Sharing Hierarchical Mobile Multimedia Content Using the MobiTOP System

We introduce MobiTOP (mobile tagging of objects and people), a map-based application which allows users to contribute and share geo-referenced multimedia annotations via mobile devices. An important feature of MobiTOP is that annotations are hierarchical, allowing annotations to be annotated to an arbitrary depth. MobiTOPpsilas interface was designed using a participatory design methodology to ensure that the user interface meets the needs of potential users. In an evaluation, a group of student-teachers involved in a geographical field study were tasked to collaboratively identify rock formations using the MobiTOP system. The students who were in the field were guided by their lab counterparts on the tasks required to identify the rock formations. Results suggest the potential of the MobiTOP system for information sharing.