The Navigator is a Lotus Notes R4 feature that allows users to navigate and retrieve information from external Internet resources such as the web. As a Notes feature, it made sense to integrate the collaborative strengths of Notes with the reach of the Internet. The initial vehicle for this integration is a collaborative filter, which allows users to rate, categorize and comment on specific resources of interest. The results of these comments are then used by other users to find resources of interest to their workgroup or interest profile, in addition to viewing by category or quality rating. In essence, this system allows the user to find out what their workgroup peers find interesting and worth investigating.
This feature is based on the Collaborative Filter and Digest for Notes developed by Kate Ehrlich at Lotus and web based collaborative agents such as HOMR and WebHound developed at MIT's Media Lab. We propose to demonstrate the Navigator, discuss the potential advantages for users and propose how similar collaborative filters could be implemented on the Web. In addition we would like to discuss simple extensions to HTML that would facilitate collaborative filtering and navigation across the entire web.