Congratulations to the winners of developers Application Contest
who won a Microsoft-donated XBox Game System:

Brian Corrie
Sangwoo Han
Darran Edmundson
Jennie File
David Cox

ABC shared radiology/volume rendering (pdf)
Michael Papka, Argonne National Laboratory

This application is a content-rich, highly interactive shared visualization tool that presents features of standard medical visualization tools. This is combined with the Access Grid (AG), to enable collaborative manipulation of radiological data and multimodal communication simultaneously on commodity off-the-shelf clients. The AG framework effectively integrates audio and video feedback between participating clients with the system. No highly specialized graphics hardware is required by any of the clients.

LUNCH

Aspen: Bringing Ubiquitous Multicast to all Access Grid users (pdf)
Andrew Swan, The University of California, Berkeley

We have developed a system called Aspen that builds upon the ideas of ALM by using unicast to reach endpoints that do not have network-level multicast available. Unlike other ALM schemes, Aspen uses network-level multicast (both ASM and SSM) where it is available, so participants that have network-level multicast available need not sacrifice efficiency unnecessarily. In contrast to QuickBridge, Aspen does not require a separate “bridge” process to be configured and maintained — instead any other participant in the session can forward data to an interested endpoint that does not have network-level multicast available.

Using AG in an International Project - HPC Europa (pdf)
Adam Carter, The University of Edinburgh

HPC-Europa is a large, Europe-wide project which aims to facilitate access to High Performance Computing infrastructure for European researchers. Access Grid was chosen at the outset to be the principal means by which remote collaboration between the sites in the consortium would be undertaken. This talk will discuss the ways in which Access Grid has been used and will discuss both the advantages that it has brought to the project and some of the challenges that have been faced in using the technology.

Panel: Engaging Emerging Communities in Access Grid (slides) (paper)
Alson Been, Bethune Cookman College; Sue Brown, University of Hawaii; Stephenie McLean, NCSA; Julia Mullen, Worcester Poltechnic Institute; Michael Miller, NCSA; Jennifer Teig von Hoffman, Boston University; Maria Williams, University of New Mexico

As new technologies are deployed to emerging communities, innovative models for training, executive awareness, and technical support can and must be developed. Towards that end, a series of visits and workshops were held in fall 2004 and winter 2005 by members of the Minority Serving Institutions Consortium (MSIC). Panelists will present the models developed, and discuss both successes and lessons learned. Examples of innovative AG use at MSIC member sites will also be discussed.

Partner Perspectives
Jim Miller, inSORS (pdf); Patrick Bristow, Microsoft Research (pdf); Kazuyuki Shudo, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (pdf)

(2.00 - 2.20) inSORS AG software has gone under extensive enhancements over the past few years. However, inSORS has remained consistent in its efforts to remain interoperability with versions of the Access Grid. Jim Miller of inSORS will provide information on current interoperability. Jim will also discuss future development strategies to make the interoperability more seamless with the current AG version and future versions. Mr. Miller will briefly identify inSORS upcoming AG related activities including SIGGRAPH 2005, SC Global 2005 and SC Desktop.

(2.20-2.40) ConferenceXP has seen a busy year, with the release of two new services - Archive Service and Reflector Service, the 3.0 and 3.1 releases of the ConferenceXP Client, and jump-starting a four-way distance learning graduate course. Patrick Bristow will describe the highlights and lowlights of these experiences, including a discussion of the ease and impact of holding a four-way course across the Internet2. Finally, he will take a brief look at their aspirations for the upcoming year.

(2.40-3.00) A private company Utagoe has been developing a communication software Cafenet with support from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. The software was inspired and derived from the Access Grid Toolkit and related activities.

The AccessFabrik Project (pdf)
Ron Rankine, Ryerson University

The AccessFabrik project is being launched to explore the fusing of Semantic Web Services with the Access Grid, with a particular focus on facilitating collaborative engineering design. Partners include 3D software suppliers, automotive manufacturers as well as parts suppliers located in Toronto, Canada as well as Stuttgart, Germany. Ryerson University has built a 3-projector 4-camera Access Grid Node equipped with High Definition projection and 7.1-surround sound. In conjunction with its partners work is underway to build a new “Semantic Services Broker” (SSB) to interface with a UDDI directory of appropriate web services. The intent is for the Semantic Services Broker to facilitate an engineering design collaboration conference between, for example, Canada and Germany.

Panel: Collaborative Education (pdf)
John Quebedeaux, Louisiana State University; Cindy Sievers, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Julia Mullens, Worcester Polytechnic Institiute; Paul Mercer, ARSC; Michael Daw, University of Manchester; Mike McMahon, University of Reno, and Monika Rabarison, Jackson State University

As AG technology matures it has moved beyond the research labs into institutions whose primary mission is teaching and education.Though many of these institutions are familiar with video conferencing technologies for distance learning, and have a great deal of expertise in the human factors of engineering, the Access Grid is new an unknown to them. This presentation is designed as an overview of current educational activities on the Access Grid, prior to the case studies to be presented by other panel members.