Jiri Komzak

Collaboration in the Semantic Grid: A Basis for e-Learning

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for the Semantic Grid. This paper presents an overview of the hypertext and knowledge-based tools that have been deployed to augment exiting collaborative environments, and the ontology that is used to exchange structure, promote enhanced process tracking, and aid navigation of resources before, after, and during a collaboration. While the primary focus of the project has been supporting e-Science, this paper also explores the similarities and application of CoAKTinG technologies as part of a human-centered design approach to e-Learning.

From buddyspace to CitiTag: large-scale symbolic presence for community building and spontaneous play

In this paper we discuss the conceptual framework and principles that guide our work in the design of large-scale informal environments for collaborative work, learning and play, aiming to foster social bonds and to provide an exciting testbed for emergent social behaviours. We present three different applications we have developed: Buddyspace, an Instant Messaging environment for community building, BumperCars, an online presence-based multiplayer game and CitiTag, an experimental wireless mixed reality game.

Scaleable GIS data transmission and visualisation

Distributed geographic information systems typically handle large amounts of data; therefore the transmission and visualisation techniques used need to be scaleable to provide quick, interactive feedback. We introduce such techniques based on the data hierarchy (levels of detail). Namely, we describe focus-and-context visualisation and progressive transmission. The main aim is to discuss the combination of these techniques for different data types and for mixture of these data types.