Clique Space: A Real-Time (Media and Collaboration) Discovery, Control, and Activity Logging System

Abstract

This paper proposes a real-time system that abstracts and models users, devices, and collaborations over existing and future collaborative devices; examples of which include email and IM software, mobile and land-based phones, VOIP phones, fax machines, virtual reality avatars, electronic white boards, PC desktops and shared resources, holographic projection systems, ECG/EEG monitoring equipment, application-level file sharing software, teleportation systems, mainframe terminal and file-transfer sessions, software services, etc. Literally any current or future synchronous or asynchronous collaboration device could, with the addition of a small software interface and with minimal additional effort on behalf of a user, be registered with an individual user's account to participate in coordinated collaborations amongst users of any other similarly registered collaboration device.

The system formalizes the central notion of a “clique” to audit, control, and represent collaborative exchanges that might engage multiple media simultaneously. The main features of its core conceptual operating infrastructure (patent pending), and a case study concentrating on one use of the system considered relevant, are here presented.