Patent ID: 7356563

Claim:
In a shared computing environment with an application running on a sharer computing device, the application producing a sharer application display on the sharer computing device, a copy of the sharer application display transmitted to a first viewer computing device for display on the first viewer computing device and transmitted to a second viewer computing device for display on the second viewer computing device, a method for the sharer computing device to accept and share annotation information provided by the first viewer computing device, the method comprising: under control of the sharer computing device, receiving input; providing the received input to the application; updating the sharer application display based on the received input; transmitting a copy of the sharer application display to the first viewer computing device and the second viewer computing device; receiving at the sharer computing device first viewer annotation information from the first viewer computing device wherein the first viewer annotation information is not provided as input to the application running on the sharer computing device; preparing at the sharer computing device the received first viewer annotation information for display; combining at the sharer computing device the first viewer annotation information with the sharer application display to create a shared annotated display; receiving at the sharer computing device second viewer annotation information from the second viewer computing device; selectively filtering at the sharer computing device the received first and second annotation information, the filtering based on an identity of the sender of the first and second annotation information; and transmitting the shared annotated display to the first viewer computing device and the second viewer computing device, the shared annotated display including the received first viewer annotation information but not the received second viewer annotation information, so that the first and second viewer computing devices do not display the second viewer annotation information.