• The Second Life Viewer 2.0 Beta has been released:
• http://secondlife.com/beta-viewer/

The viewer povides a new user interface and, importantly for those interested in collaborative systems, "shared media" (tm).  Shared media allows a wide range of web pages, video types (including Flash and YouTube),  movies, etc to be displayed on any face of any primitive in Second Life.  A vast improvement on the previous (Second Life Viewer 1.23 and before) "media texture" that was limited to a single URL for each plot of land in Second Life.

Here are some images of our tests of a range of capabilities of the shared media mechanism involving:

• Google Docs
• Google Wave
• Shared Interactive Whiteboard with display of MS Office, Open Office and PDF content (see **Notes below)
• Adobe Connect with live shared screen display, audio and video feeds
• DimDim Shared Screen, Whiteboard and Video
• Live media streaming (e.g. rtsp feeds)

The demonstration shared media displays are available in the I-Zone@VCE

• http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VCE/114/45/23

**Notes

1. http://www.dabbleboard.com/draw - able to load image formats and pdf, odt, odp, doc, ppt, xls, docx, pplx, xlsx
2. Second Life Viewer 2.0 Shared Media cannot handle all types of web page.  E.g., pages with embedded Java Applets will not function.
3. To ensure that Flash media works correctly in Second Life Viewer 2.0, it is essential that a recent Flash plug-in is available to the underlying rendering engine for web pages used by the Shared Media mechanism - llMozLib (i.e. Mozilla/Firefox).  The plug in cannot be installed in the internal browser on on prims showing shared media directly.  So it must be installed through a separate Firefox browser.
4. Observed but not verified in all contexts: Adobe Connect offers the user a plug-in which can assist in the operation of cameras, audio and is required for acting as the source for sharing screens or windows.  It is likely that if you install this, then Adobe Connect will no longer stay within the windows on the prim within Second Life.  It may launch an external browser and various external windows. This has been observed with other browsers beyond the one within Second Life.  This is unfortunately the case even when using the ?launcher=false parameter on an Adobe Connect URL.

Much more exploration is needed... many tools will be useful as Shared Media in Second Life Viewer 2.0. See some examples at:

• http://webtoolsonaprim.pbworks.com/

Look at this demonstration of the free 3 way Adobe ConnectNow web service running with media sharing, shared whiteboard, web cam, chat, etc...  to connect up to three users (more with the premium versions, 5 and 20 with ConnectNow pro versions, 300 (as on Harmonie Web) or up to 80,000 with Adobe Connnect Pro Servers!) and, in the example image below, sharing the Second Life Viewer and a Webcam/Audio feed... through Adobe ConnectNow... back into Second Life...

To infinity and beyond...

... at the sample meeting space at:

• http://connectnow.acrobat.com/openvce/

Test of streaming into VCE I-Zone of video made by Rob Cross and Paul Padur of University of Virginia to introduce Virtual Collaboration Protocol.