Francis Li
trailblazer
trailblazer is a computer-mediated communication tool for supporting a virtual community. It attempts to integrate aspects of real world physical activity into the virtual environment and to provide a structure for discourse around those activities.
Activity in the real world is captured through digital artifacts (such as photos) and contextual metadata describing the activities (the "who", "what", "when", "where", and, to a certain degree, the "why"). These artifacts and metadata can act as a shared, collective memory for the members of the community.
Discourse occurs by creating trails through the shared collection of digital artifacts. A trail can be any arbitrary sequence of artifacts, including photos and other trails. This recombination of artifacts is intended to facilitate the expression of multiple perspectives on shared experiences as well as the generation of new ideas.
Blogs and photo albums are also implemented on top of this structure, allowing their content to be part of the shared collection and seamlessly intertwined with other trails. Together, this collection of artifacts, metadata, and the links between them creates a rich dataset for data mining and visualization.
trailblazer is a computer-mediated communication tool for supporting a virtual community. It attempts to integrate aspects of real world physical activity into the virtual environment and to provide a structure for discourse around those activities.
Activity in the real world is captured through digital artifacts (such as photos) and contextual metadata describing the activities (the "who", "what", "when", "where", and, to a certain degree, the "why"). These artifacts and metadata can act as a shared, collective memory for the members of the community.
Discourse occurs by creating trails through the shared collection of digital artifacts. A trail can be any arbitrary sequence of artifacts, including photos and other trails. This recombination of artifacts is intended to facilitate the expression of multiple perspectives on shared experiences as well as the generation of new ideas.
Blogs and photo albums are also implemented on top of this structure, allowing their content to be part of the shared collection and seamlessly intertwined with other trails. Together, this collection of artifacts, metadata, and the links between them creates a rich dataset for data mining and visualization.
