Using Agents to Improve the Usability and Usefulness of the World-Wide Web

The World-Wide Web (WWW) has emerged as a new type of information space. Its lack of central control mechanisms leads to many interesting new features but at the same time has the potential danger that users can drown in irrelevant information. To address and overcome problems of global information spaces such as the WWW, we have designed and implemented a framework to integrate agents into the use of the WWW. The agents filter information, initiate communication, monitor events, and perform tasks. The agents rely on usage profiles to adapt their assistance to specific users. In this paper we describe the unique challenges of a WWW-type information space, present the design rationale and conceptual framework behind our work, and illustrate with scenarios the use of the system.

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