JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1, JANUARY 2012, ISSN 2151-9617 https://sites.google.com/site/journalofcomputing WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.

ORG

66

Collaborative Web Surfing

Akhtar Ali Jalbani1, Aneela Yasmin2, Gordhan Das Menghwar1 and Mukhtiar Memon1
AbstractRecent advances in t he area of group communication, based on the computer mediated communication increased, due to the adopt ion of result s in the paradigm shift of previ ous research tow ards group communi cation. This research uses social software into existing design p atterns for group communication. The adoption of group communication towards social groups leads to more user orient ed and human centric designs a nd combination l eads to the new potential emerging from incoperating new functionalities into collaborative environment. Tools originated from social softwares are still standalone but their influence o n collaborative environment can not be avoided. However these social software and e xisting collaborative software does n ot provide colla borative way to search on the Internet. In this research we focused on the collaborative enviornement used for web surfing. A conceptual quality model is also proposed to evelaute the qu ality impact of collaborative web surfing. Index Termscollaborative surfing, searching together, model for collaborative web surfing, Collaborative concepts.

1 INTRODUCTION

UTUAL actions are used to solve any problems is not a new development. Our history is full of the examples to solve problems in a collaborative enviornemnt. The results of the problems that are solved in a collaborative enviornemnt are even better than the solution proposed by the single persons. Researchers are more comfortable to find good solutions by share their information with others. Different factors may affect collaborative patterns for example smaller groups are formed for the larger to get more intensive information. In collaborative enviornemnt cohesion and trust building is more important factor for any good group of persons. The researchers described coming together is a beginning of a group while keeping togheter is progress and working together is a success. However, although coming together is a rather easy step, keeping together in order to work together proves to be a challenge for a group. The adoption of computer based tools in the recent development for group communication is increased [1]. The applications in this area are more user-oreinetd, human centric development and therefore fill better social collaboration needs. This combination presents new research ideas, invvovations, funtionalities and platform to be adapted in to existing tools and evern work better for new tools. The application of this software covers wide areas in the scientific, social and rsearch communities. Ebner et. al [2] indicates that the tools originating from social software are useful for collaboration environments as stand-alone applications for example microblogs in higher education, wikis and webblogs. Influence on collaborative environment in combination with other functionalities for example web surfing has not yet been analyzed. In this paper, we focused on the application of collabora-

tive groups in the web surfing area. This paper is divided into five sections. Introduction is presented in section 1. Section 2 presents the collaborative communication and their types used in the literature. The different collbaortive concept and proposed collaborative model are presented in section 3. Section 4 discuss the collaborative web surfing and conclusion are presented in section 5.

2 COLLABORATIVE COMMUNICATION
2.1 Group Research
Groups are originated from two main concepts: connected and Natural. The connected type of groups is those, which are created for research purpose and natural type of groups are those, which are independent of research activities. Group charactersistic like interaction, interdependence, mutual awareness, anticipated future, common aims, specified roles and senese of memberships are already well known in the literature [3, 4, 5].

2.2 Group as a Social Network

In social network individual are tied to one another to from a mesh of connection, which term as a network. The analysis of social networks determines the structure of networks or dependencied between the actors worked in the network environment. In social network groups provides main strength for the determination of relationship type among actors and dependencies. The people why join the group are different one may answer has a common objective to form a group, others may find different perspective to convince the individuals to join that particular group. Hence, there are different motivations behind the groups to attaract new members to join their groups. The groups owners motivate the 1 Information Technology Centre, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, member not to leave the groups and attaract other members by asking some questions related to motivation, for Pakistan. 2Department of Biotechnology, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, example why do members stay in the group? How will
Paksitan.

JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1, JANUARY 2012, ISSN 2151-9617 https://sites.google.com/site/journalofcomputing WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.ORG

67

benefit them to be a member of the group? In literature, there is no consistent view of collaboration available. Hence the definations of collaboration vary from one researcher to another. Some researcher takes collaborative activities as a model from the process prespective, while organizational prespctive is considered by others. In collaborative environment the inspiration and conceputulizations are characterized by individuals. Table 1 presents the different collaborative group type these are: general purpose, membership based, lifetime, size, and contributions. TABLE 1 COLLABORATIVE GROUP TYPES
Desciption To complete task in specified time Members are assigned tasks Until the project is completed Can be small/ large Contribution of the members Workgroup Formal, organizational, design goal Report are submitted to the leader Until the next reorganization Criteria Develop capabilities to exchange knowledge Members can select themselves As long as members have a reason to connect Small/ large

Collaboration Concepts

General

The communication that supports by means of computer and spitally distributed communication is discussed in this section. Groups that are spitally distributes by using computer technology are online groups, virtual groups, and geographically distributed groups. Member of these electroically networked groups are dispersed around the world. There are no geographical borders among them. These groups use groupware application, web conferecing, video conferencing, email or holding business mettings on conferencing tools for communication purpose. Hence, these interactions among members are mediated by time, distance and technology. Most of the communication channels uses three terms for the processing of the communication, these are: sender, receiver and a channel. Spitally distributed groups have an advantage that communication may be synchronoush or asynchrounous. The communication types, feedback and their symbol variety are presented in table 2. Table 2 Different Types of Communication, feedback & their symbol variety.
Communication Type Face-to-face Video conference Telephone Email Voice mail Chat Groupware Feedback High Medium Medium High Low Medium Medium Symbol variety High High Low High Low High High

Membership

Lifetime

Size

Depends upon the size Depends upon individual needs

Contribution

Identification of passive and active memebrs

The collaborative groups are mostly focused on the individuals text messaging, video conferencing and joining social networks. In this paper, we presented the new way of surfing Internet in a collaborative environment, where more than one Interent user can surf together. The information sharing is main motive of this research. Hence the collaboration software is based on the generic type, where the individuals can exchange the web surfing information based on their mutual interest. To attaract the web surfer, we need to make social place, where individuals can look for the people of their choice to form a mesh of social network for collaborative web surfing. Factors for the collaborative web surfing can be identifed based on the requirements gathered in this research. The execution of small mesh networks needs to be in a collaborative way that depends upon different characteristics. This type of static perspective drives a dynamic group process, where web surfing URL and search key words need to be stored.

Face-to-face communication does provide high feedback and high symbol rate. Video conference, in which visual are transmitted has a medium feedback compared to facefo-face communication. Telelphone or audio rely on the language content and provide medium and low feedback. Voice mail is based archieved message, one has recored his or her message on audio machine that provide very low response or low feedback and symbol variety. Chat and groupware has medium feedback and high symbol rate because of their instant messaging that also depends upon the content which has been communicated by the both parties. The key areas of group communication are defined by Ellis et. al these are: communication, collaboration and coordination. These three key areas are base of spitally distributed communication. These three key areas are also known as 3C model [6]. The 3C model provides the basis for conceptual computer mediated models.

3.1 Collaboration and Web Concepts

The web 2.0 emerged the collaboration concepts into practical oriented computer based collaborative softwares[7]. The technologies used in web 2.0 paradiagm are known as: web services, AJAX, RSS. Using concepts of web 2.0, one can build application

JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1, JANUARY 2012, ISSN 2151-9617 https://sites.google.com/site/journalofcomputing WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.ORG

68

for example weblogs, wikis, mashups, social bookmarking and other business models for example software as a service. Our research focuses on the web 2.0 standard and the category on which our application is based on the social networking. Using social concepts of web 2.0, we use that technology for web surfing in a collaborative way. Hence, in this paper we discuss only collaborative softwares that are available on the web for example BSCW, Microsoft office sharepoint server 2007. 1. BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work): It supports a collaborative group that includes following features: discussion boards, docuement management, task management, group management, contact management, shared calendars, blog system, notifications or online surveys. 2. Microsoft Office share point server 2007: It also support collaboration platform in the form of organizational teams. It includes following features: blog, group calendars, discussion boards, task, document and workflow management or wiki. The social feature includes personal profile and colleagues list in the orgnizational hirerachy. The missing part of these collaborative softwares is that these do not provide a collaborative way of surfing either these focus on online discussions or document management. Other social networking softwares for example facebook, myspace and xing also provide these types of the services to their users. None of the above applications provide collaborative way of surfing. Collaborative surfing is not a new idea; we already used the collaborative way to watch our television in our homes, in which one TV channel can be watched by more than one person. To watch that channel with more than one partner is a collaborative environment. In the same way browsing on the internet with more than one surfer is a collaborative way of surfing on the Internet. The attempts have been made for collaborative browsing for examples ARIADNE [7], GroupWeb [8], Webhound [9]; Webwatcher [10] and Silhouettel [11]. All of these attempts are based on coupling of user interfaces and do not provide the collaborative surfing in a dynamic way.

Collaboration Patterns Formativeness Invasion

Maturity

Cohesiveness

Completeness

Fig. 1. Conceptual Model for Collaborative Software

3.2 Model for Collaborative Surfing

To make it complete collaborative surfing application, we need to model different perspective of collaborative social network to search on the interenet. The model has been adopted from the group development model that was proposed by Tuckman in 1965 [12].

The model has five essential patterns that should be considered when collaborative softwares are developed. These patterns are formativeness, Invasion, Maturity, cohesiveness and completeness. Each of the patterns is described below: 1. Formativeness: is an attribute that is used to meaure the foundation phase. Mostly foundation phase in collaborative communication is used for testing and dependencies. Using these attribte it is necessary to have established the boundries of the foundation phase. 2. Invasion: is an attribute that is used to measure the influence of individual and to identify their requirements. 3. Maturity: is an attribute to measure the maturity level of the collaborative community. Structural and functional issues are needed to be addressed to form a muture level of collaborative communication between the members. 4. Cohesiveness: is an attribute to measure new roles. This attribute focus on the ingroup feelingsto give open minded solution to the other group members. 5. Completeness: is an attribute to measure the adjouring process of the collaborative communication. There are other three main factors that are related collaborative group interaction, these are: individual member support, group maintence and orientation between different tasks.A successful group collaborative groups can be identified by measuring each and every patterns that are defiend for the model. The completeness measure ensures the successful adjouring of the process.The performacne of the collaborative software can be measured through individual needs, task needs and group maintence need. If these all attributes should be satisfied for good quality collaborative communication.

4 COLLOBORATIVE WEB SURFING

Internet is a library, which contains information on billions of web pages. Surfing in such huge libraray is a time

JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1, JANUARY 2012, ISSN 2151-9617 https://sites.google.com/site/journalofcomputing WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.ORG

69

consuming and even passionate job. Surfer using search engines make possibility to find the releted information. However, surfer has to look for exact information by visiting each and every web page link colleted by the search engine. When looking for each search result the surfer is always alone. Some times it is possible that the surfer left his personal computer or notebook without getting particular information. In our research, we have identified that the people from backgraound zero to advance feel inconformatble while searching on the internet. While, when they are on the web using some collaborative software or social software they feel comfortable. This is becuase someone else is availbale to share ideas and participate in their research and in social activities. By using collaborative technology we make protype software called Netsurf [13] that make possible collaborative way of surfing on the internet. NetSurf is integrated with web browser. At the dynamic instance, it stores URL and the search key words against every NetSurf user. When other surfer is looking for the same information, a knowledge discovery techinques (i.e Data Mining) are applied to get exact set of information to the other user at the dynamic instance of time in a very short span of time. All the user who are searching for the same information will collaborate using data mining techniques to get their search results ( i.e surfer who is surfing same information) on their choice in a real time. This small utility will save time, money and efforts spend on the internet for a particlaur type of information. The quality of the product has been focused in the paper [14]. In this paper usability issues are discussed for the Netsurf application. [15] presented the web surfing enviorment and tested in real time at the four different geographically distributed networks. These four users use different key words to find exact information, for example biotechnology, wireless communication, software engineering, quality assurance and so on. The result shows that above 70% of the users get the exact information in very short span of time.

this technology to deliver Web presentations by controlling what Web page users are viewing. The application was tested in an experimental way at different locations to see the software applicability, software usability and the reliability of the information. In future, machine learning techniques will be applied to recognize complex patterns and to take intelligent decisions for the surfers selecting an appropriate surfer for the required information.

REFERENCES
[1] M. Koch and T. Gross, Computer-Assisted Coopertive Work---- Conceptes and Trends, Proceedings of 11th Conference of the Association Information and Management, Luxemburg, 2006. M. Ebner, C. Lienhardt, M. Rohs and L. Meyer,Mirobloging in Higher Education- A Chance to Facilitate Informal and Process oriented Learnining, Computer and Education, Vol. 55, no.1, 2010, pp. 92-100 . (Book style) D.R Forsyth, Group Dynamics, 5th Edition 2009. Wadsworth Belmont. M. Jckel and C. Rvekamp, (Tele) Beschftigte auf virtuellen Pfaden: zur Philosophie des Virtuellen und elektronisch gesttzter Arbeitsformen," in Thiedeke U. (ed.): Virtuelle Gruppen Charakteristika und Problemdimensionen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 2003, pp. 385-411. K.Y.A. McKenna, and A.S Green, Virtual Group Dynamics, Group Dynamics, Theory, Research, and Practice, vol. 6, no. 1, 2002, pp. 116-127. U.M Borghoff, and J.H Schlichter, Computer-Supported Collaborative Work, Introduction to Distributed Applications, Springer, 2000. O'Reilly, Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again, 2006. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web20compact.ht ml. M. Twidale, D. Nichols and C. Paice, Browsing is a Collaborative Process, Information Processing and Management J. 33(6) 1997, pp-761-783. Z.Y Lashkari, Feature guided automated collaborative filtering, M.S. Thesis , Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, USA, 1995, pp. 1-83. D. Mladenic, Using Text Learning to help Web browsing, Proceedings of 9th International Conferencece. on Human Computer Interactions, 2001. M. Okamoto, H. Nakanishi, T. Ishida and Silhouettell, Awareness Support for Real-World Encounter Community Computing and Support Systems.. LNCS, Springer, vol 1519, 1998, pp316-329. B.W Tuckman, Developmental Sequence in Small Groups, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 63, no. 6, 19965, pp. 384-399. A.A Jalbani, S. Abbasi, G.D Menghwar and A. Yasmin, Towards an Approach for Web Surfing in Unison, Proceedings of 4th International Conference on Developments in e-Sysytems Engineering, UAE, Dubai 2011. A.A Jalbani, G.D Menghwar, M. Memon and A. Yasmin, Usability of Collaborative Web Surfing Systems in e-Research, International Journal of Computer Sciene Issues, Vol. 9(1), 2012.

[2]

[3] [4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

5 CONCLUSION
The Web surfing has a central role in the world of Internet. The cuurent collaborative applications available on the internet are not information targeted. Hence, the surfer is isolated (i.e surfing alone). Where as our collaborative way of surfing provides new way of surfing on the internet. The advantage of this application that it is information targeted in which more one surfer can share their information based on their mutual interest. The application based software can be used to any of the research domain. Our prototype tool NetSurf provides additional facility to the surfers to share their information in real time. It is an important utility for all the Internet users, researchers and students, especially useful for distance learning, business users and researchers, who can use
[10]

[11]

[12] [13]

[14]

JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1, JANUARY 2012, ISSN 2151-9617 https://sites.google.com/site/journalofcomputing WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.ORG

70

[15] A.A Jalbani, S. Abbasi, G.D Menghwar and A. Yasmin, Using Collaborative Enviornment for Web Surfing, Pak. Journal of Agr. Engg. Vet. Sci. vol 27(1), 2011, pp: 94-99. Akhtar Ali Jalbani is Assistant Professor, Information Technology Centre, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, Pakistan. He ha s obtained PhD in computer science from Universit y of Goettingen, Germany. He is a member of SDL forum Society. His research interest includes collaborative surfing, quality of UML, Model Transformation and Data Mining. Aneela Yasmin is Assistant Profe ssor, Department of Biotechnology, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, Pakistan. She h as obtained PhD in Molecular Biology from University of Hannover, Germany. Her research interest includes Data Mining, Computaion al Biology, and investigation for functionality of resistence genes through different techniques of forward/ revers genetics. Gordhan Das Menghwar is Assistant Professor, Information Technology Centre, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, Pakistan. He has obtained P hD in wirelss communication from Vienna University of Technology, Austria. His rese arch interest includes scooperative communication, space time code s, network coding and information theory. Mukhtiar Memon is Assistant Profe ssor, Information Technology Centre, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, Pakistan. He ha s obtained PhD in computer science from Universit y of Insbu rk, Austria. His research interest includes modeling security aspects of service oriented systems, Model T ransformation, WS- Security and enterprise integeration.