The SharedDesktop Access Grid shared application listens for other SharedDesktop users to share their desktop via VNC - then offers them to the user. It also allows the user to share their own desktop to the other connected sites. Its use is mostly meant to allow for simple desktop sharing of PDF's, powerpoints, spreadsheets and documents, etc. I've also found that it is extremely useful for helping others tweak/troubleshoot their AG nodes.

Background

In WestGrid, we needed a tool to allow for simple desktop sharing - to facilitate sharing of PDF's, powerpoints, spreadsheets, etc. Since building a shared app for every possible application sounds like a lot of work ;-), I decided to just extend the existing VenueVNC shared application to be slightly easier to use. This software was created by Todd Zimmerman of Simon Fraser University, as part of the WestGrid grid computing project (www.westgrid.ca). For more information on the Collaboration and Visualization efforts of WestGrid visit the WestGrid CV web site at http://www.westgrid.ca/support/collab/collabviz.php

(very) Future Plans

• Add ability to manually set password
• Add ability to save settings as default
• Secure Tunnel of all traffic
• Ability to change geometry, depth etc.
• Ability to only share sections of large multidesktops
• Add support for other vnc servers/clients

Special thanks to the WestGrid AG-Tech team, Andrew Patrick, and Brian Corrie for helping me out with debugging this program. Also, thanks to the Argonne folks including whoever originally coded the venueVNC software (Tom I believe??) which served as a basis for this program.

SharedDesktop is (now as of 0.2.1) released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

If you would rather avoid the GPL, feel free to use a previous release.

Releases