Despite the services of sophisticated search engines like Google, there are a number of interesting information sources which are useful but largely inaccessible to current Web users. These information sources are often ad-hoc, location-specific and only useful for users over short periods of time, or relate to tacit knowledge of users or implicit knowledge in crowds. The solution presented in this paper addresses these problems by introducing an integrated concept of "location" and "presence" across the physical and virtual worlds enabling ad-hoc socializing of users interested in, or looking for similar information. While the definition of presence in the physical world is straightforward - through a spatial location and vicinity at a certain point in time - their definitions in the virtual world are neither obvious nor trivial. Based on a detailed analysis we provide an integrated spatial model spanning both worlds which enables us to define presence of users in a unified way. This integrated model allows us to enable ad-hoc socializing of users browsing the Web with users in the physical world specific to their joint information needs and allows us to unlock the untapped information sources mentioned above. We describe a proof-of-concept implementation of our model and provide an empirical analysis based on real-world experiments.
Web search is often viewed as a solitary task; however, there are many situations in which groups of people gather around a single computer to jointly search for information online. We present the findings of interviews with teachers, librarians, and developing world researchers that provide details about users' collaborative search habits in shared-computer settings, revealing several limitations of this practice. We then introduce CoSearch, a system we developed to improve the experience of co-located collaborative Web search by leveraging readily available devices such as mobile phones and extra mice. Finally, we present an evaluation comparing CoSearch to status quo collaboration approaches, and show that CoSearch enabled distributed control and division of labor, thus reducing the frustrations associated with shared-computer searches, while still preserving the positive aspects of communication and collaboration associated with joint computer use. Interactive tables can enhance small group colocated collaborative work in many domains. One application enabled by this new technology is copresent, collaborative search for digital content. For example, a group of students could sit around an interactive table and search for digital images to use in a report. We have developed TeamSearch, an application that enables this type of activity by supporting group specification of Boolean style queries. We explore whether TeamSearch should consider all group members' activities as contributing to a single query or should interpret them as separate, parallel search requests. The results reveal that both strategies are similarly efficient, but that collective query formation has advantages in terms of enhancing group collaboration and awareness, allowing users to bootstrap query specification skills, and personal preference. This suggests that team centric ills may offer benefits beyond the "staples" of efficiency and result quality that are usually considered when designing search interfaces. Studies of search habits reveal that people engage in many search tasks involving collaboration with others, such as travel planning, organizing social events, or working on a homework assignment. However, current Web search tools are designed for a single user, working alone. We introduce SearchTogether, a prototype that enables groups of remote users to synchronously or asynchronously collaborate when searching the Web. We describe an example usage scenario, and discuss the ways SearchTogether facilitates collaboration by supporting awareness, division of labor, and persistence. We then discuss the findings of our evaluation of SearchTogether, analyzing which aspects of its design enabled successful collaboration among study participants. Finding relevant and reliable information on the web is a non-trivial task. While internet search engines do find correct web pages with respect to a set of keywords, they often cannot ensure the relevance or reliability of their content. An emerging trend is to harness internet users in the spirit of Web 2.0, to discern and personalize relevant and reliable information. Users collaboratively search or browse for information, either directly by communicating or indirectly by adding meta information (e.g., tags) to web pages. While gaining much popularity, such approaches are bound to specific service providers, or the Web 2.0 sites providing the necessary features, and the knowledge so generated is also confined to, and subject to the whims and censorship of such providers. To overcome these limitations we introduce COBS, a browser-centric knowledge repository which enjoys the inherent openness (similar to Wikipedia) while aiming to provide end-users the freedom of personalization and privacy by adopting an eventually hybrid p2p back-end. In this paper we first present the COBS front-end, a browser add-on that enables users to tag, rate or comment arbitrary web pages and to socialize with others in both a synchronous and asynchronous manner. We then discuss how a decentralized back-end can be realized. While Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) are the most natural choice, and despite a decade of research on DHT designs, we encounter several, some small, while others more fundamental shortcomings that need to be surmounted in order to realize an efficient, scalable and reliable decentralized back-end for COBS. To that end, we outline various design alternatives and discuss qualitatively (and quantitatively, when possible) their (dis-)advantages. We believe that the objectives of COBS are ambitious, posing significant challenges for distributed systems, middleware and distributed data-analytics research, even while building on the existing momentum. Based on experiences from our ongoing work on COBS, we outline these systems research issues in this position paper. Today's Web browsers provide limited support for rich information-seeking and information-sharing scenarios. A survey we conducted of 204 knowledge workers at a large technology company has revealed that a large proportion of users engage in searches that include collaborative activities. We present the results of the survey, and then review the implications of these findings for designing new Web search interfaces that provide tools for sharing. Modern enterprises are replete with numerous online processes. Many must be performed frequently and are tedious, while others are done less frequently yet are complex or hard to remember. We present interviews with knowledge workers that reveal a need for mechanisms to automate the execution of and to share knowledge about these processes. In response, we have developed the CoScripter system (formerly Koala [11]), a collaborative scripting environment for recording, automating, and sharing web-based processes. We have deployed CoScripter within a large corporation for more than 10 months. Through usage log analysis and interviews with users, we show that CoScripter has addressed many user automation and sharing needs, to the extent that more than 50 employees have voluntarily incorporated it into their work practice. We also present ways people have used CoScripter and general issues for tools that support automation and sharing of how-to knowledge.