Context Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner

The purpose of this paper is to do a research on context awareness concept in instant messaging applications. The widely used instant messaging systems usually incorporate the same context awareness function that displays the current status of other users. There are many prototypes of context aware instant messenger program that already being developed and being tested in order to ensure the applications are able to display the users' status in a more reliable and accurate manner. However, the availability indicators provided by instant messenger only useful for users who are planning to have communication with other users. This kind of context aware does not help users to use the instant messaging systems for another purpose such as to schedule an appointment with one of their contact list. By realizing this issue, the design of a Context-Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner system is proposed to cater the problems. The solution application is designed for all computer users especially for the staffs in organizations and universities students which will enable them to do any appointment through instant messaging system. Throughout this document, the existing prototype of instant messaging systems is discussed regarding their context awareness concept and at the same time is compared to identifY their strong and weaknesses. From the finding of the research, new project plan is discussed in order to develop a new brand prototype of instant messaging application starting from planning, analysis, design, prototype development until prototype system testing. Prototyping methodology is chosen for the development of this application because of the time constraint. There are three prototypes with different level of functionality has been produced by this project to exhibit the scheduling planner function. Based on the research done, the Context-Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner system was found to transcend current instant messaging products by having new feature which enable the users to schedule any event with their contact list

Context Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner

The purpose of this paper is to do a research on context awareness concept in instant messaging applications. The widely used instant messaging systems usually incorporate the same context awareness function that displays the current status of other users. There are many prototypes of context aware instant messenger program that already being developed and being tested in order to ensure the applications are able to display the users' status in a more reliable and accurate manner. However, the availability indicators provided by instant messenger only useful for users who are planning to have communication with other users. This kind of context aware does not help users to use the instant messaging systems for another purpose such as to schedule an appointment with one of their contact list. By realizing this issue, the design of a Context-Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner system is proposed to cater the problems. The solution application is designed for all computer users especially for the staffs in organizations and universities students which will enable them to do any appointment through instant messaging system. Throughout this document, the existing prototype of instant messaging systems is discussed regarding their context awareness concept and at the same time is compared to identifY their strong and weaknesses. From the finding of the research, new project plan is discussed in order to develop a new brand prototype of instant messaging application starting from planning, analysis, design, prototype development until prototype system testing. Prototyping methodology is chosen for the development of this application because of the time constraint. There are three prototypes with different level of functionality has been produced by this project to exhibit the scheduling planner function. Based on the research done, the Context-Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner system was found to transcend current instant messaging products by having new feature which enable the users to schedule any event with their contact list

Context Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner

The purpose of this paper is to do a research on context awareness concept in instant messaging applications. The widely used instant messaging systems usually incorporate the same context awareness function that displays the current status of other users. There are many prototypes of context aware instant messenger program that already being developed and being tested in order to ensure the applications are able to display the users' status in a more reliable and accurate manner. However, the availability indicators provided by instant messenger only useful for users who are planning to have communication with other users. This kind of context aware does not help users to use the instant messaging systems for another purpose such as to schedule an appointment with one of their contact list. By realizing this issue, the design of a Context-Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner system is proposed to cater the problems. The solution application is designed for all computer users especially for the staffs in organizations and universities students which will enable them to do any appointment through instant messaging system. Throughout this document, the existing prototype of instant messaging systems is discussed regarding their context awareness concept and at the same time is compared to identifY their strong and weaknesses. From the finding of the research, new project plan is discussed in order to develop a new brand prototype of instant messaging application starting from planning, analysis, design, prototype development until prototype system testing. Prototyping methodology is chosen for the development of this application because of the time constraint. There are three prototypes with different level of functionality has been produced by this project to exhibit the scheduling planner function. Based on the research done, the Context-Aware Instant Messenger with Integrated Scheduling Planner system was found to transcend current instant messaging products by having new feature which enable the users to schedule any event with their contact list

Integrating Topic-centric Thread-based Organized Chat into Web-based Enterprise Instant Messengers

US

Using Unified Personal Information in Workspaces

Knowledge workers (KWers) deal with personal information and use tools like, e.g., desktop workspaces to support their work. But KWer support is hindered by personal information fragmentation, i.e., applications keep a set of personal information while not interconnecting it. This thesis addresses this in the domains personal task management and meeting management by using a common unified personal information model as offered by the semantic desktop personal information management (PIM) system

Design da interação na Web pragmática : reduzindo barreiras semióticas na colaboração mediada pela Web

Orientador: Maria Cecília Calani BaranauskasTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Web e suas tecnologias de base facilitam interações entre pessoas que alguns anos atrás não eram imagináveis. A colaboração é um tipo importante de interação que tem um propósito. Pessoas de diferentes contextos sociais e culturais, e com diferentes preferências e habilidades, podem colaborar mediadas pela Web. A colaboração muitas vezes acontece em contextos heterogêneos, que são definidos tanto pelas situações atuais dos parceiros na colaboração, quanto pelas experiências passadas, sejam elas individuais ou coletivas. A Web como um meio/uma mídia tem um impacto na colaboração e facilita certos aspectos da colaboração enquanto dificulta outros. Adotando uma perspectiva informada pela Web Pragmática, nesta tese investigamos questões da colaboração mediada pela Web, relacionadas com o Design da Interação. Nosso objetivo principal é entender barreiras semióticas da colaboração mediada pela Web e propor uma abordagem ao Design da Interação que reduza tais barreiras. Barreiras semióticas são barreiras relacionadas à comunicação, mediação e representação. Estas barreiras surgem na colaboração mediada pela Web pois muitos mecanismos da comunicação interpessoal face-a-face não estão disponíveis. Dependendo do contexto, barreiras semióticas frequentemente exercem um impacto negativo à colaboração; entretanto, em alguns casos o impacto pode ser positivo também. A abordagem ao Design da Interação aqui proposta tem suas bases na Web Pragmática e utiliza a Semiótica Organizacional e a Teoria da Atividade como referenciais teórico-metodológicos. As investigações teóricas contaram com uma contrapartida em termos de um embasamento em práticas reais através da participação em um projeto de pesquisa no domínio da educação inclusiva. Materializamos a abordagem proposta no design de um protótipo e na implementação de uma ferramenta correspondente ao protótipo, que apoia uma prática de profissionais no domínio da educação inclusiva. Além disso, propusemos e conduzimos um método de avaliação guiada pela pragmática dentro do contexto de um estudo de caso longitudinal. O design do protótipo, a implementação da ferramenta e a avaliação conduzida fornecem evidências de que a abordagem proposta ao Design da Interação guiada pela pragmática contribui para a redução de barreiras semióticas e para a promoção da colaboração mediada pela WebAbstract: The Web and its underlying technologies enable interactions among people that were unimaginable a few years ago. An important type of purposeful interaction is collaboration. Mediated by the Web, people from different social and cultural backgrounds, with different needs, preferences and capabilities can collaborate with each other. Collaboration often takes place in heterogeneous contexts that are not only defined by the actual situations of the collaboration partners, but also by individual and collective past experiences. The Web as a medium has an impact on collaboration and facilitates or enables certain aspects of collaboration while making others more difficult. In this PhD thesis we investigate Interaction Design related questions about web-mediated collaboration under a Pragmatic Web perspective. Our prime objective is to understand semiotic barriers to web-mediated collaboration and propose an approach to Interaction Design that reduces these barriers. Semiotic barriers are barriers related to communication, mediation and representation. These barriers emerge during web-based collaboration since many mechanisms of interpersonal face-to-face communication are not available. Depending on the context, semiotic barriers often have a negative impact on collaboration, but in some cases they might also have positive effects. The approach to Interaction Design proposed in this PhD thesis is rooted in the Pragmatic Web and uses Organizational Semiotics and Activity Theory as its theoretical and methodological frames of reference. The theoretic investigations were practically grounded in real world practices by participating in a research project in the domain of inclusive education. We materialized the proposed approach in the design of a prototype and the implementation of the corresponding tool that supports a practice of inclusive education professionals. Furthermore we proposed and applied a pragmatics-driven evaluation method in a longitudinal case study. Prototype design, tool implementation, and the conducted evaluation provided evidence that the proposed approach to pragmatics-driven Interaction Design can reduce semiotic barriers and thus promote web-mediated collaborationDoutoradoCiência da ComputaçãoDoutor em Ciência da Computaçã

Sharing our digital aura through social and physical proximity

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-160).People are quite good at establishing a social style and using it in different communications contexts, but they do less well when the communication is mediated by computer networks. It is hard to control what information is revealed and how one's digital persona will be presented or interpreted. In this thesis, we ameliorate this problem by creating a "Virtual Private Milieu", a "VPM", that allows networked devices to act on our behalf and project a "digital aura" to other people and devices around us in a manner analogous to the way humans naturally interact with one another. The dynamic aggregation of the different auras and facets that the devices expose to one another creates social spheres of interaction between sets of active devices, and consequently between people. We focus on the subset of networking that deals with proximate communication, which we dub Face-to-Face Networking (FtFN). Network interaction in this space is often analogous to human face-to-face interaction, and increasingly, our devices are being used in local situations. We describe a VPM framework, key features of which include the incorporation of trust and context parameters into the discovery and communication process, incorporation of multiple contextunique identities, and also the support for multiple degrees of security and privacy. We also present the "Social Dashboard", a readily usable control for one's aura. Finally, we review "Comm.unity", a software package that allows developers and researchers easy implementation and deployment of local and distant social applications, and present two applications developed over this platform.Nadav Aharony.S.M

The Impact of internet social networking websites on the gay community: Behavior and identity

The hypothesis of this thesis is that social networking website design can exert a mediating influence upon the culture of a site by supporting certain behaviors more than others; this influence can be analyzed in an active and structured way that takes into account the culture of the community it addresses. Evidence will be offered by case study, demonstration of specific mediations, and analysis. This hypothesis will be tested with specific reference to the gay male community. The scope of this paper will be limited to the analysis of gay-oriented social networking websites as new media, in general and through specific examples. I will present frameworks for categorizing and analyzing these websites that consider the mediating influences associated with site design. In the last chapter, I will propose community-enhancing design. The method of analysis first takes into account the nature of new media. It then discusses the concepts of cultural mediums and mediators in terms of site-wide typology and specific forms of mediation. It then identifies common elements of gay social networking sites and their associated usage as well as the design decisions that are related to them. Next user goals and site goals are correlated to these design decisions. Virtual personas and real communities are discusses as a concept. Using the proposed methodology, gay.com and other sites are analyzed and compared. Conclusions are drawn from the results of this analysis and evidence presented. The impact of social networking websites upon sexual activity is discussed. Finally, conclusions are summarized and recommendations are cited related to what these sites could be