ACM SIGWEB Newsletter

Gendarmi, Domenico

doi: 10.1145/1836291.1836294pmid: N/A

Domenico Gendarmi received his PhD in computer science from the University of Bari, Italy in April 2010. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Collaborative Development Group of the same University. His recent research activities focus around the Social Web and Global Software Engineering: in particular, how these fields can interact with each other in order to extend knowledge on social aspects of software development, i.e. supporting informal processes in agile and distributed team setting.

Deshpande, Yogesh

doi: 10.1145/1836291.1836297pmid: N/A

SIGWEB supports several specialized conferences, short courses, and workshops, as well as the Annual Hypertext Conference. SIGWEB sponsored conferences focus on timely topics in applied and computational hypertext and Web disciplines and provide a place for members and the entire applied Hypermedia and Web community to exchange ideas and to meet with and expand their network of colleagues. In this article, we provide a brief overview of SIGWEB sponsored conferences, in addition to events that are in cooperation with SIGWEB.

Naftali, Maia; Watanabe, Willian; Sloan, David

doi: 10.1145/1836291.1836292pmid: N/A

2010 saw the launch of the W4A student award scheme, generously supported by Google, to enable two of our most promising web accessibility research students to attend W4A --- the annual International Cross-Disciplinary Research Conference on Web Accessibility. This year's conference was held in Raleigh, North Carolina, on 26--27 April, and our two award winners were Maia Naftali (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Willian Massani Watanabe (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil). Maia and Willian have kindly provided their reflections on the conference below.

Atzenbeck, Claus

doi: 10.1145/1836291.1836293pmid: N/A

Manolis Tzagarakis is a Lecturer at the University of Patras, Greece and a researcher at the Computer Technology Institute. He holds a diploma from the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics of the University of Patras, and a Ph.D. from the same university. His research interests includes hypermedia, structural computing, Web-technologies and Computer-Supported Collaborative Work. In the context of internationally funded projects, he designed and developed numerous hypermedia systems which resulted in the Callimachus Structural computing environment. He has served as Workshop Chair of ACM Hypertext 2004 and Program Chair of ACM Hypertext 2005. He serves regularly on the conference committee of the ACM Hypertext conference series. His homepage is http://application.econ.upatras.gr/users/tzagara/

Haller, Heiko; Abecker, Andreas

doi: 10.1145/1836291.1836295pmid: N/A

We present iMapping, a zooming based approach for visually organizing information objects. It was developed on top of semantic desktop technologies and especially targets the support of personal knowledge management. iMapping has been designed to combine the advantages of spatial hypertext and other proven visual mapping approaches like mind-mapping and concept mapping, which are incompatible in their original form. We describe the design and prototypical implementation of iMapping -- which is fundamentally based on deep zooming and nesting. iMapping bridges the gap between unstructured content like informal text notes and semantic models by allowing annotations with the whole range from vague associations to formal relations. First experimental evaluation of the iMapping user-interface approach indicates favorable user experience and functionality, compared with state-of-the-art Mind-Mapping software.

Goulding, James; Brailsford, Timothy; Ashman, Helen

doi: 10.1145/1836291.1836296pmid: N/A

ZigZag is a unique hyperstructural paradigm designed by the hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson. It has piqued a lot of interest in the hypertext community in recent years because of its aim of revolutionizing electronic access to information and knowledge bases. In ZigZag information is stored in cells that are arranged into lists organized along unlimited numbers of intersecting sets of associations called dimensions. To this infrastructure a mechanism of transclusion is added, allowing the data stored in cells to span, and hence be utilized, in different contexts. Proponents of ZigZag claim that it is a flexible and universal structure for information representation, and yet the system has not been widely adopted and has been implemented even more rarely. In this paper we address the question of whether there are intrinsic theoretical reasons as to why this is the case. While the basic features and specifications of ZigZag are well known, we delve in to the less understood area of its theoretical underpinnings to tackle this question. By modeling ZigZag within the framework of set theory we reveal a new class of hyperstructure that contains no referencable link objects whatsoever, instead grouping non-referencable binary associations into disjunct but parallel sets of common semantics (dimensions). We go on to further specialize these "dimensional models" into sets of finite partial functions, which are closed over a single domain, isolating the new class of hyperstructures we are calling hyperorders. This analysis not only sheds light on the benefits and limitations of the ZigZag hypermedia system, but also provides a framework to describe and understand a wider family of possible hyperstructure models of which it is an early example. Characteristics of Zigzag's transclusion mechanisms are also investigated, highlighting a previously unrecognized distinction, and potential irrevocable conflict, between two distinct uses of content reuse: instance and identity transclusion.