IBM researchers have developed a system called Catchup, designed to summarize (verbally) in almost real time what has been said at a business meeting so newcomers can quickly catch up.

It identifies the important words and phrases in an automatic speech recognition transcript and edits out the unimportant ones.

To improve the quality of audio conference calls, MIT researchers have developed “Meeting Mediator,” which measures how much time four people in two separate locations participating in an audio conference spend talking. If one of them hogs the conversation, all four see that in graphical form on a screen in front of them.