Reconnaissance Agents

Henry Lieberman MIT Media Lab Home Page Software Agents End-User Programming Common Sense

Library Assistant Analogy

Reconnaissance Agent Desktop History Bookmarks Usage User Profile Open Documents Information Sources suggestions

Integrate information retrieval in desktop applications As user writes, browses, creates Zero-input interface No context switch to search Impromptu information discovery

Letizia Local Reconnaissance As user looks at document, use idle time to crawl and choose best “link” “Link” not just one degree away: the neighborhood of the page Letizia Demo (film clip)Letizia Demo

Powerscout Global Reconnaissance Semantic Neighborhood of page Concept Browsing “the idea of browsing links not specified by a document's author, but nonetheless semantically relevant to the document being viewed. This auxiliary set of links... might not even have existed when the page was created”

Powerscout Profiles Each of us wears different hats during the day. Hat == Profile. Profile is a set of ordered terms along with a notebook: pages, notes, searches. One profile is the “current” profile –user can “Add page to profile”

Powerscout Process Using terms from page and current profile, send complex query to search engine. If few results, relax constraints and send less keywords. and/or combinations User can view what the system is doing and edit.

Similar Systems Margin Notes –Breaks document down into sections –Sends separate queries for each section, listing results in margins. –Also considered desktop. Rhodes coined term “remembrance agent”. Watson Bradley Rhodes