A new open-source software toolkit is available Tuesday to improve remote online scientific collaboration via grid computing. The Access Grid Toolkit from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory enables development of programs to share video, audio, data and text for real-time collaboration between people at different locations around the world.

The technology makes it possible for doctors to diagnose a patient thousands of miles away, students to learn a lesson from an instructor or researchers to collaborate on a project remotely. This is the third version of the toolkit, supporting wall-sized display technology, detailed visualization of simulations, a streamlined user interface and other improvements. Since first being offered, the toolkit has been downloaded more than 20,000 times in 56 countries. Access Grid is written in the Python programming language and features more "robust middleware" than the previous version, making it easier for software developers to write applications to run on Access Grid, said Thomas Uram, technical lead for the Access Grid effort with the Futures Laboratory at Argonne.

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