As promised at the June 15 meeting at SRI, I created a Bootstrap discussion
space with my collaborative concept mapping applet. It is available at
http://icapc4.epfl.ch/bootstrap. You can get in with following login and
password:
login: Bootstrap
password: Bootstrap
If you find that this is useful and want a personal account, pleas let me
know.
This applet is in effect a collaborative space for creating concept maps
that are connected with an underlying information space. Content such as
documents, Web pages or simple text can be attached to any concept and
relationship. There's a set of snychronous and asynchronous tools to help
with the awareness of others and with collaboration. For instance, concepts
moved by another user will move on your screen with a slight delay, you will
see a message informing you of who moved the concept and when. Small post-it
notes, called comments, can be attached to any concept and any user can
contribute to them in the form of a lasting chat. Concepts can be private or
public and you can create multiple spaces where you can create maps from
scratch.
All the concepts, relationships, content etc. are stored in a relational
database which resides in a server in my office so even if the client applet
stops responding you don't lose any data. The applet communicates with the
server through http requests and XML which go through most corporate
firewalls.
The best platform to run the applet on is unfortunately MS-Windows (95, 98,
NT) even though it is pure Java. As far as my testing goes, the Java support
on Mac and Unix are not as good. The Apple virtual machine hangs very
easily. Netscape on the Mac doesn't have AWT 1.1 and won't run the applet.
Netscape on Unix doesn't show all the buttons in the applet window...
Knoware is an on-going project and we can not garantee the quality of
service. Sometime the server dies and we need to restart it and sometimes we
make updates to the software which create disruptions as well.
I'll be more than happy to get your feedback on this tool.
Gil
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Gil Regev
Institute for computer Communications and Applications
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL-ICA)
CH-1015 Lausanne, SWITZERLAND
email: gil.regev@epfl.ch
Web: http://icawww.epfl.ch
Phone: +41-21-693-6790
Fax: +41-21-693-6610
Portable: (078) 637-5116
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