Weak Information Structures forCommunity Information Sharing
Harumi Maeda , Masao Kajihara , Hidekazu Adachi ,Atsushi Sawada , Hideaki Takeda and Toyoaki Nishida
3

y

3

3

3

3

Graduate School of Information Science,
Nara Institute of Science and Technology
8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma, Nara, 630-01 Japan
Phone: +81-743-72-5265, Fax: +81-743-72-5269
E-mail: fharumi-m, masao-k, hideka-a, takeda, nishidag@is.aist-nara.ac.jp
3yDepartment of Information Science, Graduate School of Engineering,
Kyoto University
Yoshida{Honmachi, Sakyo, Kyoto, 606{01 Japan
Phone: +81-75-753-5992, Fax: +81-75-753-5977
E-mail: sawada@kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Abstract: We discuss the requirements for community information sharing. We then pro-pose the weak information structures to integrate heterogeneous information such as static
information (e.g. local sites information) and dynamic information created in word-of-mouthcommunication. The weak information structures connect various information media without de ning the semantics rigorously. By leaving the interpretation of the semantics totacit human background knowledge, it becomes compact and robust. We have developed an
information sharing system for community called
which provides people withintelligent assistance for exchanging and sharing knowledge and ideas. We have evaluatedat the ICMAS'96 Mobile Assistant Project.
InfoCommon

InfoCommon

1 Introduction

The World Wide Web has become popular forhuman information sharing on the Internet. As
large-scale information resources on the Internet
are increasing rapidly, it becomes more and moredicult to obtain information we need. Althougha number of search tools are available, there are
few intelligent systems which help us reorganize
vast information obtained from the Internet fromour point of view.
On the other hand, programming languages orknowledge representations such as rst-order logic
or frames have been used for computer information sharing. Unfortunately, these are so logicallyrigid that one must spend tremendous amount ofe orts on information acquisition. This defectforces too much on human e ort and hence signi cantly hinders accumulation of a large amountof useful information.
We investigatean intermediateinformation representation called the weak information structures,
which are weakerthan well-de nedknowledgerepresentations for human information sharing.
In this paper, we focus on a kind of communities in which a group of people meet together
and are united by shared interests as a range ofhuman information sharing. We attempt to builda system to support community information sharing using the weak information structures.
We discuss the requirements for community
information sharing. We then propose the weak
information structures to integrate heterogeneous
information such as static information (e.g. local

sites information) and dynamic information created in word-of-mouth communication.
We havedeveloped an information sharing system called
which providespeople withintelligent assistance for exchanging and sharing
knowledge and ideas. We have evaluatedat the ICMAS'96 Mobile Assistant Project.
In what follows, rst we analyze requirements
for community information sharing and describe
the weak information structures. We then present
and experimental results at the ICMAS'96 Mobile AssistantProject[1] and make discussion.
InfoCommon

InfoCom-mon

InfoCommon

2 Issues in Community Information Sharing

In this section, issues in community information
sharing will be discussed.
2.1

Important Information in Community

Community is a \group of people living together
and/or united by shared interests, religion, nationality." In this paper, we focus on a kind ofcommunities in which people meet together andare united by shared interests.
By the above de nition, local sites information where people meet together and informationthat people share interests is important. Personal
information is also important to activate humanhuman interaction.
In addition, it is known that informal information created in word-of-mouth communication isessential to support community information sharing.
2.2

Hypothesis of Information Activity in Network Communities

As computer network technologies progress, virtual communities in which people do not live together and which are supported by computer networks have been formed. Netnews, Mailing-lists
and Forums are such systems which support virtual communities. Wecall suchcommunities\network communities."
We analyze how network communities areformed on mailing-lists.
Firstly, friends or companions who have thesame/similar interests start a mailing-list. In the
beginning, acquaintances of founders participate

in. Newcomers then take part in when they happen to know the mailing-list by word-of-mouth orwatching publicity.
First Messages created by newcomersare mainly
questions except for self-introduction. This is because most of newcomers participate in the mailinglist to get information they need.
Newcomers try to nd information by themselves in vain, and ask other members. They get
chances to talk with and know others by asking
questions, and they are recognized by others as
well. Discussions seldom occur unless people do
not know the people with whom they want to talk.
We set up a hypothesis that there are a seriesof processes for newcomers in information activity in network communities: \search ! asking !
knowing people ! discussion." We think that
helping these processes facilitates community information sharing.
In addition, we claim that the existence of special persons who answer others' questions and encourage others to send messages is important toactivate network communities.
2.3

Problems in Information Sharing on the WWW

As we pointed out in section 1, The WWW has
become popular for human information sharing
on the Internet. Here we focus on some problems in information sharing on the WWW. (1) It
is dicult for users to get information they needwhen the menu structures of hypertexts are different from user knowledge about topics. (2) If
search results are too many when using searchengines, it is dicult for users to nd useful information from them. We need more intelligent
systems to reorganize vast information from ourpoint of view.
2.4

Information Sharing Environment
with Mobile Terminals

Most of groupware and information sharing systems are used on workstations or personal computers at workand at home. Matsushita[2] pointed
out that building information sharing environment
with mobile terminals will be one of the most anticipated issues in this eld.
We must consider some limitations in current
technology of mobile terminals, for example: (1)slowness of communication, (2) expensiveness ofcommunication cost, (3) poorness of security, and(4) smallness of screen.

2.5

Requirements Analysis for Community Information Sharing

From considerations described in the previous section, we analyze the requirements to build a successful system for community information sharing.
(1) Contents of information are important. For
example, local sites, personal, word-of-mouth information and information that people share interests should be stored.
(2) Special members assist general users to use
the system.
(3) The system supports information activity
in network communities: \search ! asking !
knowing people ! discussion."(4) Users can access heterogeneous information from the users' point of view with/without
menus.
(5) Users can integrate and reorganize personal and public information.
In addition, in order to use mobile terminals,
we must consider the following issues to overcome
the limitations of them.
(6) The system should have easy and simple
user-interface.
(7) Interaction between mobile terminals andthe server should be reduced.

Weak Information Structure

NaturalKnowledge
Hypertexts
Language
Representations
Images
Texts
Movies Sounds
various information media

Figure 1: The Weak Information Structures

InfoCommon Information Base

PDA

Knowledge Base

Information
Retrieval
InfoCommon
ServerRetrieval
Information Card Base

Information
Sending
Sending

User

RetrievalMonitoring
News
Sending

4

Figure 2: overview of

Session

Abstracts

ProfilesLocal

InfoCommon
Information
Volunteer

InfoCommon

InfoCommon

We havedeveloped a shared-card information sharing system called
which allows seamlesskeyword-based
accesstoa variety of infor3 Weak Information Structures mation cards to support community
information
sharing.
The weak information structures connect a wide
variety of information media such as natural language texts, hypertexts and images without de n- 4.1 Architecture
ing the semantics rigorously (Figure 1). By leavWe employed several design principles to faing the interpretation of the semantics to tacit cilitate
information sharing. First, we
human background knowledge inherently shared try not community
toenforceanyoneparticular concept. Inwith people, they become compact and robust. stead, we allow much freedom
the usage of
Moreover, the weak information structures are easy terms and the structure of shared ininformation
andto generate from raw data for both of humans and to incorporate useful information from variousviewcomputers, and therefore can reduce the cost of points. Second, we make the information space
information acquisition and integration.
single seamless space. This releases users from
We call the information structures \weak" in aworking
a rigid menu. Third, we enable users
a sense that we need not de ne the semantics rig- to build withapersonal
information space where they
orously, as compared with knowledge representa- can organize relatively
small amounts of informations such as semantic networks, frames or rst- tion as desired.
order logics.
is composed of (a) PDAs (PerIn community information sharing, the weak sonal Digital Assistant)possessed by users, (b)information structures are used to integrate hetinformation
serverhandles usererogeneous information such as static information requests and (c) News serverwhich
which
stores user(e.g. local sites information) and dynamic infor- messages and (d)information
base.
mation created in word-of-mouth communication. The
information
base
consistsof(d1)
We think that background knowledge shared by a knowledge base which links keywords and informembers can be utilized to understand the mean- mation cards using the weak information strucing of the relations.
tures and (d2) an information card base which
InfoCommon

InfoCommon

In-

foCommon

InfoCommon

InfoCommon

(a)Example Result of Information Retrieval

information card is a piece of static information
stored in the information card base, (b) a message
card is a piece of dynamic information created byusers, which is stored in the News server, and (c)a memo card is a piece of users' personal memoranda, which is stored in PDAs.
provides visual interface for retrieving and sending cards. A relation between
cards is denoted by a link.
Figure 3(a) shows an example result when auser inputs \daibutsu, temple" in information retrieval. An icon of the card \Todaiji Temple"
which is related to both of \daibutsu (great imageof Budda)" and \temple" is shown in the middleof the screen. Some card icons which are related
to \Todaiji Temple" such as \Nandaimon Gate"and \Daibutsuden Hall" (these are buildings ofTodaiji Temple) are linked with the card icon of\Todaiji Temple". A card icon of \Model Coursearound Nara Park" is shown but not linked withthat of \Todaiji Temple", because the former andthe latter are not related directly.
InfoCommon(b)Information Card (c)Message Card

Figure 3: Screen Image ofstores static information (Figure 2).
In addition,
information volunteers (a) answer to user questions as the help desk
to activate communications and (b) add information cards and adjust the weak information structures to improve search results.
InfoCommon

4.4

Search Algorithm

This section describes the algorithm which nds
a set of cards when the server receives user input
in information retrieval.
 step 1: to removeunnecessary words/symbols
from the input string and to expand key4.2 Functions
words referring synonyms
supports the following functions.
 step 2: to select card candidates by fulltext \AND" searchContent-based Information Retrieval Givena set of keywords, InfoCommon will respond with step 3: to select card candidates by fullthe set of information cards connected to the keytext \OR" search when card candidates arewords. The result of retrieval is stored in the
not selected by step 2
user's local information base where the user can step 4: to add card candidates by pathre-arrange the collection of information cards, andnding of the weak information structures
add/remove nodes/links as desired.
and generate links
Information Sending (Posting News) step 5: to de ne maximum 10 cards fromis built on a conventional News service.
card candidates using prede ned weights
Users can send messages to the News server. Thesemessages are viewed as message cards in
The weak information structures which are re.
ferred in step 4 are de ned by (1) prede ned relations between cards, (2) prede ned relations bePersonalizing Information Users can edit and tween concepts or (3) relations of cards de ned byreorganize gathered information and message cards users or information volunteers.
and personal memoranda.
We describe the path nding below. The pathnding is based on the idea of \spreading activation" on semantic networks [3]. Path- nding
4.3 User Interface
The information unit inis called with distance n searches a set of units which are\card." There are three kinds of cards: (a) an
InfoCommon

InfoCommon

Info-

1

CommonInfoCom-mon

InfoCommon

1 screen size of PDA and usability are concernedtemplePrince Shotoku

distance 1 from Shotoku

distance 1 from temple
Todai-ji Temple
Kofuku-ji
TempleEmperorSuiko

Horyu-ji
Templeson
Prince Shotoku
Prince Yamahsiro-oe

foundation

templeNara

Hasde-dera
TempleChogoson-ji
TempleshrineFigure 4: Path Finding
connected by links with distance n. Distance 1
denotes an extent between keys and values. Figure 4 illustrates how the algorithm works to an
input: \temple, Prince Shotoku ?" and answers\Horyuji-Temple" and \Chogosonji-Temple."

Figure 5: PDA with phone

5 Social Experiment at the
ICMAS'96 Mobile Assistant
Project
5.1

ICMAS'96 Mobile Assistant Project

ICMAS'96 is the Second International Conference
on Multiagent Systems, which was held in December 9 - 13 of 1996 in Kyoto, Japan.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation(NTT), Kyoto University, and Nara Institute of
Science and Technology jointly planned the ICMAS'96 Mobile Assistant Project to exhibit aTelescript-based system which provides (1) e-mail,e-forum and internet access services, (2) conference and tourist information for local sites, and(3) social match making based on participants'
pro les and schedules to arrange meetings, teas,dinners and so on.
The project is the world rst experiment in applying mobile computing systems to community
support. 100 personal intelligent communicatorswith handy phones were loaned to conference participants to actually try out the system.
People could access various information about
the participants through their PDAs (Figure 5).
One server machine (HP9000 model 800I60) and
30 telephone lines were set up at the conferencesite[1].

Figure 6:
5.2

InfoCommon

in UseOverview of Experimental Result of InfoCommon

We evaluated the usefulness ofat theICMAS'96 Mobile Assistant Project.
Figure 6 is a photo taken in the Nara Park
where an excursion was held, which shows how auser actually used.
The
information base stored static
information such as abstracts of papers, session,
local sites information and participants' pro les.
The number of information retrievals was 351
and information sending was 32 over the 5 day
period.
In what follows, We rst show some examples
of how users actually usedat the conference and then analyze howwasused by examining the log le and questionnaires
in details.
InfoCommon

InfoCommon

InfoCommon

InfoCommon

InfoCommon

Figure 7: Example 1: \ pa"Figure 9: Example 3: \nishimura"
49 (59%)50
40
num. of30
answers(%) 2018 (22%)10

6 (7%)

9 (11%)
1 (0%)00 (0%)

information help dis- news others not useddesk cussion
retrieval

Figure 10: Purpose

Figure 8: Example 2: \real world agent"
5.3

Examples

5.3.1 Example 1: \ pa"

Table 1 describes message exchangesabout a topic\FIPA (The Foundation for Intelligent Physical
Agents)."User A tried to nd information about \FIPA"
using information retrievalin vain. He asked about\FIPA" by information sending. The Information
volunteer and users answered his question. Figure
7 shows a result of information retrieval when user
A nally got information about FIPA (as item 12.
of Table 1). Card icons whose messages are sent
via InfoCommon are linked together.
5.3.2 Example 2: \real world agent"

Figure 8 shows a result of information retrieval
when a user input \real world agent."
Card icons of session information, abstracts ofpapers and participants' pro les concerning \realworld agent" were found. In this case, card icons
of a speaker's pro le, his abstract and session information are linked together.

5.3.3 Example 3: \nishimura"

Figure 9 showsa result of input \nishimura," which
is a name of a participantwho used the system frequently. Icons of personal information of Nishimura,message cards created by him were displayed.
5.4

Analysis5.4.1 Purpose

Answers to the question \For what did you used?" are shown in Figure 10. 59% used
the system for information retrieval and 18% for
information sending including News(11%), help
desk(7%) and discussion.
InfoCommon

30
number20
ofanswers(%) 10024 (33%)13 (18%)12 (16%)
11 (15%)8 (11%)
5 (7%)
research presen- sight- restau- people others
tation seeing rant

Figure 11: TopicTable 1: Message Exchanges of Example 1: \ pa"

no.
1

user
user AsystemInfoCommon

manipulation
retrieval: keyword" pa"date
Dec 9 23:12

2

user A

InfoCommon

posting

Dec 9:23:17

3

InfoCommon

posting

Dec 10 00:35

4

information
volunteer
user B

InfoCommon

retrieval: keyword"icstat"Dec 10 00:51

5

user B

InfoCommon

retrieval: keyword" pa"

Dec 10 00:56

6

user B

InfoCommon

posting

Dec 10 00:58

7

user C

Newsreader

read \misc" newsgroup{8

user C

Newsreader

post \misc" newsgroup{9user C

Newsreader\misc" newsgroupDec 11 23:56

10

user D

InfoCommon

retrieval: keyword"icstat"Dec 12 09:01

11

user D

InfoCommon

retrieval: keyword" pa"

Dec 12 09:28

12

user A

InfoCommon

retrieval: keyword" pa"

Dec 12 10:01

5.4.2 Comparison with Traditional Newsreader

In this experiment, 3 services were prepared whichaccess to 17 Newsgroups:, a traditional Newsreader system and an information navigation system[4]. Users could read and post messages in each newsgroup using the Newsreader. In
contrast, users could access messages regardless of
newsgroups based on keywords in.
32 out of 48 messages (67%) were posted via.
The answer to the question \Which service did
you mainly use for reading News ?" is as follows; Newsreader 33 persons (64%),14 persons (27%), other 4 persons (9%).
About \Which service did you mainly use forposting News ?": Newsreader 9 persons (52%),
7 persons (41%), other 1 person (1%).
The reasons as to why
was usedfor News are described as follows: \Because keyword search was easy and useful (14 persons)",\Because I found interesting topics in(5 persons)" and \Because I had a question(4 persons)".
We determined that
added newfacility to the conventional Newsreader.
Major reasons of the choice \didn't use" were\slow information retrieval (8 persons)" and \Icouldn't connect to the server (4 persons)". These
problems involve server response and so can beeasily xed.
InfoCommon

InfoCommon

InfoCommon

InfoCommon

In-

foCommon

InfoCommon

InfoCom-mon

InfoCommon

explanation
User A searched information about
FIPA.
User A asked a question about
FIPA.
The information volunteer answered to user A's question.
User B searched statistics andfound a subject about FIPA.
User B searched information about
FIPA.
User B answered to user A's
question.
User C found information about
FIPA.
User C answered to user A's
question.
User C answered to user A's question again.
User D searched statistics andfound a subject about FIPA.
User D searched information about
FIPA.
User A searched information about
FIPA and found his own question
and answers by others.

5.4.3 Topic

Answers to the question \For what topic did youuse" are displayed in Figure 11: research(33%), presentation(18%), people(16%),
sightseeing(15%) and restaurant(11%) and others(7%).
InfoCommon

5.4.4 Statistics

Table 2 shows the ranking of frequently asked keywords in information retrieval. The most frequent
input word was \icstat," a special keyword to display statistics concerning frequently asked keywords and frequently discussed subjects. This result suggests that users used
to know
what other people are interested in and/or what
are hot before information retrieval or sending.
We found that such statistics are useful for sharing information among participants.
\Nara" and \keihanna"are names of area where
the conference was held. \Fipa" and \agent" areresearch keywordsconcerning the conference topic.
\Nishimura" is a name of a participant. \Food",\lunch", \banquet", \kamameshi" and \restaurant" can be considered as food information. The
above result almost meets with that of questionnaires described in the previous section. The difference is that keywords about research, presentation and people are less found in Table 2 andthis is because these words vary individually.
InfoCommon

Table 2: Frequently Asked Keywords
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

keywordcount

icstatnara
fipa
keihannaagent
nishimura
food

50
24
15
12
10
8
6

7
9
9
9
9
9

20 (44%)20

keyword

count

lunch
banqueticsuggest
kamameshi
restaurant
shuttle

6
5
5
5
5
5

numberof
10
answers(%)
0

1 (0%)
interesting much appropriateun- others
information
expected

Figure 14: Search Results 2
30 (51%)30
number20
ofanswers(%) 107
6mean 54
3
2
1
0

20 (34%)9 (15%)

00

2

4mean ＝

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

days

5.4.5 Change of Search

Figure 12 shows thatwas used fromevening to midnight. This result meets with a report of Kawaura et al[5] which says \the computercommunication is often done during night."
On the other hand, it does not meet with thegeneral investigation about user activities of PDAs
which says the communication in mobile computing is done irrespective of time. We analyze thatthe reasons are perhaps (1) the system was slow,(2) people were busy during the daytime, and (3)information retrieval was not a very urgent task.
InfoCommon

5.4.6 Search Results

Figure 13 shows answers to the question \How did
you feel the search results of?" 81%
felt that the search results were ne (very good +good + moderate) as shown in Figure 13.
Figure 14 shows di erent answers to the samequestion as before. 44% answered that the search
results were interesting.
InfoCommon

30 (52%)30
number20
ofanswers
100

10 (17%)2 (0%)

1 (0%)

very good moderate bad
good

very
bad

Figure 13: Search Results 1

othersnotsatisfied

5.4.7 Satisfaction

51% answered that they were satis ed with
(Figure 15).

Info-

Common5.4.8 Usefulness

55% answered thatwas useful for
getting the information they need (Figure 16(a)).
On the other hand, 48% answered that it was notuseful for knowing people (Figure 16(b)), 60% for
discussion (Figure 16(c)). The results indicatethat the system is useful for information retrieval
but not for knowing people nor discussion.
We feel that the period (5 days) was too short
to form the kind of community in which people
create many active discussions. We need to conduct a longer-term experiment to evaluate theusefulness of the system for discussion in the future.
InfoCommon

40
30

40

40
30

30

19 (34%)23 (41%)20
num. ofans. (%)
10

20
num. ofans. (%)
10

notothersuseful(a)0

11 (21%) 10 (19%)

6 (11%)

6 (11%)
useful32 (60%)27 (48%)31 (55%)20
num. ofans. (%)
100

15 (26%)

satisfiedFigure 15: Satisfaction

o'clock
number of information retieval except for the persons involved in the project

Figure 12: Change of Search

8 (18%)8 (18%)

6 (13%)

usefulnotothersuseful0

usefulnotothersuseful(b)(c)
Figure 16: Usefulness

6 Discussion
6.1

Contents of Information in Community Information Sharing

The result of questionnaires shows that (a) local
sites information such as restaurants and sightseeing, (b) personal information and (c) information
about research and presentations were searched.
In addition, it is found that statics are useful by
analyzing the log le.
These result support the consideration in section 2 and suggest that people are interested inwhat others are interested in.
6.2

InfoCommon as an Information Retrieval Tool

We analyze that the following results support thatis useful as an information retrieval
tool for community; (a) 81% felt that search results were ne, (b) 51% were satis ed the system,and (c) 55% answered that the system was usefulfor information retrieval.
InfoCommon

6.3

InfoCommon as an Information Exchange Tool

We could not prove the usefulness ofas an information exchange tool for community
because (a) the number of information sending
was only 32 and (b) only 21% answered that it
was useful for discussion.
However, the result that 32 messages out of
48 (67%) were via
suggests thecan be useful as an information exchange
tool. We analyze that this is because the simpleness of its user-interface and existence of information volunteers.
In addition, the comparison with the traditional Newsreader suggests thatdoes
not replace the traditional Newsreader but add
new functions to it.
InfoCommon

InfoCommon

Info-

CommonInfoCommon

6.4

Hypothesis of Information Activity in Network Communities

We attempt to evaluatewhether the system is useful about the hypothesis of information activity incommunities: \search ! asking ! knowing people ! discussion" that we set up in section 2.
(1) We evaluate that the system supported
the process \search" from the results of questionnaires.
(2) The process of \search ! ask" is partially
supported bythe system because the log le showsthat some users asked questions after information
retrieval (as example 1 in section 5).
(3) Half of users answered that the system was
not useful for \knowing people." However, weconsider that this is because there were other systems in which users can access participants information without connecting the server[6] and users
did not need to use
for the purpose.
We expect thatis useful for knowing
people and try to verify it in the future.
(4) The process of \discussion" cannot be supported by. We feel that the period
was too short to form the kind of community inwhich people create many active discussions. We
need to conduct a longer-term experiment to evaluate the usefulness of the system for discussion in
the future.
InfoCommon

InfoCommon

InfoCommon

6.5

Weak Information Structures in
Community Information Sharing

The following results indicate the system's usefulness for community information sharing: (a)51% of users were satis ed of the system, (b) 81%
felt search results were ne and (c) 55% answeredthat the system was useful for getting information
they need. We consider the results are supporting evidence of that people who share interests incommunity can have common background knowledge and they can understand the meaning of thesemantics of the weak information structures.

7 Related Work

This research is a part of the Knowledgeable CommunityProject [7] which aims to developdistributed
knowledge bases.
Ishida et al[8][9] investigate to facilitate conversation on wide-area information networks tosupport community activities.
CYC[10] and ARPA Knowledge Sharing Effort [11][12][13] have made a signi cant contribution in the sense they shed light on the importance of knowledge and information sharing andthat they have presented a self-completed computational model. Their approach orients computer
information sharing while ours is for human information sharing.
Gaines uses semantic networks as information
representation for group knowledge sharing[14].
Our approach is based on much weaker information representation than semantic networks.
Kautz studied the use of agents in assistingand simplifying person-to-person communication

for information gathering tasks[15]. They focus
on the use of a software agent. We concentrateon the process of how humans create knowledge
and information.

8 Conclusions

We discussed requirements for community information sharing. We then proposed the weak information structures to integrate heterogeneous
information such as static information (e.g. local sites information) and dynamic information
created in word-of-mouth communication. The
weak information structures connect various information media without de ning the semantics
rigorously. By leaving the interpretation of thesemantics to tacit human background knowledge,
it becomes compact and robust.
We developed an information sharing systemfor community called
which provides
people with intelligent assistance for exchanging
and sharing knowledge and ideas. We evaluatedat the ICMAS'96 Mobile Assistant
Project.
As a future research, We plan to conduct alonger-term experiment to evaluate the usefulnessof the system for discussion.
InfoCommon

InfoCommon

Acknowledgements

The ICMAS'96 Mobile Assistant Project was conducted collaboratively by NTT, Kyoto University,
Nara Institute of Science and Tehcnology, andKobe University and in cooperation with NTT
Kansai Mobile CommunicationsNetwork Inc., General Magic Inc., NTT Multimedia Service Promotion Headquarters and Keihanna Interaction
Plaza Inc. We wish to thank Mr. Fumio Hattori, Mr. IchiroMorihara, Mr. YoshiyasuNishibe,Prof. Toru Ishida, Prof. Katsumi Tanaka, Mr.
Shiro Takata and Mr. Hisao Nojima for their help
in this project. We would like to thank the participants of this project for their cooperation.

References[1] Yoshiyasu Nishibe, Hiroaki Waki, Ichiro Morihara andFumio Hattori, \Analyzing Social Interactions in Massive Mobile Computing - Experiments of ICMAS'96
Mobile Assistant Project - ," In Working Notes for
IJCAI-97 International Workshop on Social Interaction
and Communityware, pp.19{24, 1997.
[2] Yutaka Matsushita and Kenichi Okada, \Collaboration
and Communication," pp.18, Kyoritsu-shuppan, 1995
(in Japanese).

[3] M.R.Quillian, \Semantic memory," in \Semantic Information Processing" in Marvin Minsky edition, MIT
Press, 1968.
[4] Rie Otsubo, Katsumi Takahashi, Yoshiyasu Nishibeand Ichiro Morihara, \Information Service System
for Decision Support- Action Navigator -," IPSJ SIG
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