Mobile support in CSCW applications and groupware development frameworks

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an established subset of the field of Human Computer Interaction that deals with the how people use computing technology to enhance group interaction and collaboration. Mobile CSCW has emerged as a result of the progression from personal desktop computing to the mobile device platforms that are ubiquitous today. CSCW aims to not only connect people and facilitate communication through using computers; it aims to provide conceptual models coupled with technology to manage, mediate, and assist collaborative processes. Mobile CSCW research looks to fulfil these aims through the adoption of mobile technology and consideration for the mobile user. Facilitating collaboration using mobile devices brings new challenges. Some of these challenges are inherent to the nature of the device hardware, while others focus on the understanding of how to engineer software to maximize effectiveness for the end-users. This paper reviews seminal and state-of-the-art cooperative software applications and development frameworks, and their support for mobile devices

Online cooperation learning environment : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

This project aims to create an online cooperation learning environment for students who study the same paper. Firstly, the whole class will be divided into several tutorial peer groups. One tutorial group includes five to seven students. The students can discuss with each other in the same study group, which is assigned by the lecturer. This is achieved via an online cooperation learning environment application (OCLE), which consists of a web based J2EE application and a peer to peer (P2P) java application, cooperative learning tool (CLT). It can reduce web server traffic significantly during online tutorial discussion time

Document annotation and version control for the Internet

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1997.Inverted exclamation point precedes the workd Share in title on t.p.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-53).by Jason Bryce Thomas.M.Eng

Co-operative authoring and collaboration over the World Wide Web : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology in Computer Systems Engineering at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Co-operative authoring and collaboration over the World Wide Web is looking at a future development of the Web. One of the reasons that Berners-Lee created the Web in 1989 was for collaboration and collaborative design. As the Web has limited collaboration at present this thesis looks specifically at co-operative authoring (the actual creation and editing of web pages) and generally at the collaboration surrounding this authoring. The goal of this thesis is to create an engine that is capable of supporting co-operative authoring and collaboration over the Web. In addition it would be a major advantage if the engine were flexible enough to allow the future development of other access methods, especially those that are web related, such as WebDAV, WAP, etc

Integrating Transaction Services into Web-based Software Development Environments

Software Development Environments (SDE) require sophisticated database transaction models due to the long-duration,interactive, and cooperative nature of the software engineering activities. Such Extended Transaction Models (ETM) have been proposed and implemented by building application-specific databases for the SDEs. With the development of World Wide Web (WWW), there have been a number of efforts to build SDEs on top of the WWW. Using web servers as the databases to store the software artifacts provided us with a new challenge: how to implement the ETMs in such web-based SDEs without requiring the web servers to be customized specifically according to the application domains of the SDEs. This paper presents our experiences of integrating transaction services into web based SDEs. We evolved from the traditional approach of building a transaction management component that operated on top of a dedicated database to the external transaction server approach. A transaction server, called JPernLite, was built to operate independently of the web servers and provide the necessary extensibility for SDEs to implement their ETMs. The transaction server can be integrated into the SDE via a number of interfaces, and we discuss the pros and cons of each alternative in detail

Synchronization of PIM in iPhone and evolution implementing a task application based on CouchDB

This thesis has put in evidence several faílures in the existing synchronization systems between the iPhone and Evolution. Most of these problems come from the use of a closed operating mobile system, the iPhone OS, with no many chances to open source solutions. Moreover, the desktop application to syn-chronize belongs to the Linux system, while almost every commercial solution has been thought to work on Windows. So the synchronization of PIM data between these devices has meant a big challenge. First, any device includes an UID and time stamp fields. That makes almost impossible a synchronization system without unnecessary replications and lose of data. Together with this, any of the tested servers are able to manage a "newer wins" policy and merging is not well implemented in the majority of them. Several of the involved protocols only work when a connection is available, as GroupDAV, LDAP, WebDAV with Toodledo or the Evolution plugin for Google. That does not fulfill the basis requirements of a synchronization system, which essence is to let users work omine making the data consistent when coming back online. In order to fix all these lacks, a new synchronization system based on CouchDB is proposed. Taking the task application developed in this thesis as a basis, the same could be made with contacts, calendars and memos (see figure 6.1). In this moment, the UbuntuOne project is oriented in this way. It supports contacts already and tasks will be added as soon as the implementation is completed. Moreover, our own server can be used with this project, not being necessary to store our data in Ubuntu servers. Another improvement for this system would be the development of an iPhone application able to store data locally in order to let us work when a connection is not available. The synchronization with the CouchDB would be made when coming back online, achieving a complete synchronization system. ________________________________________________________________El objetivo de este proyecto fin de carrera es el de conseguir la sincronización de la información personal del usuario entre uno de los teléfonos móviles más vendidos actualmente, el iPhone de Apple, y una de las aplicaciones de escritorio más utilizadas en Linux, Evolution. Habrá que solventar bastantes problemas en el camino debido a que la API (Interfaz de programación de la aplicación, de las siglas en inglés: Application Programming Interface), y los servicios en general ofrecidos por Apple, siguen una política bastante cerrada y restrictiva. Dentro de las soluciones existentes, encontraremos que la sincronización no es posible para las tareas de forma bidireccional, por lo que desarrollaremos nuestro propio gestor de tareas capaz de ser sincronizado entre el iPhone y Evolution. Para ello utilizaremos una nueva base de datos, CouchDB, que será explicada con mayor detalle en las siguientes secciones.Ingeniería de Telecomunicació

Replacing Microsoft’s collaboration software with Open-Source software

Thema der vorliegenden Arbeit ist zu untersuchen ob mittels Verwendung von Open- Source Software (OSS) die Funktionalität von Microsoft’s Software- Kollaborationsprodukten erreicht werden kann. Microsoft Serverprodukte die zu diesem Zweck evaluiert werden sind Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 und Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. Auf der Client-Seite werden das Microsoft Windows Betriebssystem, Microsoft Office 2003 und 2007 sowie weitere, für die Verwendung mit Microsoft’s Serverprodukten bestimmte Applikationen, untersucht. Eine realistische Annahme in dieser Diplomarbeit muss sein, dass nicht notwendigerweise innerhalb eines lokalen Netzwerkes kollaboriert wird sondern über das Internet. Um einen Gesamteindruck über das Thema zu geben werden ebenfalls Punkte wie mobiles Arbeiten oder unzureichender Hardware-Support für Laptop-Computer bei Einsatz von OSS behandelt.The purpose of the thesis at hand is to assess if similar functionality to a Microsoft-only collaboration solution can be achieved using Open-Source software (OSS) on the server as well as on the client. Specifically, the software to be replaced includes Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 on the server side. For the client the list includes the Microsoft Windows operating system as well as Microsoft Office 2003/2007 and any other client software tailored for use with the server software. A realistic assumption in this undertaking has to be that much of the collaboration will be done over the Internet and not necessarily on a local network. To provide a complete overview, topics such as mobile computing or inadequate hardware support for laptops when using OSS will be included as well