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authorship and by allowing users to track changes and make annotations to docu-
ments. Authors collaborating on a document may also be given tools to help plan
and coordinate the authoring process, such as methods for locking parts of the
document or linking separately authored documents. Synchronous support allows
authors to see each other ’ s changes as they make them and usually needs to provide
an additional communication channel to the authors as they work (via videophones
or chat).
Synchronous or real-time groupware is exemplifi ed by shared workspaces, telecon-
ferencing or videoconferencing, and chat systems. For example, shared whiteboards
allow two or more people to view and draw on a shared drawing surface even from
different locations. This can be used, for instance, during a phone call, where each
person can jot down notes (e.g., a name, phone number, or map) or to work col-
laboratively on a visual problem. Most shared whiteboards are designed for informal
conversation, but they may also serve structured communications or more sophisti-
cated drawing tasks, such as collaborative graphic design, publishing, or engineering
applications. Shared whiteboards can indicate where each person is drawing or point-
ing by showing tele-pointers, which are color coded or labeled to identify each
person.
Twitter is a newer technology that is about as real as real-time can get. The major
use of Twitter is to continuously answer the question, “ what are you doing now? ” It
is a miniblogging service that allows users to send tweets or minitexts up to 140 char-
acters in length to their user profi le web page. This information is then conveyed to
users who have signed up to receive the posts (typically a circle of friends or col-
leagues). Tweets can be received as web page updates RSS feeds, SMS text on phones,
through e-mail, on Facebook, and so on. Twitter started out in life as an R & D project
in podcasting ( Glaser 2007 ). While Twitter remains largely a novelty application used
by early adopters, there are potential applications within a KM context. Anthony
Bradley (2008) addressed this point and noted that Twitter is a people-based technol-
ogy and can serve as a good alerting service for people who are working together,
particularly if they are working together on time critical work. Twitter can also serve
as an ultra-rapid way of testing out ideas on a few trusted individuals — a quick forum
for feedback in real time (e.g., a presenter who checks to see how the talk is going, a
meeting coordinator who needs everyone in attendance ASAP, or a project manager
trying to physically locate his team). One potential application for real-time tweets
could be an expertise locator system — one that locates expertise in real-time as well
as a means of meeting some of the expectations of millennial knowledge workers
( Lee 2003 ).