An info-based content sharing system for small communities

There is no doubt that the Web is a very successful system on the Internet for content sharing. In the Web system a Web page is a basic unit for content providers to organize their contents. However, in an application, using a single Web page is often not adequate to represent the complete information. How many information entities must be included in a unit to represent adequate information basically depends on the requirements of an application. From another point of view, in current information applications on the Web system, the data and the relevant operations are not bound together. Consequently, if the content units are to be modified, moved, or extended in functionalities, the designers or the users would encounter some inconvenience or problems. We apply the information object model to construct a community object system to share content for virtual communities on the Internet. A community object is basically an information object that is portable and extensible in functionality. The information object model we propose in this paper is simple but powerful for presenting both contents and users. The simple and uniform mechanisms of method managements in the information object model can be used to fulfill many various requirements in developing applications for the Internet services.