Scalable Annotation Mechanisms for Digital Content Aggregation and Context-Aware Authoring

This paper discusses the role of context information in building the next generation of human-centered information systems, and classifies the various aspects of contextualization with a special emphasis on the production and consumption of digital content. The real-time annotation of resources is a crucial element when moving from content aggregators (which process third-party digital content) to context-aware visual authoring environments (which allow users to create and edit their own documents). We present a publicly available prototype of such an environment, which required a major redesign of an existing Web intelligence and media monitoring framework to provide real-time data services and synchronize the text editor with the frontend’s visual components. The paper concludes with a summary of achieved results and an outlook on possible future research avenues including multi-user support and the visualization of document evolution.