This paper addresses ways users can remotely control industrial hardware devices over the Internet. We employ a J2EE based Remote Lab platform to describe the interface of the remote devices and to relay commands and results between users and devices. Collaboration is accomplished by embed ding the remote lab platform in an Open Wonderland virtual world.

In this paper, we describe a range of audio problems that impact the effectiveness of audio conferences and detail the solutions we have devised to address these problems. We conducted an audio quality assessment to determine how differences in quality impact audio clarity, a remote person's experience connecting to a conference room , and social presence. Based on the results of this assessment, we examine the costs and benefits of increasing audio fidelity with respect to the network resources needed to support high-fidelity audio conferencing.

The Meeting Central prototype is a suite of collaboration tools designed to support distributed meetings. The tools' minimalist design provides only those features that have the most impact on distributed meeting effectiveness. The collaboration suite is built on top of a distributed, extensible, and scalable framework.

We examined records of minute-by-minute computer activity coupled with information about the location of the activity, online calendar appointments, and e-mail activity. We present a number of visualizations of the data that exhibit meaningful patterns in users' activities. We demonstrate how the patterns vary between individuals and within individuals according to time of day, location, and day of the week. Some patterns augment the schedule information found in people's online calendars. We discuss applications for group coordination (especially across time zones) plus opportunities for future research. In light of the popularity of instant messaging, this research identifies some of the benefits and privacy risks associated with the uses of online presence and awareness information.

We explored the use of awareness information to facilitate communication by developing a series of prototypes. The ConNexus prototype integrates awareness information, instant messaging, and other communication channels in an interface that runs on a desktop computer. The Awarenex prototype extends that functionality to wireless handheld devices, such as a Palm. A speech interface also enables callers to make use of the awareness information over the telephone. While the prototypes offer similar functionality, the interfaces reflect the different design affordances and use context of each platform. We discuss the design implications of providing awareness information on devices with varying interface and network characteristics.

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Goals and content: This tutorial will provide a simple overview of the Internet for K-12 teachers with no Internet experience. It will demonstrate many useful resources that teachers can find on the Internet to use directly in their classrooms or in working with other teachers. It will explain how to get started using the Internet and will provide free admission to The Boston Computer Museum.

SpeechActs is an t:xperimental conversational speech system.Experience with redesigning the system based on user feedback indicates the importance of adhering to conversational conventions when designing speech interfaces, particularly in the face of speech recognition errors.Study results also suggest that speech-only interfaces should be designed from scratch rather than directly translated from their graphical counterparts.Thi& paper examines a set of challenging issues facing speech inteIface designers and describes approaches to address some of these challenges.

The Envoy Framework addresses a need for computer-based assistants or agents that operate in conjunction with users' existing applications, helping them perform tedious, repetitive, or time-consuming tasks more easily and efficiently. Envoys carry out missions for users by invoking envoy-aware applications called operatives and inform users of mission results via envoy-aware applications called informers. The distributed, open architecture developed for Envoys is derived from an analysis of the best characteristics of existing agent systems. This architecture has been designed as a model for how agent technology can be seamlessly integrated into the electronic desktop. It defines a set of application programmer's interfaces so that developers may convert their software to envoy-aware applications. A subset of the architecture described in this paper has been implemented in an Envoy Framework prototype.

The core of hypermedia's power lies in the complex networks of links that can be created within and between documents. However, these networks frequently overwhelm the user and become a source of confusion. Within Intermedia, we have developed the Web View-a tool for viewing and navigating such networks with a minimum of user confusion and disorientation. The key factors in the Web View's success are a display that combines a record of the user's path through the network with a map of the currently available links; a scope line that summarizes the number of documents and links in the network; and a set of commands that permit the user to open documents directly from the Web View.