Abstract: [This paper] explores the importance of designing shared browsing user interfaces to support sociability. In particular, several shared browsing interfaces were empirically tested for the extent to which they helped people achieve a sense of shared understanding--or common ground--while surfing the web. We found a) that people generally preferred a shared browser to an unshared browser when shopping online together, and b) that user interface features that enhanced common ground had a greater impact on enjoyment than did features affecting ease of use or functionality. These results suggest that web designers need to take into account supporting sociability when considering the tradeoffs in their user interface designs.

Supporting Sociability in a Shared Browser [PDF]

"large-scale models of revolutionary information systems"

The very fabric of life in the next millennium will be dependent on the effective utility of new communications media ... [T]o prosper, [we need] revolutionary network information systems which can be deployed into mass infrastructure. ... The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ... CANIS carries out large-scale experiments on network information systems, which can serve as effective models for predicting the world of the electronic future. The motto of CANIS is Social Revolution through Information Technology. The primary activity of CANIS is the design of new network information systems and analysis of their deployment in model user communities.

... The Interspace Research Project is developing a prototype environment for semantic indexing of multimedia information in a testbed of real collections. The semantic indexing relies on statistical clustering for concepts and categories. Interactive navigation based on semantic indexing enables information retrieval at a deeper level than previously possible for large, diverse collections.

CANIS: Community Architectures for Network Information Systems

Blogdex has informally announced a new feature called the "social network explorer." The URL format is like this:

http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/socnet/index.asp?ego=domain.tld

where domain.tld is the site you want to know about (such as memestreams.net, which probably isn't in the blogdex database).

It displays your selected site in the top 3/4 of the screen. The bottom 1/4 is split into three frames containing relationships for the selected site: "linked to", "friends", and "links to". The "friends" panel is the interesting one ... the others are just simple SELECT queries on the database. Check it out, recalling that the authors say it's still in testing.

blogdex social network explorer

Based on data reported by international news organizations, this page presents a network map of terrorists involved in the 11 September attacks. It is a sample of the output produced by InFlow, a software program for network mapping and social network analysis. For another sample, see the "Internet Industry Map of Partnerships and Alliances" at

http://www.orgnet.com/netindustry.html

Social Network Analysis of Terrorist Networks

Onion Networks, of St. Paul, MN, provides software and services for ad-hoc peer-to-peer content delivery networks. They freely provide a Java Forward Error Correction (FEC) library in support of IETF standards work. These are the technical people who designed the SwarmCast system for OpenCola.

Onion Networks

MemeStreamers in the SF Bay Area may be interested in this upcoming conference. Deadline for submission of papers is 1 Jan 2002. The Program Committee includes Jamie Zawinski, Bram Cohen, Iag Grigg, and others.

"CodeCon 2002, scheduled for February 15, 16, and 17 in San Francisco, California, is the premier event in 2002 for the P2P, cypherpunk, and network/security application developer community. It is a workshop for developers of real-world applications that support individual liberties."

CodeCon 2002

Included below are a few excerpts from the November 20 newslog entry at Blogdex. Thus far, Blogdex's content has been highly predictible, but these improvements could change things.

crawling upgrade: the crawler is currently being optimized, so that within a few weeks we hope to have up to the hour statistics on weblogs. we've realized that daily is not good enough, and that prediction will have to be a much bigger part of our crawl scheduling.

social network: for the past month we've been developing and testing a new sort of view of the weblog community based on the social network. i can't say exactly what kind of interface we plan to put on it (since we haven't thought of it yet), but i can say that it's very interesting data. something that has come up often: the weblog community has 5.818 degrees of separation, based on current information. more to come.. soon..

blogdex is slowly improving

"Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are a pressing problem on the Internet as demonstrated by recent attacks on major e-commerce servers and ISPs. Since their threat lies in the inherited weaknesses of the TCP/IP, an effective solution to DDoS attacks must be formulated in conjunction with a new networking paradigm, such as Active Networks. In this paper, we introduce a conceptual framework called Aegis, which we propose as a defense mechanism against DDoS attacks."

An Active-Network-Powered Defense Mechanism against DDoS Attacks

This company (probably just a few people) is located in 415 ... one of the principals is Fen Fabalme. Anyone in SF know him?

Broadcatch Technologies is a software and consulting venture that encompasses a wide range of products and services built upon the secure, open source reputation servers provided by the OpenPrivacy platform. These services - which are designed to enhance web access while protecting personal privacy - include:

* infomediary agents that capitalize on the anonymous digital marketplace by streamlining marketer access to interested and qualified customers
* personalized portal and community building systems
* pseudonymous publishing and reputation capital accrual
* inter- and intra-community persona, profile and reputation management
* anonymous verification and authentication facilities
* OpenPrivacy systems support and consulting services

Broadcatch Technologies

"Most collaboration software is not used as fully as it might be because it lacks a natural interface, and if collaboration tools are ever to be crucial business applications, vendors must improve the way users interact with them, said Ray Ozzie, founder of peer-to-peer technology vendor Groove Networks."

'Collaboration tools must be natural', says Ray Ozzie