Groupware SLP - Research Paper Example

Analyzing the web site http www.acm.org The referred website is maintained by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) a non profitable organization under the theme “Advancing computing as a science and profession”. The ACM was established in 1947 as the first scientific computing society in the world with the objective of delivering resources related to computing for educational and carrier development purpose. It claims to have more than 90,000 members world wide to date and their website serve as a resource online resource center for individuals who are interested in computing (ACM, 2005).

The organization further subdivided its members in to Special Interest Groups of 34 different areas such as computer-human interaction and mobile communications.The ACM website (www.acm.org) is a large website which consisted of variety of resources such as journal articles, special interest groups, details about conferences, blogs, and news. All though some of the resources are free, paid membership is necessary to access the digital library and other benefits including awards and conferences.

The website (home page) links with about 18 sections including publications, special interest groups, news and awards. Since the ACM try to cover all possible details about computing, the contents of the site are less specific and diluted. Although they do not publish commercial advertisement (such as Google ads) in the home page they have used much of it space (in the home page) to popularize their activities which usually require a paid membership. Photographs and quotes of the members and winners have been used for these purposes.

They have placed commercial advertisements mostly as banners in some of the links/sections (example: ads in the section “Online Books & Courses”). Irrespective to its usage of “org” (organization) in the web address it provides very limited amount of free/open access information to the internet users where the usual practice of the most organizations is to provide more free information much as possible (Postel, 1984 & Gray, 1999).According to the ACM the target audience is anyone interested on professional or educational computing (ACM, 2005).

However the content and the arrangement of the website are not interesting and not attractive. They were unable to narrow down the activities to meet with the objectives. The real purpose of this website and the benefit to the audience is difficult to understand. Further the real effect and the validity of the activities such as conferences and the awards are not clear. Even though the website was recognized as an international source (not specific for a community, country or region) it is lacking the tools to retrieve information regionally or country-wise.

This tires the audience via providing the access to large amount unwanted or unrelated information and making them hard to find the needed information.Carrier and the job center was the only link that I am interested to follow on. This section seems to provide general but important content. However paid membership is required for the access. This section keenly presented the information under clearly identified categories (example: Job seeker, Employer).Finally, as whole the referred website is more likely to have commercial purpose than typical online organization.

The possible significant cost benefit can be the reason to maintain this website. Site structure and arrangement is not attractive and messy. References1. Gray, Daniel (1999). The Complete Guide to Associate and Affiliate Programs on the Net. McGraw-Hill Trade.2. Joint Task Force of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Association for Information Systems (AIS) and IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS). (2005). Computing Curricula The Overview Report.3. Postel, J., Reynolds, J. (1984). Domain Requirements.

The Internet Society.