A system for allowing conference participants to share all or a portion of
the display seen on their computer screens is disclosed. The conferees
may be at sites removed from each other, or may view a recorded
presentation or archived conference at different times. Conference
participants are either "presenters" who can modify the display or
"attendees" who cannot modify the display. A pointer icon, which can be
labeled to identify the conferee, is displayed on the shared image area.
Each conferee can modify the position of his or her own pointer, even
when not presenting, so that every participant can see what each conferee
is pointing to, should a conferee choose to point to an element of the
display. These and other features apply to other data streams shared in
the conference or in meetings where there is no shared-image data stream.