August 1997
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This file is a list of items added to the UMBC agents pages this month
and is in maintained chronological order.
1999:
July,
1998:
Jan,
Feb,
Mar,
Apr,
May,
June,
July,
Aug,
1997:
Jan,
Feb,
Mar,
Apr,
May,
June,
July,
Aug,
Sept,
Oct,
Nov,
Dec,
1996:
Jan,
Feb,
Mar,
Apr,
May,
June,
July,
Aug,
Sept,
Oct,
Nov,
Dec,
1995:
Aug,
Sept,
Oct,
Nov,
Dec.
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Believable Chess Agents
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The NYT has a article Checkmate
and the Computer Cries which discusses attempts by commercial
chess programs to add believable-agent like qualities to their
programs.
"Gasper believes for a chess program to be realistic, it should
exhibit the same frailties humans show when they get ahead or
behind. That's how he's programmed Power Chess, a game by Sierra Online that is one of the
hottest selling chess programs on the market. "When you play most
programs, you're playing an insect-brained move picker," Gasper
said. "When ours gets behind, he gets depressed, cowers, puts too much
emphasis on defense. It's much more reminiscent of human opponents.""
Another Sierra program Power Chess
employs two chess engines, a king engine and a queen engine. Players
of the game do battle against the King while the Queen engine monitors
the match. Afterwards, the queen engine replays the moves and explains
the mistakes and missed opportunities to the human opponent.
The Queen does so using an alluring -- to some sultry -- voice of a
French actress. "When we were in testing, we asked people what they
thought of the voice, and they said, 'oh, I could listen to her all
day,' " said Gasper. "When I set out to program this game, I spent
months reading usenet postings on computer-chess bulletin boards,"
Gasper said. "What I kept hearing is 'it's not as much fun to play a
program as a human being. The problem with computers is they don't
squirm.' "
8/15/97
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Search Engine Watch
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Search Engine Watch
is a nice collection of information on web search engines. Creator and
maintainer Danny Sullivan, of Calafia
Consulting, say "It contains all that "A Webmaster's Guide to
Search Engines" had, plus it is more accessible to search engine
users. The site remains grounded in the technical. How do these things
work, or more specifically, how well do these things work. It also
remains committed to tracking search engine news, important changes,
and providing quality information about these important tools. The
information from continuing studies, search engine help pages,
articles, reviews, books, tips from others, feedback received directly
from the various search engines, and interviews I conduct in the
course of covering the search engine beat." They also run a mailing
list devoted to search engines.
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KQML+CORBA
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"A KQML-CORBA Based Architecture for the Communication of Intelligent
Agents in Cooperative Service and Network Management", D. Benech,
T. Desprats, Y. Raynaud (Universite Paul Sabatier, France), First
IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of
Multimedia Networks and Services '97, July 8-10, 1997, Montréal,
Canada.
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Alexa
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Alexa Internet (founded
in April 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat describes itself as
"The company gathers, manages and analyzes multi-terabyte collections
of information to make information access and navigation easy for
everyone." Their first product is Alexa -- a client program (as
opposed to a plug-in or proxy server) that has two components -- the
toolbar and the contact system. As you browse the Web, the Alexa
toolbar contacts their servers independently and separate from your
Web browser. Alexa provides the following services:
- Where Am I? -- Alexa provides context for a site visited by
offering instant background information (e.g., number of pages,
frequency of updates, number of links into the site, popularity, etc.)
so you can decide if it is worthwhile.
- What happened to my page? -- Alexa gives you automatic access to
unavailable web pages through their archive, eliminating the problem
of "404 Not Found" messages.
- Where should I go next? -- Wherever you travel online, Alexa is
there with suggestions hot-linked to places you might want to visit
next.
- Who else is online? -- Alexa tells you instantly which of your
friends and colleagues are currently online, and lets you send an
instant message so you can communicate with them in real-time.
The first two services are provided using their own archive of the Web
which, as of July 1997, is in excess of five Terabytes. Alexa began
collecting the Web in early 1996 and now has at least one snapshot of
over 500K web sites. They adjust site visits to reflect their apparent
speed of change and estimate that they have a new snapshot
approximately every 60 days. The browsing suggestions are computing
using collaborative filtering over the database of paths taken by
Alexa users (with suitable privacy
safeguards).
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MacroBot -- write search agent scripts in Basic
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Information Projects Group, Inc of Reston, Virginia has released MacroBot -- a
programmable search agent which runs under windows 95 or NT ($50 for
the Pro version and $30 for the LITE version). They say... "MacroBot
is the first agent software program that uses Basic as a programming
language thereby giving users a simple yet sophisticated way to
extract meaningful data from web sites connected to the Internet (or
an Intranet) -- worldwide. With MacroBot users can write or download
simple 'macro' programs that tell the bot what to do. Some macros are
included with the software and they are easy to create and share with
friends and colleagues. Macros included are; link checker (every web
author should have one), email address extractor, keyword search of
web site(s) in title or text, and site map." 8/5/97 |
let your browser do the hard work
|
Ken Laws
reports in TCC 7.51 that Let Your Browser Do the
Hard Work is a website about off-line programs that can monitor
and download web pages automatically, then browse the cache on your
hard disk. 27 programs are listed, most of them shareware with
limited free trials. 8/5/97
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UNICOM agent seminars
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UNICOM Seminars is running a
series of agent related seminars and tutorials in London on 6-9
October 1997. Titles in the series include Agents and HCI, Agents in
Telecoms, Agents in Information Systems, Intelligent Systems and
Software Agents for Finance.
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KR'98
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Sixth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge
Representation and Reasoning (KR'98) will be helf in Trento,
Italy, June 2-5, 1998 with workshops and coordinated events May 30 -
June 1). Extended abstracts are due Monday December 1, 1997.
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Matsushita's VRML virtual humans
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TechWire has an article Virtual
Humans To Populate The Internet which describes Matsushita's
recent announcement of 3-D computer graphics software for creating
animated virtual humans for use over the Internet. Matsushita will
demonstrate the technology at SigGraph '97 and will make a free beta
version of a VRML 2.0 browser and contents available for downloading
later in the month. Matsushita has submitted the technology to the
VRML Consortium for consideration as an industry standard for 3-D
animation.
8/5/97
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P-2
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The Japanese carmaker Honda has developed P2
- the first human-shaped robot which can move independently and do
basic manual tasks. The battery powered P-2 stands six feet tall,
weighs 462 pounds and resembles an astronaut in a space suit. It has
its own autonomous control process and can walk, change direction, and
go up and down stairs without the need for human instructions. It can
even correct its own balance automatically. Honda says it can also be
moved by radio remote control and programmed to do various jobs with
two hands. A 30 second quicktime movie shows P2
walking, sidestepping, climbing steps and grabbing handles.
8/4/97
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MOLE 2.0 now available
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The MOLE group at the University of Stuttgart announced the
availability of MOLE
2.0, a Java-based mobile agent system. New features include: easier
installation and usage; Moleview, the graphical system monitor and
various internal improvements.
8/4/97
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Learning in Autonomous Robots
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Henry Hexmoor and Maja Mataric are guest editing a special issue of
the Autonomous Robots Journal on
Learning in Autonomous Robots. Papers should be submitted by
August 15, 1997.
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PAAM'98
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PAAM98 - The Third
International Conference and Exhibition on The Practical Application
of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology will be held Monday
23rd March - Wednesday 25th March 1998 in London. PAAM98 will provide
tutorials, invited talks, refereed papers, panel discussions, poster
session, social agenda and a full industrial exhibition. PAAM'98 will
form part of a five day Practical Application Expo which will also
include conferences on Data Mining, Prolog, Constraint and Knowledge
Management Technology. Submitted papers or industrial reports
describing current or near-term practical applications of agent
technology by December 5th, 1997.
8/4/97
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Agents' world |
Agents' World will be a multi-conference on agents and
multi-agent systems held 2-8 July 1998 at Cite des Sciences - La
Villette in Paris. The renowned Cite des Sciences at the Parc de la
Villette in Paris sets the scene for an international conference, six
international workshops, and an international competition in a
week-filling programme of invited talks, demonstrations, technical
presentations and pannel discussions. The components are:
- ICMAS'98 --
the 3rd International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems,
focusing on theory and practice of multi-agent systems.
- ATAL'98 -- the 5th Int. W. on Agents : Theories, Architectures,
and Languages, focusing on theory and practice of intelligent agents.
-
CIA'98 -- the 2nd Int. W. on Cooperative Information Agents,
focusing on multi-agent systems and databases
- IATA'98 -- the
Intelligent Agents for Telecommunications Applications, focusing on
multi-agent systems and telecommunications
-
CRW'98 Collective Robotics -- Focusing on Multi-Agent Systems
and Robotics
- ACW'98
-- Agents in CommunityWare, focusing on multi-agent systems and
telematics.
- MABS'98 -- Multi-Agent Systems and Agent-Based
Simulation, focusing on multi-agent systems, social sciences,
artificial life
- Paris'98 --
Featuring Robocup'98 and FIRA RWC'98, international competitions
between soccer robots teams
8/4/97
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Intelligent User Interfaces |
The 1998 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces
will be held January 6-9, 1998 in San Francisco, California, USA.
8/4/97
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ILU 2.0 |
An alpha release of the The Inter-Language Unification system (ILU)
version 2.0 is available as source for UNIX or Windows or pre-built
Windows binaries at ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/ilu.html.
ILU is a multi-language object interface system. The object
interfaces provided by ILU hide implementation distinctions between
different languages, between different address spaces, and between
operating system types. ILU interfaces can be specified in either the
OMG's IDL language, or in ILU's Interface Specification Language,
which allows extensions to the CORBA spec. Programming languages
supported in 2.0alpha10 are ANSI C, Common Lisp, Java, and Python;
rough C++ support is also present. Operating systems supported in
2.0alpha10 are all Windows platforms with Win32 and WinSock, and all
UNIX platforms with BSD sockets and minimal POSIX compliance.
2.0alpha10 supports interoperability with ONC RPC services, OMG CORBA
services, World Wide Web HTTP services, and XNS Courier services.
``Plug-in'' extensibility is provided for RPC message formats, message
transport schemes, URL schemes, accounting and authorization identity
types, threading and event loop processing, and various other things.
ILU is provided free for unrestricted use.
8/4/97
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Jango, a stealth shopbot
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Jango is a free "intelligent
shopping assistant" for Windows 95/NT, from Netbot, Inc. in Seattle.
You enter a product name and Jango will bring back specs, reviews,
vendors, and prices. Then it helps you fill our order forms.
Netbot's parallel search technology is from the work of Oren Etzioni
and Dan Weld at UWashington. Jango runs in your browser, so online
stores can't easily recognize or block it.
8/4/97
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OPENARCH'98
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The First IEEE Conference on Open Architectures and Network
Programming (
OPENARCH'98) will be held on April 3-4, 1998 in San Francisco, CA,
USA, at the Hotel Nikko. The conference is sponsored by the IEEE
Communications Society and will be co-located and organized in
conjunction with INFOCOM'98. Authors are invited to submit papers,
and proposals for tutorials and panel discussions that address areas
which include:
- Active Networks
- Intelligent Agents and Trading
- Information Representation, Modeling and Abstractions
- Programming for Mobility
- Interactive Multimedia, Multi-party Cooperation and Groupware
8/4/97
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Kafka
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A beta version of Kafka: Yet
Another Multi-Agent Library for Java is available. Kafka is yet
another agent library designed for constructing multi-agent based
distributed applications. Kafka is a flexible, extendable, and
easy-to-use java class library for programmers who are familiar with
distributed programming. Its features include:
- Runtime Reflection: Agents can modify their behaviour (program
codes) at runtime. The behaviour of the agent is represented by an
abstract class Action. It is useful for remote maintenance or
installation services.
- Remote Evaluation: Agents can receive and evaluate program codes
(classes) with or without the serialized object. Remote evaluation is
a fundamental function of a mobile agent and is thought to be a push
model of service delivery.
- Distributed Name Service: Agents have any number of logical names
that don't contain the host name. These names can be managed by the
distributed directories.
- Customizable security policy :a very flexible, customizable,
3-layered security model is implemented in Kafka.
- 100% Java and RMI compatible: Kafka is written completely in
Java. Agent is a Java RMI server object itself. So, agents can
directly communicate with other RMI objects.
8/4/97
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Java Mobile Agents
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There will be a workshop on Java-based
Paradigms for Mobile Agent Facilities as part of the OOPSLA 97
conference to be held in Atlanta between October 5-9, 1997. The
workshop is on sunday, October 5th.
8/4/97
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ABIR
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Iam Soboroff (ian@cs.umbc.edu) is
maintaining a page on
Agent-based Information Retrieval . It inclu slides from a recent
tutorial presentation at SIGIR'97.
8/4/97
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IBM's WBI
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IBM is making WBI (Web
Browser Intelligence, pronounced "webby") available by license. WBI
can be used to provide such agent enhancements as:
- annotate web pages with news bulletins, ads, or reminders
- track electronic purchases, and provide summaries & reminders
- filter or manage push information content
- develop expert "persona" while searching or browsing
The WBI Personal Web Agent for 95/NT/OS2 can be downloaded
free for personal use. To learn more about the WBI development kit and
technology that built the personal agent, see WBI Technology and
Development Toolkit. You can also read the Press Release.
8/4/97
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Jess 3.0
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Ernest Friedman-Hill of Sandia has released
Jess 3.0. This is a
final release of Jess, a clone of the popular
CLIPS expert system shell written entirely in Java. Jess 3.0 adds
significant new features like multifields, multislots, and incremental
reset, includes a number of bug fixes, a more flexible user function
interface, *lots* of new built-in functions, and a general code
cleanup and reorganization (a 'jess' package.) Jess 3.0 is compatible
with all versions of Java starting with version 1.0.2. It is (in
particular) Java 1.1.3 compatible.
8/3/97
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Intelligent Environments
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Intelligent
Environments Symposium will be part of the AAAI Spring Symposium
Series held March 23-25, 1998 at Stanford University. "Intelligent
Environments are spaces in which computation is seamlessly used to
enhance ordinary activity. ... Interaction with these environments
should be in terms of forms that people are naturally comfortable
with. Their user-interface primitives are not menus, mice and windows
but gesture, speech, context, and affect. At least in theory, it
should be possible for a person to forget she is using a computer
while interacting with one. Building Intelligent Environments
requires a unique breadth of knowledge that extends beyond any of the
traditional boundaries of AI research areas. The purpose of this
symposium is to bring together researchers from various AI backgrounds
to discuss the issues involved in creating these complex, interactive,
embedded systems. We expect to have relevant contributions from
interested researchers in computer vision, software agents, knowledge
representation, robotics, machine learning, and speech understanding."
8/3/97
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