[AG-TECH] Whiteboard for AG

[Christoph Willing]

On 20/11/2004, at 3:54 AM, Derek Piper wrote:

>
> 	Hi,
>
> 	I was wondering if anyone has used the LBNL or UCL whiteboard 
> programs ('wb' or 'wbd' respectively) with AccessGrid sessions. They 
> don't appear to be maintained any more though. Are there any good 
> whiteboard solutions out there for use on the AccessGrid?

Derek,

When we first started doing AG stuff here in Australia, a few sites 
played with MLB (Media Lecture Board). Its really only due to lack of 
demand by users that we haven't perservered. I notice that there was a 
new release for Windows & Linux in May 2004, so perhaps its still a 
viable project. Its at:
     http://www.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/pi4/projects/mlb/


Also (perhaps a bit out of left field), I've been looking at Dave 
Semeraro's Shared Image Viewer at:
     http://cherokee.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~semeraro/Stupid_AG_Tricks/default.htm

Although its meant for sharing views of images, it also has a mark up 
mechanism i.e. anyone in the session can draw on the image and this 
drawing is seen by all the participants. Although the mark up stuff is 
still in very early stages of its development, it strikes me that this 
combination of image viewer and mark up mechanism is really the 
beginning of a whiteboard style of program.

The current Shared Image Viewer is all written in wxPython, so  is 
completely Windows & Linux compatible. Unfortunately the Windows & 
Linux AG 2.3 software releases use different wxPython versions, which 
will affect (badly) most Linux AG users trying the SharedImageViewer. 
There is a Share Image Viewer version which fixes this problem at:
     http://www.ap-accessgrid.org/AG2/siv.html
which I'm hoping will be included in Dave's official release.

chris


Christoph Willing                        Ph: +61 7 3365 8350
QPSF Access Grid Manager
University of Queensland