Topic-focused thread-based instant messenger

• Main Author: Ma, Weiming
• Other Authors: Shen Haifeng
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computer applications::Social and behavioral sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/17006
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

An Instant Messenger (IM) is a popular network communication tool that allows a user to keep in touch with friends, families and colleagues both at home and in the workplace. IM applications are ubiquitous among today’s online communities, easily accessible on most computing platforms and mobile devices. IM offers real-time interactivity between two or more parties through the exchange of text messages. Modern IM applications support a rich collection of multimedia capability such as voice recording, video conferencing and file sharing, facilitating an efficient and effective means of collaboration among geographically dispersed people. In IM conversations, people feel emancipated to express their ideas or views, possibly spanning a variety of topics. Such a free and casual style of dialogue could form dissimilar views among individuals. The flow of incoming messages sent continuously by the same user further aggravates this problem. Hence, a topic-focused and organized IM chat system is ideal for efficient communication to take place, especially in the corporate environment. In organized chat systems, important discussions can revolve around core topics, whilst sub-topics provide a different dialogue focus. Messages may reference to another message, indicating the scope of the dialogue. This enables the user to control the flow of ideas in a conversation. Multiple users can participate in diverse topics simultaneously, comparable to conducting a large interactive business meeting over the Internet. This project aims to realize the concept of topic-focused organized chat IM in twofold; firstly, a thorough investigation of current topic-focused chat technologies. Secondly, to leverage on existing technologies to design and develop a functional thread-based, topic-focused IM, which could possibly revolutionize the way we communicate on the Internet in the future.