SAM: Semantics Aware Instant Messaging for the Networked Semantic Desktop

While instant messaging (IM) became a mature communication means in business organizations over the last years, IM systems did not follow this evolution comparably. Communicated content is often stored insufficiently and hard to recall, integration into other desktop applications impossible. In this paper, we address these shortcomings and provide concepts for novel instant messaging. In contrast to prior work such as the Haystack system, which integrates IM data into a personal information management application, we enhance IM based on a ready to integrate ontological meta model that introduces semantics to instant messaging and its content to foster advanced management. In particular, we address networked exchange of semantic meta information to integrate IM into the Networked Semantic Desktop. The Semantics Aware Messenger (SAM) is a prototypical implementation of the concepts presented in this paper.