Grassroots: a System Providing a Uniform Framework for Communicating, Structuring, Sharing Information, and Organizing People

Abstract

People keep pieces of information in diverse collections such as folders, hotlists, e-mail inboxes, newsgroups, and mailing lists. These collections mediate various types of collaborations including communicating, structuring, sharing information, and organizing people. Grassroots is a system that provides a uniform framework to support people's collaborative activities mediated by collections of information. The system seamlessly integrates functionalities currently found in such disparate systems as e-mail, newsgroups, shared hotlists, hierarchical indexes, hypermail, etc. Grassroots co-exists with these systems in that its users benefit from the uniform image provided by Grassroots, but other people can continue using other mechanisms, and Grassroots leverages from them. The current Grassroots prototype is based on an http-proxy implementation, and can be used with any Web browser. In the context of the design of a next-generation version of the Web, Grassroots demonstrates the utility of a uniform notification infrastructure.