This book extends groupware for human communities. Conventional groupware typically supports the cooperative work of formally organized groups of people. The collaboration technologies introduced in this book, unlike conventional groupware, is designed to support the process of organizing people who are willing to share mutual understanding and experiences.

Community Computing - Collaboration over Global Information Networks draws on the combined experience of leading industrial and academic researches to present the following five stages of social interaction in human communities:

• Knowing each other by groundbreaking implementation of virtual spaces
• Sharing preference and knowledge by distributed computing over the Internet
• Generating consensus by network solutions for heterogeneous communities
• Supporting everyday life by autonomous agents and multi-agent technologies
• Assisting social events by intimate software on personal digital assistants

Contents:

• Overview of Community Computing
• Agent Networks for Connecting People Together
• FreeWalk: A Three-Dimensional Meeting-Place for Communities
• Market-Based QoS Control for Incorporating Community Preferences
• The Knowledgeable Community: Facilitating Human Knowledge Sharing
• Informal Conversation Environment for Collaborative Concept Formation
• Agent Augmented Reality: Agents Integrate the Real World with Cyberspace
• Mobile Digital Assistance for International Conference