Misc Agent Technology
- Verity has announced topicAGENT Server Toolkit -- a collection of tools for creating applications that automatically filter, match and disseminate relevant information to the user. "topicAGENTS are personal agents that search, filter, or categorize information and deliver it according to the user's preferences. topicAGENT Server Toolkit is a development kit with which developers and integrators can build topicAGENT solutions. Many leading partners have developed topicAGENT solutions, including Time Inc. New Media, IBM InfoSage, Knight-Ridder, Xilinx, Cisco Systems and Dell Computer." 7/29/96
- Technology, tools: SRI is making availability their GKB-Editor (Generic Knowledge Base Editor), a free tool for graphically browsing and editing knowledge bases across multiple frame representation systems in a uniform manner. It offers an intuitive user interface, in which objects and data items are represented as nodes in a graph, with the relationships between them forming the edges. Users edit a KB through direct pictorial manipulation using the mouse. A sophisticated incremental browsing facility allows the user to selectively display only that region of a KB that is currently of interest, even as that region changes. GKB-Editor runs on Sun workstations and requires Common Lisp and CLIM (Allegro or Lucid). 6/25/96
- Technology:
mobilis "the mobile
computing lifestyle magazine" is a free magazine available exclusively
on the Web in its entirety.
In the June 1996 issue they feature mobilis
Reader Interview: General Magic's Jim White by mobilis Readers.
Abstract: "For the past couple of months, mobilis has offered you the
unique opportunity to directly interview Jim White, General Magic Vice
President of Telescript Technology. We selected a representative
sample of the questions we received and Jim has been kind enough to
respond very completely to all of the questions. So here now, without
further delay, is your interview of Jim White." 6/19/96
- Technology: David Wells (wells@objs.com) of Object Services and Consulting, Inc. has produced a nice survey on software Wrappers. Wrappers are "a type of software "glueware" that is used to attach together other software components. A wrapper encapsulates a single data source to make it usable in a more convenient fashion than the original unwrapped source; this distinguishes wrappers from another kind of glue-ware, mediators, that combine data from different data sources. Wrappers are assumed to be "simple", although there is no clear demarcation between what belongs in a "simple" wrapper and a "complex" higher level component. Wrappers can be used to present a simplified interface, to encapsulate diverse sources so that they all present a common interface, to add functionality to the data source, or to expose some of the data source's internal interfaces." 6/19/96
- Internet Trends , A.M.Rutkowski , V.P. Internet Business Development, General Magic, Inc. Abstract: This analysis and material is made available to the Internet community by General Magic, Inc., - scaling the Internet and enhancing access through its open Internet technologies, including MagicCap personal communicator, Telescript intelligent agent, and Active Web applications platforms. The material may be copied and distributed providing attribution is given to the sources. 6/17/96
- Technology: ThoughtTreasure is a tool set developed by Erik Mueller for writing agents to process text on the Internet. Includes subagents for parsing words, phrases, ends of sentences, human names, usernames, email addresses, email headers, Usenet newsgroup names, Usenet attributions, communicons, times and dates, telephone numbers, titles of books/songs/films, product names. (MORE). 5/14/96
- IETF draft paper:
"Service Location Protocol", J. Veizades, S. Kaplan, E. Guttman,
C. Perkins, IETF Service Location Protocol Working Group, 38
pages, 01/23/1996. Abstract:
"The service location
protocol provides a framework for the discovery and selection of
network services. It relies on multicast support at the network layer
of the protocol stack it is using. It does not specifically rely upon
the TCP/IP protocol stack but makes use of concepts that are found in
most TCP/IP protocol implementations.
Traditionally, users find services using the name of a network host (a
human readable text string) which is an alias for a network address. The
service location protocol eliminates the need for a user to know the name
of a network host supporting a service. Rather, the user supplies a set of
attributes which describe the service. The service location protocol
allows the user to bind this description to the network address of the
service.
Service Location provides a dynamic configuration mechanism for
applications in a tightly coupled set of local area networks. It is not a
global resolution system for the entire Internet, rather it is intended to
serve institutional networks with shared services.
1/24/96
- Software: OSF WebWare 1.0 is a set of tools and services for building and deploying browsing associates and Web server-based applications that can be accessed through standard off-the-shelf browsers and servers. The services facilitate the location, management, and use of Web-based information and support group-related activities on the Web. In addition to the basic Strand toolkit (formerly known as OreO until Nabisco's lawyers noticed), a number of derived agents are available, such as: a Personal What's New Browsing Associate, a Personal What's Changed Proxy, a What's Changed Server Application, a Personal LinkTree Browsing Associate, a Group Full Text Indexer Proxy, and Group Annotation Service. The source is available free for academic, research and internal business purposes. 1/23/96
- A page on Distributed Programming: Agentware/Componentware/Distributed Objects maintained by Steven D. Majewski, University of Virginia, sdm7g@Virginia.EDU.
- Oracle in Motion uses a new client-agent-server architecture to enable Microsoft Windows-based laptop computers to quickly and easily access critical corporate information via wireless networks, LANs and phone lines. In the client-agent-server architecture "agents" act on behalf of the mobile client, even when the client is disconnected. Agents reside on the corporate network where they have high-bandwidth access to data servers. A mobile client can access any number of agents for a variety of services.
- Tps (Tiny/Transportable Postscript) provides an embedded interpreter for a language like Postscript with the graphics operators removed. The resulting system is roughly the same size and for the same purposes as Tcl. readme and source
Comments and suggestions to Tim Finin .... finin@umbc.edu