| Introduction |
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Welcome to the Trailist project !Looking for specific information or finding colleagues working on similar topics, has always been and still is an open issue. Growing numbers of documents within Intranets and - even more - on the World Wide Web make it increasingly difficult to find appropriate information. We suggest trails, built from users' browsing paths, as concept for assisting users in electronic environments. Basing access to and retrieval of information on user trails would allow people not only to better manage their personal information spaces but also to ask questions such as "where do other people go from here'', "what else should I read?" or "how did we come to that conclusion?". As a consequence, users could manage their individual information spaces more efficiently. Furthermore, the fact that trails are built with information about the users' browsing paths and activities makes them well suited for collaborative applications where users with similar interests are to be matched. The name "Trailist" indicates that, similar to the way "Tourists" travel on tours, "Trailists" make their ways through vast information spaces. Trailist proposes to build an open framework that will support the construction of trail-based applications. Besides building the framework, the primary goals of the project include addressing the issues of acquisition of trail data and processing of trail data. The usability of the framework and the concept of user trails will be evaluated by building several exemplar application prototypes and by an end-user evaluation. Trailist started in 2000 and was a 2 year runnung project funded by the Austrian Fonds zur Foerderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) under grant No. P14006-INF. After finishing the project successfully we continued our work on the concept of trails and are now researching on the integration of physical and virtual trails. If you are interested in any kind of cooperation regarding this topic please contact us! For further information, please contact: |