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"A bibliography of 20 titles is useful ... but what do we
do with one of 10,000 titles obtained by pushing a
computer button? Into the wastebasket! Just so,
photocopying kills reading, and therefore understanding.
Before, I would have gone to the library and taken notes
on the books which interested me. Now, I am content to
carry home this reservoir of knowledge which I have
photocopied -- because it's easy -- and which I never
again will open.
-- Umberto Eco.
THIS ISSUE

Volume 2,Number 3
March 10, 1997
Baltimore, MD

 http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/1997/03/
Modified Monday, 10-Mar-1997 12:36:21 EST
AGENT NEWS

AgentNews Reminder

 Each issue of AgentNews is available as a web page but you can get it via email in one of three forms -- ascii, html or url. The default is to receive each copy as ascii text (i.e., not marked up with HTML) with the URLs for the major links represented textually as footnotes. The URL to the original source is listed just after the date at the top of each issue so if you read your mail with a web-aware mail reader, you can click on this link to view the HTML version. If you prefer, you can get each issue as the full HTML source or as just a URL pointing to the source. See http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentnews/about.shtml for details on subscriptions. Issues are published on an irregular basis. If it's been a while since you've seen one and you need a fix of agent news, you can view the raw material for the next issue on the UMBC AgentWeb What's New page.

Positions available

 New agent-related positions were posted by NEC , University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand , NEC Europe Ltd C&C Research Laboratories, Berlin, Germany , and Information Extraction & Transport (IET), Inc. .
AGENT TECHNOLOGY

Swarm 1.0.0 out

The Sante Fe Institute has released Swarm version 1.0.0 It's available via the web pages ( http://www.santafe.edu/projects/swarm) or by ftp (ftp://ftp.santafe.edu/pub/swarm). This release is primarily a cleanup of the previous beta releases to provide a stable version as the first production release of Swarm. Additional demo applications and documentation have also been added. 2/4/97
AGENT THEORY

Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

Did you ever wonder what a zombie running a chinese room on Twin-earth would be like? If you are a bit uncertain, you might want to consult the Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind which is being compiled by Chris Eliasmith (Department of Philosophy of Washington University in St. Louis). It is intended "as a free resource to all those interested in the philosophy of mind." He is " especially interested in receiving submissions to the dictionary so it will grow uncontrollably - and become actually useful." 2/24/97
AGENT STANDARDS

Open Intelligent Agent Platforms and Protocols

 The Agent Society held a design workshop on Open Intelligent Agent Platforms and Protocols at the first meeting of the "Agent Interop Working Group" just after the Agents'97 conference. A second meeting will be held just after the PAAM'97 conference in London, 24-25 Apr 1997. For more information send email to info@agent.org, or phone its temporary Secretariat at +1 408.774.6950.

Proposed FIPA ACL

 Yannis Labrou and Tim Finin offer some comments on the current draft specification for the FIPA proposal for a standard language for agent-to-agent communication .
MOBILE AGENTS

Tubular mobile code

 The Tube is a mobile code system developed by David Halls (dah28@cl.cam.ac.uk). It is a portable platform for the remote execution of Scheme programs. Programs (or REPs for Remotely Executable Programs) can be written which will run on any machine in a heterogenous network of computers. Further details are available in: There is a Netscape plug-in that allows "Tubelets" to be referred to from inside WWW pages. The plugin forwards Tubelets onto a REP-site for execution. 2/24/97

Kali Scheme

Kali Scheme is a distributed implementation of Scheme developed at the NEC Research Institute that permits efficient transmission of higher-order objects such as closures and continuations. The integration of distributed communication facilities within a higher-order programming language engenders a number of new abstractions and paradigms for distributed computing, including user-specified load-balancing and migration policies for threads, incrementally-linked distributed computations, and parameterized client-server applications. See Software can be downloaded .

Mobile Agents in Java

Danny Lange and Mitsuru Oshima of IBM Research are working on a book "Mobile Agents in Java - With the Java Aglet API". An outline and draft of the initial chapters are available on the wev. Planned chapters include: 1. Preface; 2. Elements of the Java Aglet API; 3. Anatomy of an Aglet; 4 .Aglet Context; 5. Working With the Proxy; 6. Aglet Messaging; 7. Trip Planning with the Itinerary; 8. Aglet Usage Patterns; and 9. Aglet Security as well as appendices 1. Examples and 2. The Java Aglet API. 3/3/97
AGENTS ON THE NET

Firefly Passports

Firefly Network, Inc. has announced an open client/server platform to allow other applications to use their collaborative filtering technology. Firefly says that using its software tools, "businesses can register, recognize and manage end-user profiles; create personalized communities on-line; deliver personalized content to end-users; serve highly targeted advertisements; incorporate compelling chat capabilities; and more accurately measure and report on end-user activity." Firefly's approach is based on "a trusted profile management architecture which makes possible the exchange of information, both business to business and between businesses and end-users. When end-users register at any Firefly-enabled site or application they receive a Firefly Passport, which serves as their mobile profile." For more information, see the Firefly press release . 3/10/97

LiveAgent Agent Creator


AgentSoft has released a beta version of the LiveAgent personal agent builder. Creating your own Java agent is as simple as browsing. Build your agent by going through a regular browsing session --- LiveAgent records what you have done, creating an agent that can then be replayed. Agents can be "trained" to perform routine tasks on the Web and can generate user-defined browsing reports. Agents can be further customized after creation by setting parameters on launch. LiveAgent comes with SearchAgent -- a prerecorded Java agent that does multi-site Web searches. SearchAgent takes a query from the user, goes to several search engines (such as Yahoo, Lycos, and Excite) in parallel, sorts the results, removes duplicates, and returns a ranked, consolidated list of sites. The search can be customized, with the user specifying filtering criteria (e.g., which Internet domains to search), which search engines to visit, sorting criteria, and stopping conditions. LiveAgent Pro, an agent software development kit for Java programmers will be released in 1Q97 and will include Java classes, templates, and sample code that speeds the development of agent applications. 2/4/97

iAgent

iAgent is an information retrieval product developed by the Information Technology Institute in Singapore. It features a multi-lingual IR engine, and various agent-oriented features. 3/4/97

Netscape's Orion to feature agents

Netscape has announced that a forthcoming version of its SuiteSpot server suite will include "will include agent creation and management tools that will help track and administer applets running on Web clients or servers.". A Netscapeworld article says...
"Other modular upgrades for the next version of SuiteSpot, which is code-named Orion, are also scheduled for a staggered roll-out during the next 12 months. The company's intranet white paper repeatedly refers to agents and agent management as critical future technologies for the entire SuiteSpot line.

Although Netscape officials would not discuss specific details of the applet-management-agent feature set, the agent technology is expected to highlight the next SuiteSpot release.

"Watch for a number of things in the 3.0 Version of Enterprise Server," said Marc Andreessen, Netscape's chief technology officer. "There will be agent creation for all of the services so that information can be pushed instead of pulled." This means one of the first places this agent technology will surface is in Netscape's e-mail servers, which will make use of agents to automatically perform certain functions and route processes in workflow applications.
...
The use of agents to manage applets on the network could solve a number of problems, said Rob Enderle, an industry analyst for Giga Information Group, in Santa Clara, CA.

"With agents, you could restrict the type of applets you collect into some sort of repository of trusted applets," Enderle said.

Agents that provide centralized management of Java applets or plug-ins have yet to be deployed. One vendor pursuing this is Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp., in Austin, TX, which also is developing agents for managing Java applets."

3/6/97

A troup of retrieval agents

 Netscape world has a table of links to over 20 "retrieval agents" which can be downloaded. They include:
Agentware (Autonomy) ; AnchorPage (Iconovex) ; AppControl (Seagate Software) ; EchoSearch (Iconovex) ; Freeloader (Individual) ; Headliner (Lanacom) ; Hotbot (Inktomi) ; MagnetSearch (CompassWare Development) ; Net Attache (Tympani Development) ; Netriever 2.0 (Metz Software) ; Personalized Commerce Agents (Personal) ; SEARCH'97 Information Server (Verity); SEARCH'97 Personal for Microsoft Exchange (Verity); SEARCH'97 Personal (Verity) ; SearchPDF for Web Servers (Verity) ; Secret Agent (Arial Communications); Smart Bookmarks 3.0 Beta 2 (FirstFloor) ; SmartSearch (Xilinx) ; Surfbot (SurfLogic) ; Web Retriever 2.1 (Folio) ; WebAnchor (Iconovex); WebCompass (Quarterdeck) ; Zooworks (Hitachi Software) ;
3/6/97
AGENT EVENTS

Constraints and Agents

 The AAAI-97 Workshop on Constraints and Agents will focus on research at the interface of constraint and agent technology. It will encompass both the modeling of agent issues, e.g. negotiation, as constraint satisfaction and optimization problems, and the use of agents to solve constraint satisfaction and optimization problems, e.g. distributed scheduling problems. It will concern both hardware agents and software agents. Submit postscript electronically to the Logistics Chair by March 11, 1997. 2/4/97

Unicom agents seminars

UNICOM Seminars is running two events on Intelligent Agents in March 1997:
  • 17 March 1997 - Agent Theory and IUI Tutorial - led by Pattie Maes, MIT Media Lab & Jim Alty., Loughborough University.
  • 18 March 1997 - Working with Agents - Speakers include: Mike Wooldridge, Zuno Ltd; Christine Guilfoyle, The Trefoyle Partnership; Innes Ferguson, Zuno Ltd; Mike Lynch, AutoNomy; Dieter Wenger, Swiss Bank.
2/4/97

European Conference on Planning

Sam Steel (sam@essex.ac.uk) reports that the Fourth European Conference on Planning (formerly the European Workshop on Planning) will be held 24/25/26 September 1997 in Toulouse, France. The workshop proceedings will be published shortly after the workshop in book form by the international publisher Springer-Verlag, as part of the well-known Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series. Topics of interest include multi-agent planning. Submission deadline: 3 May 1997. 2/24/97
AGENTS IN PRINT

Mobile Code Bibliography

 Jeremy Hylton (jeremy@cnri.reston.va.us) has developed a mobile code bibliography which currently includes 78 entries mobile code, mobile agents, and related systems. It is available in three forms: with abstracts, without abstracts and as BibTeX source. The citations focus on system support for mobile agents, code mobility (i.e., code is shipped between nodes), safety and security for mobile code, and and active networks (i.e., packets contain code executed at routers.) Jeremy would like to receive corrections and appropriate contributions (in Bibtex) by email using "mobile code bibliography" as the subject. 3/7/97

Simulated Social Control for Secure Internet Commerce

Simulated Social Control for Secure Internet Commerce, Lars Rasmusson Sverker Jansson, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, 1 April, 1996. Abstract: In this paper we suggest that soft security such as social control has to be used to create secure open systems. Social control means that it is the participants themselves who are responsible for the security, as opposed to leaving the security to some external or global authority. Social mechanisms don't deny the existence of malicious participants. Instead they are aiming at avoiding interaction with them. This makes them more robust than hard security mechanisms such as passwords, who reveal everything if they are bypassed. We describe our work in progress of constructing a workbench to run simulations of electronic markets. By examining the success of different security mechanisms to avoid maliciously behaving actors we hope to gain insight into how to create electronic markets. The idea of creating reputations for the participants is discussed. Finally some legal aspects on using social control and reputation as security mechanisms are discussed. 3/5/97

Intelligent Interfaces

Annika Wærn of SICS has made available notes from an introductory seminar on What is an Intelligent Interface? given in March 1997. The notes cover What is not an intelligent interface?, Scope of intelligent interfaces, State of the Art in Intelligent Interfaces, Application areas for Intelligent Interfaces, Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Interfaces and Design Considerations for Intelligent Interfaces. It also includes references and links to additional material. 2/27/97

Let KQML do the shopping?

 The March issue of Computer Shopper had an article on KQML and software agents. KQML at Your Service, Stephen W. Plain. "The autonomous agent is one of the hottest and most promising advances in computing..."

IEEE Internet computing special issue on Agents

A special issue of IEEE Internet Computing on Agents is being edited by Munindar Singh (singh@ncsu.edu) and Michael Huhns (huhns@sc.edu). The issue seeks papers which address
"What kinds of agents are performing useful work on the Internet? Papers should clearly define both the applications and technologies being used as well as the sense of "agent." Applications should be demonstrable. Issues include security, mobility, and agent communication languages. Claims about the efficacy of one approach or language should be supported by examples from applications."
The deadline for this issue is March 15, 1997.

IJAI special issue on Intelligent Adaptive Agents

Ibrahim Fahmi Imam (iimam@aic.gmu.edu) is editing a special issue of The International Journal of Applied Intelligence on Intelligent Adaptive Agents. Submit a a title and abstract together with contact information, and key words by March 15 and a full copy by April 10.

Mobile Object Systems: Towards the Programmable Internet

Mobile Object Systems: Towards the Programmable Internet, Jan Vitek and Christian Tschudin Eds., Second International Workshop, MOS'96, Linz, Austria, July 1996, Selected Presentations and Invited Papers, Springer-Verlag, LNCS 1222, April 1997. "This book presents a collection of papers dealing with different aspects of mobile computations. Mobile computations are computations that are not bound to single locations, but may move at will to best use the computer network's resources. In this view, the network becomes a single, vast, programmable environment. Among computer scientists, many feel that this approach will have a profound effect on the way we design and implement distributed applications, and they agree that we are witnessing a paradigm change. However, this new and exciting paradigm requires advances, both theoretical and applied, in fields such as programming languages (where we need a sound semantic foundation and efficient implementations), operating systems and software safety and security. Some of the first steps towards a programmable Internet are documented here."
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