The good news is that the grid I'm on is upgrading its OpenSim version. The not-so-good news is that it still will not have shared media. The latter has been available for some time but is only just making its way into the next stable release as I write and grid managers will doubtless want to see what, if any, issues it raises before implementing.
Of course, we are not without web options anyway. In addition to firing up the internal or external web browser, we still have web pages from parcel media. However, these are largely non-interactive unless you use Imprudence Experimental in which case you are limited to the URL set by the owner (I failed thus far in attempts to change it via scripting).
On the other hand OpenSim does allow you to do two things that SL doesn't (at least not easily): write text on a prim (other than via shared and parcel media) and save text to a notecard. These are managed in OpenSim via OSSL commands, a supplementary set of functions that can be admixed with standard LSL scripts (OSSL stands for Open Sim Scripting Language).
I decided that I should have a Library space on the new sim and returned to an old aspiration, namely to have some kind of inworld PubMed search. The picture shows a simple application that retrieves newly entered PubMed records containing the word "tuberculosis". As a result of the search, the source and title are entered dynamically on the display prims. If you touch the righthand side of the prim, it is highlighted and if you touch the other side the relevant PubMed web page is fired up in the internal browser. Of course, the search could be extended to other topics/strategies though the display is currently limited to 50 references so it isn't going to supplant existing approaches any time soon.
References displayed in the prims can be collated by touching the reporter prim. There is also an option to address only highlighted prims and also to delete those that are not highlighted. The avatar receives a report notecard listing the references (just the pubmed ids at the moment). What remains undone at present is to use the same notecard subsequently to redisplay the references again inworld. The notecard also has a rather unhelpful autogenerated name.
Given the paramount importance of search these days, I'm not sure the application has merit beyond providing students and myself with a way to generate reference prims for use elsewhere on the sim. Yes, there is the shared presence aspect but for a small group something like join.me gives you that just as readily and with less by way of usability issues. Incidentally, join.me also works with OpenSim and SL and is a great way of showing students your edit view and vice versa. Perhaps if the situation was less hierachical, with more going on in parallel, the inworld search might be useful. Anyway, it does nicely illustrate a couple of OSSL functions that go some way to compensating for the current lack of shared media web pages and I anticipate using them a lot in the future.
