This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will prototype and assess feasibility of "Virtual Collaborative Spaces." The rapidly expanding ubiquity of the web creates an opportunity to exploit its potential as a global, dynamic repository of knowledge, more than just a vast archive of posted information. This knowledge, which arises from the web users' exploratory activities, is highly volatile, fragmented, and episodic, but nonetheless practical and instantly applicable if it can be captured and delivered to the right person at the right time. It is continuously created (and lost) by millions of people who surf the Internet daily for various reasons: to research a topic, to find advice, to make a purchase, and so on. By harnessing even a portion of this activity and by linking it to the practical knowledge thus discovered: what to do, how to do it, where to find it, etc., a vast, sharable, and self-sustaining resource can be created, that, if properly managed, would deliver enhanced levels of support and accuracy to all web users: the seekers and the offerors alike.
If successful, the effort will make the existing internet applications, including search, more responsive to the users' needs by modeling users' exploratory activities rather than the users themselves. The broader impact is the transformation of the Internet into a dynamic knowledge repository with greatly improved access, so that the users can draw more value from it; the potential for market impact is significant.
