0000000000798190

AUTHOR

Saku Hujala

MADE – A Groupware Application to Support Real-Time Activities of Distributed and Cooperating Communities

Abstract. Distributed work has increased during the last few years. Employees travelling around in different countries still need access to information and must be reachable by their colleagues. A variety of mobile devices have been utilised for this purpose. However, often, when using multiple devices, the information is available to the appropriate device only. Transferring data between the devices is not always an intuitive or easy thing to do – not while conversing at least. This paper presents a groupware application to support real-time actions of distributed communities. The problem of separate devices is addressed by combining multiple tools, media, into a platform independent aggre…

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Collaborative virtual environments in the year of the dragon

Three suggestions are made for extensions from and to CVE's: awareness of others, multiple media, and scalability. Awareness of others and their activities is strongly desirable in all media and applications, not just in CVE's. Multiple media are not seriously catered for in existing CVE's, and a suitable architecture will precede popular applications. CVE's need to be scalable to greater numbers of people, and achieving this also has implications for greater flexibility and reconfigurability. With respect to awareness of others, we argue that the Web and most document handling applications are unaware of others in the workgroup or community, and this limits the ability to support real work…

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Multimedia application to support distance learning and other social interactions in real-time

Supporting social interactions, in distance learning situations for example, with modern technology is very difficult. Generally Internet, networked PC, document handling and communication services and applications are not designed from a multiple user perspective but to support a one-person-one-device (or tool) interaction. This approach creates problems for supporting awareness of, and communication with other people while simultaneously working on documents. Such simultaneous activities have been identified as essential by CSCW and CHI studies, where users are reported to move promiscuously between media and devices, and combine applications and media intuitively, while maintaining aware…

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