I believe you've made a great use case of OHS. It would read email or forum
posts and automagically tag words it knows exist elsewhere. It should do
that AT INPUT TIME as well as output time (when users receive the post).
That way, people like me with short memories (with posts whose Subject
doesn't reflect keywords buried in the body) would not repeat great works of
others.
Cascade is not an open source project. You can download binaries. If you
want the server, you have to ax for it.
From: John J. <mailto:JJDeneen@ricochet.net> Deneen
On 9/7/00, I sent an interesting email with links regarding CASCADE based on
Doug's augmentation theories.:
The CASCADE (Computer Augmented Support Collaborative Authoring and Document
Editing)
project is based on the augmentation theories of Engelbart
(1984,1988,1992). CASCADE was
developed to augment and aid document review tasks. Reviewers
communicate through documents
and annotations created. A number of tasks are off-loaded from
reviewers or inspectors so that
more time and effort can be allocated for the primary (review) task.
In addition, CASCADE's
interaction style using point-and-clicking, in-line, color-coded and
form-based annotations - are
intuitive and "natural" for reviewing textual documents. This would be
true for software
artifacts, e.g. source code listing. From this perspective, software
inspection tasks could be
facilitated by the use of the CASCADE system. CASCADE involves
SGML/XML, hypertext,
multimedia, DBMSs ,network protocols, system design, visualization,
data mining, social
computing, and intelligent agents to name a view. CASCADE is an
email-centric environment that
allows groups of people to work together writing, revising,
commenting, and discussing
documents. CASCADE offers a number of notable features including,
placement of annotations
at specific locations, color coded labeling, flexible comment
classifications, and navigational
tools. With minor reorganization and a few enhancements, CASCADE can
serve as a testbed for
asynchronous software inspection research.
CASCADE, has been developed to augment commenting and review on
electronic documents, is a
three-tier client server application. Its design was guided by four
principles most simply
described as: augmentation, information utilization, visualization,
and agents. Each is briefly
elaborated on here.
Augmentation. Given some task, only a small portion of the subtasks
require cognitive
processing (Engelbart, 1961; Engelbart, 1962). In CASCADE, the system
is so structured as to
offload the mechanical tasks to the computer. For example, making a
hypertext comment
requires 10-15 actions (depending on how the process is defined). Only
one of these tasks,
writing the comment itself, actually requires the commenter - the rest
can be done by the
system. "Augmentation", as used by Engelbart (1984,1988,1992),
involves task analysis and
redesign to create a set of processes that optimize the human side of
the human computer
interaction. CASCADE currently augments comment and comment review
processes. This current
research will extend the augmented processes to inspection and defect
collection.
Information Utilization. Zuboff (1984) uses the term "informating" to
refer to a process
where an information stream generated by a computer is used to improve
the process. She draws
parallels between automation and information, and automating and
informating. CASCADE uses
information about documents, groups, and actions to inform simple
functions. For example,
sending mail begins with the subject, recipient, and originator fields
of a mail note filled in.
CASCADE knows the email addresses, and how group members like to
receive their mail. Clicking
one button attaches the document. The user simply types the note and
the document is sent out.
This kind of redesign is called "information" in the Zuboffian sense
of the term as a direct
parallel to "automation".
Visualization. The visualization of data can increase the speed with
which targets of
opportunity can be addressed. CASCADE has a set of visual navigation
tools that increase the
speed with which sets of documents, document components, and areas
within documents can be
accessed. Current research is aimed at assessing the utility of these
tools contrasted with other
mechanisms for accessing particular documents. Apart from navigational
tools, CASCADE
provides visualization tools, that augment activity analysis, tracking
and reporting on various
forms of activity in a way that supports different views, and controls
access to a large complex
document set.
Agents. There are many things that we would like others to do for us.
With advances in
computing power and techniques, it is increasingly possible to design
simple software programs
(agents) that appear to be intelligent (in some cases the learning
algorithms and control logic
merit that title). In CASCADE, the current plan for agent design
focuses on simple
"contribution" agents that do little tasks on behalf of the user. For
example, the communication
agent keeps track of where people "live" when they are using CASCADE.
Knowing that, the agent
can check those places when someone wants to contact them. The CASCADE
communication agent
does just this. It keeps track of who a user wants to talk to and
watches for them. When found,
it let's the user know, and if the timing is still right, sets up an
interactive talk session.
CASCADE is a multiple-platform three-tier client-server application
and its screen is divided
into four main panels. Across the top are menus. Across the bottom are
status and informational
panels. On the left-hand side of the CASCADE screen, there is a file
navigational panel showing the user available documents and folders.
The majority of the screen
is the main viewer where the document is displayed. To make a comment,
the user simply clicks
the mouse at a target location in the document. The comment creation
and review dialogs allow
comments to be entered and comment types to be classified. Once a
comment is created, it will
appear as a color coded label inside the document and will be
available for all users to view.
Users can quickly identify comments through an intra-document
navigational facility, called the
mural bar, located at the right most of the
window. CASCADE also has a number of security features. User
privileges and document
permission enforce accessibility and operations inside CASCADE.
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~cascade <http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~cascade>
"This research is still in its early stages. A number of questions are
still being explored. Among
these are the development of an optimized application protocol and
refinement of the database
structure. There are also questions about overall process efficiency
that may require violation
of some of the conceptual principles of DBMS design. While locking has
been implemented at a
gross level in the current version, a more accurate assessment of the
capability of the system
will have to await the implementation of element level locking which
is currently being
implemented. Also, the incorporation of augmented XML document
construction and XML
document display will represent an important step in the refinement of
the system as a usable
system for practical application."
References
Appendix E, Bordin Sapsomboon thesis (Shared Defect Detection : The
Effects of Annotations
in Asynchronous Software Inspection)
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~cascade/bordin/inspection.html
<http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~cascade/bordin/inspection.html>
*Off-loading routine tasks to computer for allowing humans to focus on
high-level cognitive
tasks
http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/~cascade/bordin/bordin_presentation.ppt
<http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/~cascade/bordin/bordin_presentation.ppt>
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