World Wide Whiteboard is a Web-based online collaboration and conferencing tool designed for use in online education. It was developed by Link-Systems International (LSI), a privately held distance-learning software corporation in Tampa, Florida. The World Wide Whiteboard went online in 1996, under the name NetTutor, although the LSI NetTutor online tutoring service is technically an implementation of the WorldWideWhiteboard product. Version 3.8 of the WorldWideWhiteboard is in use in the current NetTutor online tutoring service, and in its on-campus online tutoring programs, online courses, and collaborative learning environments, globally. As a Java applet, it can be run on Windows, Mac, and Linux without downloading software. LSI maintains the application and leases both hosted and unhosted access to it. LSI operations, tutoring, product development, online content services, management, and technical support are housed in the company's Tampa offices. History The WorldWideWhiteboard is the first software product developed by Link-Systems International (LSI). LSI was launched in 1995 primarily as a company that converted text-based content like scholarly journals into an SGML format. Incorporated in the State of Florida on February 27, 1996, LSI expanded its mission to the Web-based implementation of a variety of traditionally face-to-face academic activities. The company developed what it called the "Net Tutor" product that included a whiteboard-like interface and, later, a tutoring service that used the whiteboard to conduct online tutoring. For about five years, the software side of this product leased as NetTutor to schools, individual educators, and programs, for example, to conduct online tutoring using tutors provided by the institution, as well as for online instruction and office hours. Eventually, LSI re-christened the interface of the World Wide Whiteboard. The company still owns the NetTutor trademark, which refers to the online tutoring it supplies via the World Wide Whiteboard and using professional tutors it employs. This history seems to justify the company's claim that it was the first to offer commercially a tool for Web access to a shared, real-time environment with such education-oriented features as subject-specific toolbars. The World Wide Whiteboard was also adopted as an option available with certain textbooks by publishers such as McGraw-Hill, John Wiley and Sons, Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Bedford, Freeman and Worth. The use of the World Wide Whiteboard by campuses and educational programs to support online environments, give classes and hold faculty office hours and meetings expanded over the next decade. In 2010, LSI began the development