Updating freeTribe to Support Efficient Synchronous Awareness in the Web Context

Abstract: The research field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work has been reflected fundamentally in theoretical contributions. This contributions have constitute the base to carry out several intents to facilitate the work of the collaborative systems developers, however, current tool-kits, APIs or class libraries only eliminate partially the gap between the technical aspects that impose the information technology and the stressed social character of the process of collaboration in the World Wide Web. In this paper is presented the framework freeTribe, which involve the domain of the distributed groupwares leaning on the Cooperative Model of the methodology AMENITIES, in the middleware platform ICE and in RIA technologies; freeTribe has been designed as a software framework, to maximize its reusability and adaptability with a minimal programming effort. Support for synchronous group tasks in the Web context is increasingly recognized as a desideratum for collaborative systems and several tools have emerged recently that help groups of people with the same goals to work together, but many issues for these collaborative systems remain under studied. We identified synchronous awareness as one of these issues in collaborative systems, and updated freeTribe with four well-accepted kinds of awareness (group awareness, workspace awareness, contextual awareness, and peripheral awareness) by the community focusing our interest in its synchronous mechanism for efficient interaction in Web contexts.Keywords: computer-supported cooperative work, groupware, synchronous awareness.

Combining Web 2.0 and Web Services in Collaborative Working Environments

Collaborative applications offer significant benefits in business sector. Usually, team members need to use several systems to carry out their tasks. What these users need is an environment which permits them to carry out these tasks automatically, considering the flow of information between the different systems and offering interoperability and composition features. Nowadays, Web Services have gained their prominence in providing these both features. On the other hand, the use of Web 2.0 allows to create web applications in which the user constitutes a key element. What we propose in this paper is the combination of both approaches for creating a Collaborative Working Environment (CWE)

Evaluasi Heuristik Aplikasi Open Source Groupware Sebagai Solusi Praktis e-Government

Tulisan ini bertujuan memaparkan evaluasi heuristik terhadap empat aplikasi open source Groupware berdasarkan sepuluh prinsip heuristik Nielsen. Groupware sebagai Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) sangat dibutuhkan untuk mendukung e-Government mengingat tuntutan era globalisasi menuju transformasi knowledge-based organization. Hasil perbandingan akan digunakan sebagai acuan dalam tahap lanjutan yaitu pembuatan paket aplikasi Groupware siap instal yang terintegrasi pada server berbasis linux. Hasil dari penelitian ini adalah kesimpulan mengenai aplikasi Groupware yang paling sesuai dengan kebutuhan pengguna berdasarkanperbandingan usability heuristic Nielsen

Web collaboration for software engineering

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Accommodation Service System

This paper is about a study of developing an Accommodation Service System (ACMSS) - a kind of Web-based application. The scope of this project will be the reservation processes and managing the hotel rooms via ACMSS that can be access through online. These include creation of necessary database for hoteliers and hotel customer/guest as well as user interface in building the application and its implementation. This system is created specially for certain hotels. Development tools being used are Apache, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, and Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. The intended users for this system are hotel customers/guest, and hoteliers such as front desk clerk/receptionist or the hotel management staff. Further research on human-computer interaction (HCI) and the advantages of Web-base application were carried out. Also covered in this report is the current problems that encountered by most of the hoteliers with their existing system. Prototype was chosen as a methodology model that will be applied in the development of such system. Study shows that, Web-based application have several advantages over their more traditional downloadable software programs thus it promote to replace it. As for the results and discussions, questionnaires were distributed and the findings were delegated to separate segments; hotel customers and the front desk. From the result and findings, it shows that the necessary of having Web-based system that can be accessed through online/Internet together with a good user-friendly interface are very encouraging. Thus, it derived the motivation to get involve and developed such application for the sake of the system users

Integration of Configurable Dynamic Notification System with CSIBER Website

In this digital era every academic institution and commercial setup investments enormously in hosting and maintenance of the website which plays a critical role in the success of an organization by making it reachable across wide geographical area at any time. A carefully designed website reflects institute’s best assets and delivers tremendous first-hand information to any user at any time irrespective of his/her geographical location. To stay in market there is a constant requirement for changing the look and feel and content of the website and incorporating dynamism into the website. It is inevitable to keep the website constantly updated since it is accessible to the public. As the new website data pertaining to event information, notification etc is constantly generated and old data soon becomes obsolete, it demands for continuous manual efforts from the human resource to keep the dynamically changing data current and up-to-date. It can save tremendous amount of human effort and time, if such a task is automated which in turn enables meaningful data to be displayed on the website with very little human intervention. To facilitate this new technologies such as jQuery, JSON, angular JS etc. are emerging continuously to name a few. In the current paper, the author has proposed an algorithm for the integration of dynamic notification system with existing website of CSIBER. The algorithm is implemented in PHP and MySQL and hosted on web server employing the web hosting service availed by the organization. The dynamic module is scheduled to be executed periodically on a daily basic by the Cron utility and server-side include is dynamically created and embedded in home page. Every month’s events can be scheduled and stored in the backend database which is parsed by dynamic module and the required data is accordingly generated. As a measure towards efficiency improvement, the tool is executed once per day instead of executing it for every user request. Two options are proposed for integration, one on client-side and the second one on the server-side. The dialog displaying the notification data is rendered mobile friendly and is subject to Google’s mobile friendly test

Groupware design and implementation

I have designed and implemented an application for collaborative work and socializing for the design group at the Institute for Informatics (IFI) at the University of Oslo (UIO) and this thesis will present the results of my particular design and the accompanying design process. The thesis was written to find out how to improve collaboration and socialization with design group by undertaking a groupware development project. The process followed software engineering procedures, and my approach was user oriented, favoring user collaboration and progress measured in features produced. The users work patterns and the environment was studied and technologies were researched to see how the project could be solved. Existing groupware solutions were also considered. An initial prototype was implemented and evaluated, but did not catch the interest of the users, even though the group wanted the project to happen and was enthusiastic about it. After developing another prototype evolving the features of the first one into features that were usable, more work was put into user-developer interaction analysis. The design process did not go as expected, with the users reluctant to commit to the project and provide necessary feedback. This behavior common as many software projects do fail. The thesis then explores the reasons why this behavior occur and I argue concrete actions that must take place with the design group to create a creative working environment for the people there and future students. Initiatives to increase user awareness and group identity along with a systematic approach to support software engineering are recommended