Supporting Proximate Communities with P3-Systems: Technology for Connecting People-to-People-to-Geographical-Places

In this chapter we examine systems that link People-to-People-togeographical- Places, which we label P3-Systems. Four major P3-Systems design approaches have been identified by an analysis of systems prototyped to date: (1) People Centric P3-System design that use absolute user location, based on awareness of where somebody is located (e.g., Active Badge); (2) People Centric P3-System design based on user co-location/proximity (e.g., Hocman); (3) Place Centric P3-System design based on the use of virtual spaces that contain representations of user's use of physical spaces (e.g., ActiveMap); and (4) Place Centric P3-System design based on the use of virtual spaces that contain online interactions related to physical location (e.g., Geonotes). This chapter explores how proximate community member interactions can potentially be well supported by P3-Systems through the improved geographical contextualization and coordination of interactions and the identification of previously unidentified location based affinities between community members.