central database contains information about previous conference calls in one embodiment the software application is a customized java based application the conferencing system 105 includes a conference bridge or multipoint telephony platform 130 the multipoint telephony platform 130 is coupled to the conference state control platform 124 and to telephone network 132 as illustrated in fig1 for a particular conference call the multipoint telephony platform 130 accepts multiple telephone calls mixes the voices on the calls into an audio signal and forwards the resulting signal to all of the connected lines in one embodiment the multipoint telephony platform 130 includes a conference bridge available from voyant the conferencing system 105 also includes a transcoding platform 128 and a streaming server platform 126 in the illustrated embodiment the transcoding platform 128 is coupled to the conference state control platform 124 and to the telephone network 132 the streaming server platform 126 is coupled to the communication network 120 and to the transcoding platform 128 the transcoding platform 128 includes a plurality of lines to which a call from the multipoint telephony platform 130 can be connected in one embodiment individual participants are connected to the multipoint telephony platform 130 via the telephone network 132 the multipoint telephony platform 130 merges the audio from the participants into a single stream which is forwarded to the transcoding platform 128 as a single call the transcoding platform 128 can handle multiple conference calls from one or more multipoint telephony.