Microsoft SharedView (fka "Tahiti") Beta Download Available

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft SharedView Beta

"Overview

More effective meetings and phone calls
Connect with up to 15 people in different locations and get your point across by showing them what's on your screen.

Work together in real time
Share, review, and update documents with multiple people in real time.

Use anytime, anywhere
SharedView is easy to use, from anywhere, at a moment's notice.

Click here to learn more about the SharedView Beta." [Description Leached in Full]

I like the promise/idea. I work remotely/out of the office much of my time and I see how this could really help me.

I do think it's pretty funny that the "Business" SKU's for Vista are not listed as supported (Vista Home Premium and Ultimate are the only listed supported Vista versions). Personally I think there's more draw for business related usage than anything. Think about meetings, training sessions, presentations, conference calls, etc.

In any case, I think this is one beta I'm going to give a go (I reached a beta burnout plateau during the Vista/Office 2007 period...but this looks cool enough to try out sooner than later...).

(via All About Microsoft (Mary Jo Foley) Microsoft rebrands Tahiti collaboration service as ‘Shared View’)

 

Update #1 5/10/2007 @ 1:25PM (PDT):

Okay I have to say this beta is pretty darn smooth...

Installed on Vista Ultimate, XP and Win2k3 with no problems. Creating a session is drop dead easy as is joining an existing one. No firewall, VPN, etc issues. Inside the corporate network to external, external to internal, etc, etc, was all very very smooth and easy.

It's not the fastest remote app sharing method, but it easily gets the job done.

The one thing that I'd like to be able to do is have an option to turn off the advertising. I accept that the advertising is what's paying for the app and backend services. Nothing is free...but still I hope there's some method/service/subscription/etc that will allow SharedView to run without ad's.

Also I REALLY want an SDK/API for this. Given that it runs on XP and later, I would like to build/connect this into my app's... (think something like the Windows Desktop Sharing API but for XP and later).

Now to see if I can "encourage" it's usage with people at work... ;)