Multimedia Lecture Board (MLB) in the Access Grid

Multimedia Lecture Board (MLB) in the AG

Overview

Multimedia Lecture Board (MLB) is a sophisticated shared whiteboard - a full description is available at the MLB home page. At the time of writing, MLB version 1.1 is available for Linux and Windows environments.

The Access Grid toolkit has a shared event framework which we can use to launch MLB as a Shared Application from inside an AG virtual venue.

This is a work in progress - details below describe a working proof of concept version of an AG Shared Application to start MLB from within an AG venue. Feel free to test it; any feedback is welcome (to: willing at itee.uq.edu.au)

Downloads

MLB for Linux
MLB for Windows

SharedMLB.agpkg

Method

Linux installations have been fairly well tested, Windows much less so.

This method assumes that MLB has been installed in the user's home directory - it may be possible to put it in a better place later.

1. Unpack the Linux download in the user's home directory with the command:
    tar zxvf mlb-1.1.tar.gz
(which creates a directory named mlb, inside which there will be some files and directories)
Notes for Windows users:
    - the downloaded package name is mlb-1.1.zip
    - unpacking may create a different directory name, depending on the unpacking method used. Please change the directory name to mlb

2. Install the SharedMLB.agpkg shared application with the command:
    agpm.py -p SharedMLB.agpkg

When the VenueClient is next started, a new SharedMLB shared application session can be started from in the Venue->Shared Application Session menu.

To join the session, double click the "Shared MLB" item in the Application Sessions node of the VenueClient. What happens when you join a Shared MLB session depends on whether it was you or someone else that created this particular session. Suppose that you created the session as above, then the following control window pops up when you join the session:

Otherwise, a standard session window pops up for anyone else joining the sesssion:

The difference is that whoever created the session has conrol over the session's multicast address; clicking on the "New" button will pop up a multicast address selection tool.

In both cases, clicking on "Start MLB" button will (as the button suggests) start the mlb application itself, using the displayed multicast address. If whoever created the session hasn't joined it yet, then no one else can join it either.

Acknowledgements

Universities of Mannheim and Freiburg for media lecture board
Channa Tang for assistance with Windows installation of SharedMLB

Any comments, suggestions to Chris Willing <c.willing at uq.edu.au>