streams, altering one or more of the video streams, applying augmented reality to the video stream, and so forth.

Abstract: In a cluster of servers, each server is configured as follows. A request is received at the server from a requesting entity. The request includes an identifier of the request. The server determines whether the request identifier is already associated with any of the servers in a cluster database. If the request identifier is already associated with a different one of the servers in the cluster database, it is forwarded to the different server. If the request identifier is not already associated with any of the servers, it is associated with the server. The server generates a response to the request, and, stores in local storage accessible to the server and transmits a copy of it to a requesting entity. If the request is already associated with the server in the cluster database, the server locates any response to the request that is already stored in the local storage.