Briefly, the present invention provides electronic methods and apparatus for storing and organizing access restricted
multimedia objects. This is accomplished using semantic networks by interactively defining a
semantic network, identifying a relationship between nodes by associating a
label with each
semantic link, attaching
multimedia objects to nodes and restricting user access to
multimedia objects and / or the
semantic network. The method allows users to access and edit the
semantic network in a
Java-based platform-independent
software environment. The present invention further provides a method for multiple users to collaboratively store and organize multimedia objects by providing a shared view via a network while defining the semantic network, identifying the relationship between nodes, and attaching multimedia objects to nodes. The method permits a first user to interactively edit the semantic network, transfer control to a second user, and allow the second user to edit the semantic network while maintaining the shared view. The present invention further provides a method for collaborative platform-independent authoring of multimedia documents, allowing a first user to edit a
multimedia document, providing the first and a second user with a shared view of the document via a network, permitting the first user to transfer control of the document to the second user, and allowing the second user to edit the document while maintain the shared view. These tasks are performed in a platform-independent
Java-based
software environment. The method further comprises restricting access to multimedia documents and / or multimedia objects based on a set of access privileges.