UMBC AGENTNEWS WEBLETTER 1.14 NOVEMBER 18, 1996 UMBC LAIT|AgentWeb|AgentNews|Subscribe|Search|Issues:1 2 3 ... 12 13 14 "Ontology recapitulates philately" -- anon __________________________________________________________________________ THIS ISSUE Volume 1,Number 14 http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/1996/12/ November 18, 1996 Baltimore, MD __________________________________________________________________________ AGENT NEWS Software Agents The Software Agents Mailing List [0] is devoted Mailing List to the issues of software agents, personal digital assistants, software robots, knowbots, agents@cs.umbc.edu intelligent interface agents, etc. The list was begun in 1994 by Ray Johnson, then at the Lockheed Palo Alto AI Center and now at Sun and moved to UMBC in the Fall of 1996. The list is available in two forms -- the regular AGENTS list and the AGENTS-DIGEST list. If you subscribe to the regular agents list, you will get each message posted to the list immediately and if you subscribe to the digest, you will get a periodic digest message containing messages posted since the last digest. To join the mailing list send a message to majordomo@cs.umbc.edu [1] with subscribe agents or subscribe agents-digest in the body of the message. Messages sent to agents@cs.umbc.edu [2] will be immediately distributed to all of the subscriber to agents, added to the hypermail archive [3] , and added to the current digest for later distribution to the agents-digest subscribers. 11/18/96 Positions available New agent-related positions [4] were posted by Carnegie Mellon University [5] , Empirical Media Corporation [6] , Norwegian University of Science and Technology [7] , Franz, inc. [8] , Siemens Corporate Research, Inc. [9] , and Penn State University [10] . __________________________________________________________________________ AGENT TECHNOLOGY Identify and IDML Identify [11] is a system done by Emerge Consulting [12] (Palo Alto) for finding products and pages that use IDML to identify themselves. IDML [13] is a SGML-compliant markup language that gives Internet marketers and publishers a standard way to identify themselves, their content, and their products. Content creators insert IDML markup that describe the contents of a page or objects on the page interspersed with the HTML and content . Browsers will ignore the IDML but IDML-savvy indexing agents can use it to better understand the content. Identify is the site where IDML tags from the world over are indexed and available. With Identify, users can find products and information using the simple and powerful Identify engine. Users can query solid information that the publishers provide themselves. The current IDML language has just four tags (ID-PUBLISHER, ID-INFO, ID-PRODUCT, ID-SYSTEM) that can be used to describe a page or object, each of which has a handful of attributes. The big question, of course, is how to manage the growth and acceptance of the underlying ontologies. 10/19/96 JAM The Columbia JAM Project [14] is building an infrastructure for launching Java-based learning [Image] agents over network-based information systems that then spawn learned "classifier agents". These classifier agents migrate to other sites and are combined by "meta-learning". The resultant "meta-classifier agents" can then migrate as well to harvest additional knowledge from other agents. The particular application under study involves fraud and intrusion detection in financial information systems. This work is being done in collaboration with the Financial Services Technology Consortium, a not-for-profit R&D organization whose members include many of the nation's largest banks and associated vendor community. 10/16/96 Microsoft Agent Microsoft Agent [15] is a set of software services that supports the presentation of ActiveX for software agents (applications that operate on the interactive software user's behalf) as interactive personalities agents ] within the Microsoft Windows interface. By providing support for visual personalities, [Image] Microsoft Agent facilitates a new form of user interaction known as a conversational interface. A conversational interface attempts to leverage natural aspects of human dialogue and social interaction (also known as a social user interface), and make user interfaces more appealing and approachable for a wider variety of users." "The conversational interface approach facilitated by the Microsoft Agent services is not a replacement for an application's conventional graphical user interface design; it is an extension and enhancement of the existing interactive modalities of the Windows interface. Microsoft Agent services are not intended as an exclusive interface any more than a mouse is a replacement for the keyboard. Character interaction can be blended with the conventional interface components such as windows, menus, and controls. Therefore, Microsoft Agent services can be used to enhance the interface of an existing application or as the exclusive interface." ( It looks like this is mainly support for simple animation to accompany interactions driven by conventional programs. -- ed) 10/28/96 __________________________________________________________________________ AGENTS ON THE NET Off-line browsing TechWeb has a page on off-line web browsing agents agents. Beyond Browsing--Offline Web Agents [16] by Joel T. Patz. "Tired of waiting for web pages to download? Offline web agents are designed to log on, get the information you need, and log off while you are performing other tasks. They come in a variety of flavors, but the most popular are designed to log onto a web site, roam through a user-definable set of levels (that is, you control how many levels of links are followed) and return the pages to your hard disk, where you can read them at your leisure. ..." The page identifies seven systems -- Folio Web Retriever 2.0, The PointCast Network 1.1, Smart Bookmarks 2.0, WebEx 1.01, WebWhacker 2.0, Freeloader 2.0, METZ Netriever 1.1 -- and includes a head-to-head comparison and a feature chart. 10/15/96 Another agent named Customized searching goes beyond the net. Gerd Bob Meissner, who helped customize the German edition of Edupage, has developed a search service called BOB, The Human Search Engine [17] , which combines searches of the Net with searches beyond the Net, to help you when you're looking for such things as: a special German saying? A bookstore in Bavaria? Or an old pal's address in Paderborn? From the requests made by private users, schools and non-profit organizations, the service chooses at least one every week to research and answer via e-mail -- for free. U.S. customers are welcome. The address is info@adline.de or http://www.adline.de. [from Edupage, 22 October 1996] 10/23/96 Browser Buddy Browser Buddy [18] bu Softbots, Inc. [19] is an Internet software agent that does WWW page fetching according to your specifications. It also helps you setup your URL collections so that they are hierarchically organized and augmented with descriptive notes. URL collections are saved in a "Choices" file for later use. To specify what you want to fetch, you open a Choices file and "select" URLs by double clicking on their labels in the URL area of the display. 10/19/96 [

Net Angels

] "The Angel turns the overwhelming Internet universe into a world personalized specifically for you. Your personal Angel profiles you and intelligently recommends places on the web that will interest you. You view these recommendations on your own World Page, and you can also store and access them in Angel Marks NetAngels' state-of-the-art bookmarking database." 10/31/96 [Image] Bot Spot [20] calls itself "the spot for all the bots on the web." Its purpose is to inform users of the latest bots and Internet agents available.10/31/96 __________________________________________________________________________ AGENT FUNDING DARPA HPKB program The DARPA High Performance Knowledge Bases [21] (HPKB) program is aimed at producing the [Image] technology needed to enable system developers to rapidly construct very large knowledge-bases that provide comprehensive coverage of topics of interest, are reusable by multiple applications with diverse problem-solving strategies, and are maintainable in rapidly changing environments. It is envisioned that the process for constructing these large, comprehensive, reusable, and maintainable knowledge bases would involve three major steps: building foundation knowledge; acquiring domain knowledge; and efficient problem solving. (BAA 96-43. CBD Reference: October 3, 1996. Close Date: December 2, 1996). DARPA Advanced DARPA's Advanced Simulation Technology Thrust Simulation program [22] program is focused on modeling synthetic military forces in simulated environments. [Image] Relevant AI/agent technologies including multi-agent collaborative decision making, collaboration/communication between humans and agents, action selection and planning, behavioral "realism" (model effects of stress and other factors on performance), adaptation and learning, etc. Proposals are due approximately 30 days from the CBD announcement on 9/23/96. 10/15/96 __________________________________________________________________________ AGENTS IN PRINT DAI in Medicine on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine will have a the WWW special issue on Distributed Artificial Intelligence in Medicine over the World Wide Web which will include papers investigating aspects of the enabling potential of the WWW to support the development of distributed AI applications in Medicine, including distributed ai architectures in medicine over the WWW and agent-based medical applications using the WWW. Papers should be submitted by March 30th, 1997. 10/15/96 Automated Negotiation Zlotkin, G. and Rosenschein, J.S. (1996), in State Oriented "Mechanisms for Automated Negotiation in State Domains Oriented Domains" [23] , Journal of AI Research, Volume 5, pages 163-238. Abstract: This paper lays part of the groundwork for a domain theory of negotiation, that is, a way of classifying interactions so that it is clear, given a domain, which negotiation mechanisms and strategies are appropriate. We define State Oriented Domains, a general category of interaction. Necessary and sufficient conditions for cooperation are outlined. We use the notion of worth in an altered definition of utility, thus enabling agreements in a wider class of joint-goal reachable situations. An approach is offered for conflict resolution, and it is shown that even in a conflict situation, partial cooperative steps can be taken by interacting agents (that is, agents in fundamental conflict might still agree to cooperate up to a certain point). A Unified Negotiation Protocol (UNP) is developed that can be used in all types of encounters. It is shown that in certain borderline cooperative situations, a partial cooperative agreement (i.e., one that does not achieve all agents' goals) might be preferred by all agents, even though there exists a rational agreement that would achieve all their goals. Finally, we analyze cases where agents have incomplete information on the goals and worth of other agents. First we consider the case where agents' goals are private information, and we analyze what goal declaration strategies the agents might adopt to increase their utility. Then, we consider the situation where the agents' goals (and therefore stand-alone costs) are common knowledge, but the worth they attach to their goals is private information. We introduce two mechanisms, one 'strict', the other 'tolerant', and analyze their affects on the stability and efficiency of negotiation outcomes. 10/29/96 -- AgentNews is an electronic newsletter published at the UMBC Lab for Advanced Information Technology [24] and is edited by Tim Finin [25] (finin@umbc.edu.) Copies of material in this newsletter may be forwarded provided they are attributed. Send comments and news items to agentnews-owner@cs.umbc.edu [26] . To subscribe, send email to majordomo@cs.umbc.edu [27] containing the string "subscribe agentnews". For more information see http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/ [28] . Custom scripting by RaHuMen. Copyright © 1996, Timothy W. Finin. ISSN 1090-306. -- [0] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentslist [1] mailto:majordomo@cs.umbc.edu [2] mailto:agents@cs.umbc.edu [3] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentslist/archive [4] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/jobs [5] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/jobs/cmu3.shtml [6] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/jobs/empirical.shtml [7] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/jobs/trondheim.shtml [8] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/jobs/franz.shtml [9] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/jobs/siemens.shtml [10] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/jobs/psu2.shtml [11] http://www.identify.com/ [12] http://www.emerge.com/ [13] http://www.identify.com/welcome/idml-faq.html [14] http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~sal/JAM/PROJECT [15] http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/agent/ [16] http://www.techweb.com/tools/agents/ [17] http://bda.web.aol.com/bda/nat/adline/ [18] http://www.softbots.com/bb_home.htm [19] http://www.softbots.com/ [20] http://www.botspot.com/ [21] http://east.isx.com/cgi-bin/WebToolkit/DocumentServer/document-server?display_topic+anonymous+844438119145730+82266931993580+8435024406890 [22] http://www.darpa.mil/baa/ASTT [23] http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/jair/abstracts/zlotkin96a.html [24] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/lait/ [25] http://umbc.edu/~finin [26] mailto:agentnews-owner@cs.umbc.edu [27] mailto:majordomo@cs.umbc.edu [28] http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/