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We have recently focussed on these projects:
- Sparrow Web
Sparrow Web makes writing to the web as easy as reading from the web! Sparrow Web is a system that
adds structured, in-place editing to community-shared web pages. It allows contributors to add and
modify information on a Sparrow Web page using simple fill-in forms specified by the author/manager
of the Sparrow Web page. Sparrow Web pages are standard web pages, and casual visitors do not have
to be aware of Sparrow Web editing capability. Sparrow Web pages may have any number of different
kinds of Sparrow Web items, interspersed with other HTML content. The Sparrow Web package comes
with sample pages - a set of commonly used templates that can be cloned and used immediately - and
with a complete authors manual for creating new Sparrow Web pages. Sparrow Web also has security
features, that make it easy to set permissions for authoring and managing Sparrow Web pages.
- Niagara
Information flows in knowledge work. From the perspective of information
retrieval, information flows to a person from outside sources. If
information flows faster than we can handle it, we can become overwhelmed by
"information overload." But information coming to us from outside is only
half of the picture. We can also be overwhelmed by the flow of information
from within us. When we are brainstorming or working intensely, we
experience being "in the flow" in our streams of thought. Sometimes,
however, ideas can bubble up in our minds faster than we can write them down
or organize them. Our most important task when generating ideas is to get
the ideas recorded into the external memory before they are forgotten.
During bursts of intense information work, user interfaces that divert too
much of our attention to organizing or correcting representations of our
thoughts can take us out of the flow. When we wake up from the distractions
we wonder, "what did I just forget?" or "where was I?" Niagara is a tool
that is intended to help users to stay in the flow while developing ideas in
a 2.5 dimensional workspace.
- UbiText (in collaboration with SPIA)
- ProductSense (no external information yet available)
In the past, we have worked on these projects:
- Inter-Language Unification
The Inter-Language Unification system (ILU) is a multi-language
object interface system. The object interfaces provided by ILU hide
implementation distinctions between different languages, between
different address spaces, and between operating system types. ILU can
be used to build multi-lingual object-oriented libraries ("class
libraries") with well-specified language-independent interfaces. It can
also be used to implement distributed systems. It can also be used to
define and document interfaces between the modules of non-distributed
programs.
- MailContent
Email has become a major focus of people's working lives,
serving as a primary source of information and and medium for
collaboration. However, email volumes are a serious problem.
The inbox aspect of this problem is well recognized.
Less recognized is the fact that these same volumes have built
huge archived discussion lists, both public and private. While these
archives constitute important new information sources, their size
strongly limits their utility.
The MailContent project has the general goal of
facilitating human email processing by assisting readers of message
collections to obtain a good picture of collection content,
to select threads of interest, and to read those threads efficiently.
The primary current result is an integrated, browser-based environment
for exploring an email archive. It contains overview facilities for
discussion lists as a whole, and new visualizations for
threads. These visualizations, described in a recent
paper provide useful overviews
of thread structure and content, and serve as guides to more detailed
displays allowing efficient, play-like reading of entire threads or
subthreads.
A secondary result is a prototype inbox application providing displays that
vary the amount of detail provided for individual message categories
based on user view specifications.
- Focus + Context Screens
Sensemaking situations typically require users to view a large amount
of information at the same time in order to perform "visual
sensemaking", i.e. to discover structure in the shown corpus of
information. In order to support this type of analysis, we developed
focus plus context screens. Focus plus context screens are wall-size
low-resolution displays with an embedded high-resolution display
region. They are used to display a single large document across the
entire hybrid screen, such that the scaling of document content is
preserved, while its resolution varies. Focus plus context screens
allow sensemakers to perceive context information simultaneously via
peripheral vision while working on a given task in the focus region,
thereby fostering the sensemakers orientation and capability to detect
structure by using peripheral vision.
- Fluid Documents
Fluid Documents uses lightweight interactive animation
to incorporate annotations in their context. Our approach initially uses the space on a page for primary information,
indicating the presence of supporting material with small visual cues. When a user expresses interest in a cue, its
annotation gradually expands nearby. Meanwhile, the surrounding information alters its typography and/or layout to
create the needed visual space.
- Documents.com (no external information yet available)
- HTTP-NG
The PARC HTTP-NG project aimed at developing a proof-of-concept of a binary
distributed object protocol, for use with the Web, which was (1)
optimized for Internet use; (2) at least as efficient as HTTP 1.1 for
World Wide Web use; and (3) also provided direct support for remote
service invocation models such as DCOM or CORBA. We believe encoded
and unwieldy forms of such invocations are a sizable fraction of Web
traffic and that users of the Web and builders of distributed
systems would benefit from having one
consistent system, rather than trying to cope with many different ones
simultaneously.
- Toolglass™ and Magic Lens™: See-through Interfaces
This project focuses on a new style of graphical user interface, called the
see-through interface. The see-through interface includes
semi-transparent interactive tools, called Toolglass™ widgets, that
are used in an application work area. They appear on a virtual sheet
of transparent glass, called a Toolglass sheet, between the
application and a traditional cursor. These widgets may provide a
customized view of the application underneath them, using viewing
filters called Magic Lens™ filters. Each lens is a screen region
together with an operator, such as "magnification" or "render in
wireframe," performed on objects viewed in the region. The user
positions a Toolglass sheet over desired objects and then points
through the widgets and lenses. These tools create spatial modes that
can replace temporal modes in user interface systems.
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