UMBC AgentNews v5n27                             Tue Sep 19 20:00:21 2000
The past 12 days of news from AgentWeb (http://agents.umbc.edu/).
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                          A specification, design, procedure, or test plan
                           that will not fit on one page of 8.5-by-11 inch
                                               paper cannot be understood."
                                              -- Mark Ardis, Wang Institute

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-- LATEST NEWS ITEMS ------------------------------------------------------

Can Robots Rule the World? Not Yet -- A NYT article on the Humanoids
2000 conference. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/12/science/12ROBO.html

Robots "R" us -- A Salon.com article which reviews the new book Robo
sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, by Peter Menzel, Faith D'Aluisio. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.salon.com/tech/books/2000/09/14/robo_sapiens/index.html

FIPA-OS 1.31. released -- A new release of Nortel's FIPA platform is
available. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.nortelnetworks.com/products/announcements/fipa/index.html

The Net As One Giant Brain -- A ZDNet article on efforts to use
peer-to-peer computing ideas to deliver distributed computing services
on the Internet. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2628734,00.html

University of Maine Agent Institute Seminar Series -- The University
of Maine and the Agent Institute are holding a series of 6 workshops
between September 2000 and June 2001. These meetings are designed to
introduce agent based technology and current research to the
development and industrial/commercial markets while at the same time
introducing researchers to their market partners (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.agent.maine.edu/seminar.stm

JADE 3.0 FIPA platform -- Version 2.0 of the Java Agent Development
framework is out. This new version complies with the FIPA 2000 standard. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://sharon.cselt.it/projects/jade/

Interview with Sims creator Will Wright -- A feedmag.com interview
with Will Wright, the creator of some of the most popular simulation
games including simcity and The Sims. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.feedmag.com/re/re389_master.html


-- LATEST DIRECTORY ADDITIONS -------------------------------------

WebWrappers.com -- Webwrappers makes "... Programmable Agents for
E-Cataloging, Automation, Data Aggregation and Integration". (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.webwrappers.com/

agentTool -- The agentTool system is a tool to support and enforce the
Multiagent Systems Engineering methodology.  agentTool version 1.7
implements the entire MaSE process including Capturing Goals, Applying
Use Cases, Refining Roles, Creating Agent Classes, Constructing
Conversations, Assembling Agent Classes, and System Design.
Capabilities of agentTool include graphical analysis and design of
multiagent systems from high-level organizational design to low-level
component design.  agentTool also includes Java code generation
capability for agentMom, an simple socket-based communication
infrastructure, and Carolina, a multiagent framework under development
at the University of Connecticut. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://en.afit.af.mil/ai/agentool.htm

Saffron Technology -- Saffron technologies is a startup working on
machine learning for personalization with applications to
ecommerce. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.saffrontech.com/

Multi-Agent Platform Survey -- Pierre-Michel Ricordel, Yves Demazeau,
"From Analysis to Deployment: a Multi-Agent Platform Survey",
Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Engineering
Societies in the Agents' World, Berlin, August 2000. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.lia.deis.unibo.it/confs/ESAW00/Notes.shtml

Topia ventures -- Topia Personal Agents are a class of software that
performs tasks on clients' behalf. The Topia Personal Agent fulfills
requests by finding, acquiring, filtering and delivering information,
negotiating for services and products, collaborating with other agents
to complete tasks and monitoring agent activities.  The Topia Personal
Agents are goal-centered and autonomous. Once the agent has received a
goal, it makes decisions to carry out tasks in the best possible way,
and performs these actions freeing you to engage in other
activities. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.topiaventures.com/flash.html

AAAI symposium on Game and Decision Theoretic Agents -- Papers are due
on October 9, 2000. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://matisse.uta.edu/GTDT2001/

DELTA: DEscription Language for TAxonomy -- The DELTA format
(DEscription Language for TAxonomy) is a flexible method for encoding
taxonomic descriptions for computer processing. It has been adopted by
the International Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) as a
standard for data exchange. DELTA-format data can be used to produce
natural-language descriptions, interactive or conventional keys,
cladistic or phenetic classifications, and information-retrieval
systems. (9/19)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/

Media Semantics, Inc. -- Media Semantics, Inc. develops intelligent
user-interface technology for media applications and includes support
for animated agents. (9/9)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.mediasemantics.com/

Native Minds -- "NativeMinds is the leading provider of automated,
natural language sales and customer service solutions for the Web and beyond." (9/9)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://nicole-sf1.nativeminds.com/default.html

An Extensible Approach for Modeling Ontologies in RDF(S) -- An
Extensible Approach for Modeling Ontologies in RDF(S), ECDL 2000
Workshop on the Semantic Web, 21 September 2000, Lisbon Portugal,
Steffen Staab, Michael Erdmann, Alexander Maedche, Stefan Decker (9/9)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.ics.forth.gr/proj/isst/SemWeb/proceedings/session2-1/html_version/index.html

PRIMA 2001 -- Fourth Pacific Rim International Workshop on
Multi-Agents (PRIMA'2001) will be held July 28-29, 2001 at the Grand
Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan with papers due April 5, 2001 (9/9)
http://agents.umbc.edu/cgi-bin/raw?url=http://www.lab7.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/prima2001/

--

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