Creation and use of service-based Distributed Interactive Workspaces

Distributed Interactive Workspaces (DIWs) are interactive environments, accessible through different devices, where end users create new content by exploring and aggregating data retrieved from distributed resources in the Web, tailor this content to their own personal needs, use it on different devices, and possibly share and co-create it with others. The need for collaborating with other people by means of DIWs is an important requirement that emerged in field studies conducted in different domains. This paper shows the extension of a platform for mashup composition to support collaboration through DIWs. In particular, it considers the possibility of producing annotated versions of DIWs, to add specific information and make it available to others without corrupting the original resources. It also investigates techniques for synchronous collaboration that enable a distributed creation and execution of the interactive workspaces on different devices and by different users. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.