Patent Grant
6845370
The present invention relates to agent based systems and more particularly to an agent based system which automatically creates background information for an upcoming event.
Agent based technology has become increasingly important for use with applications designed to interact with a user for performing various computer based tasks in foreground and background modes. Agent software comprises computer programs that are set on behalf of users to perform routine, tedious and time-consuming tasks. To be useful to an individual user, an agent must be personalized to the individual user's goals, habits and preferences. Thus, there exists a substantial requirement for the agent to efficiently and effectively acquire user-specific knowledge from the user and utilize it to perform tasks on behalf of the user.
The concept of agency, or the user of agents, is well established. An agent is a person authorized by another person, typically referred to as a principal, to act on behalf of the principal. In this manner the principal empowers the agent to perform any of the tasks that the principal is unwilling or unable to perform. For example, an insurance agent may handle all of the insurance requirements for a principal, or a talent agent may act on behalf of a performer to arrange concert dates.
With the advent of the computer, a new domain for employing agents has arrived. Significant advances in the realm of expert systems enable computer programs to act on behalf of computer users to perform routine, tedious and other time-consuming tasks. These computer programs are referred to as “software agents.”
Moreover, there has been a recent proliferation of computer and communication networks. These networks permit a user to access vast amounts of information and services without, essentially, any geographical boundaries. Thus, a software agent has a rich environment to perform a large number of tasks on behalf of a user. For example, it is now possible for an agent to make an airline reservation, purchase the ticket, and have the ticket delivered directly to a user. Similarly, an agent could scan the Internet and obtain information ranging from the latest sports or news to a particular graduate thesis in applied physics. Current solutions fail to apply agent technology to existing calendar technology to provide targeted acquisition of background information for a user's upcoming events.
According to a broad aspect of a preferred embodiment of the invention, an agent based system assists in preparing an individual for an upcoming meeting by helping him/her retrieve relevant information about the meeting from various sources. The system obtains input text in character form indicative of the target meeting from the a calendar program that includes the time of the meeting. As the time of the meeting approaches, the calendar program is queried to obtain the text of the target event and that information is utilized as input to the agent system. Then, the agent system parses the input meeting text to extract its various components such as title, body, participants, location, time etc. The system also performs pattern matching to identify particular meeting fields in a meeting text. This information is utilized to query various sources of information on the web and obtain relevant stories about the current meeting to send back to the calendaring system. For example, if an individual has a meeting with Netscape and Microsoft to talk about their disputes, the system obtains this initial information from the calendaring system. It will then parse out the text to realize that the companies in the meeting are “Netscape” and “Microsoft” and the topic is “disputes”. It will then surf the web for relevant information concerning the topic. Thus, in accordance with an objective of the invention, the system updates the calendaring system and eventually the user with the best information it can gather to prepare for the target meeting. In accordance with a preferred embodiment, the information is stored in a file that is obtained via selection from a link imbedded in the calendar system.
The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages are better understood from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, in which:
A preferred embodiment of a system in accordance with the present invention is preferably practiced in the context of a personal computer such as an IBM compatible personal computer, Apple MACINTOSH computer or UNIX based workstation. A representative hardware environment is depicted in
A preferred embodiment is written using JAVA, C, and the C++ language and utilizes object oriented programming methodology. Object oriented programming (OOP) has become increasingly used to develop complex applications. As OOP moves toward the mainstream of software design and development, various software solutions require adaptation to make use of the benefits of OOP. A need exists for these principles of OOP to be applied to a messaging interface of an electronic messaging system such that a set of
OOP classes and objects for the messaging interface can be provided. OOP is a process of developing computer software using objects, including the steps of analyzing the problem, designing the system, and constructing the program. An object is a software package that contains both data and a collection of related structures and procedures. Since it contains both data and a collection of structures and procedures, it can be visualized as a self-sufficient component that does not require other additional structures, procedures or data to perform its specific task. OOP, therefore, views a computer program as a collection of largely autonomous components, called objects, each of which is responsible for a specific task. This concept of packaging data, structures, and procedures together in one component or module is called encapsulation.
In general, OOP components are reusable software modules which present an interface that conforms to an object model and which are accessed at run-time through a component integration architecture. A component integration architecture is a set of architecture mechanisms which allow software modules in different process spaces to utilize each others capabilities or functions. This is generally done by assuming a common component object model on which to build the architecture.
It is worthwhile to differentiate between an object and a class of objects at this point. An object is a single instance of the class of objects, which is often just called a class. A class of objects can be viewed as a blueprint, from which many objects can be formed.
OOP allows the programmer to create an object that is a part of another object. For example, the object representing a piston engine is said to have a composition-relationship with the object representing a piston. In reality, a piston engine comprises a piston, valves and many other components; the fact that a piston is an element of a piston engine can be logically and semantically represented in OOP by two objects.
OOP also allows creation of an object that “depends from” another object. If there are two objects, one representing a piston engine and the other representing a piston engine wherein the piston is made of ceramic, then the relationship between the two objects is not that of composition. A ceramic piston engine does not make up a piston engine. Rather it is merely one kind of piston engine that has one more limitation than the piston engine; its piston is made of ceramic. In this case, the object representing the ceramic piston engine is called a derived object, and it inherits all of the aspects of the object representing the piston engine and adds further limitation or detail to it. The object representing the ceramic piston engine “depends from” the object representing the piston engine. The relationship between these objects is called inheritance.
When the object or class representing the ceramic piston engine inherits all of the aspects of the objects representing the piston engine, it inherits the thermal characteristics of a standard piston defined in the piston engine class. However, the ceramic piston engine object overrides these ceramic specific thermal characteristics, which are typically different from those associated with a metal piston. It skips over the original and uses new functions related to ceramic pistons. Different kinds of piston engines have different characteristics, but may have the same underlying functions associated with it (e.g., how many pistons in the engine, ignition sequences, lubrication, etc.). To access each of these functions in any piston engine object, a programmer would call the same functions with the same names, but each type of piston engine may have different/overriding implementations of functions behind the same name. This ability to hide different implementations of a function behind the same name is called polymorphism and it greatly simplifies communication among objects.
With the concepts of composition-relationship, encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism, an object can represent just about anything in the real world. In fact, our logical perception of the reality is the only limit on determining the kinds of things that can become objects in object-oriented software. Some typical categories are as follows:
With this enormous capability of an object to represent just about any logically separable matters, OOP allows the software developer to design and implement a computer program that is a model of some aspects of reality, whether that reality is a physical entity, a process, a system, or a composition of matter. Since the object can represent anything, the software developer can create an object which can be used as a component in a larger software project in the future.
If 90% of a new OOP software program consists of proven, existing components made from preexisting reusable objects, then only the remaining 10% of the new software project has to be written and tested from scratch. Since 90% already came from an inventory of extensively tested reusable objects, the potential domain from which an error could originate is 10% of the program. As a result, OOP enables software developers to build objects out of other, previously built, objects.
This process closely resembles complex machinery being built out of assemblies and sub-assemblies. OOP technology, therefore, makes software engineering more like hardware engineering in that software is built from existing components, which are available to the developer as objects. All this adds up to an improved quality of the software as well as an increased speed of its development.
Programming languages are beginning to fully support the OOP principles, such as encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, and composition-relationship. With the advent of the C++ language, many commercial software developers have embraced OOP. C++ is an OOP language that offers a fast, machine-executable code. Furthermore, C++ is suitable for both commercial-application and systems-programming projects. For now, C++ appears to be the most popular choice among many OOP programmers, but there is a host of other OOP languages, such as Smalltalk, common lisp object system (CLOS), and Eiffel. Additionally, OOP capabilities are being added to more traditional popular computer programming languages such as Pascal.
The benefits of object classes can be summarized, as follows:
Class libraries are very flexible. As programs grow more complex, more programmers are forced to reinvent basic solutions to basic problems over and over again. A relatively new extension of the class library concept is to have a framework of class libraries. This framework is more complex and consists of significant collections of collaborating classes that capture both the small scale patterns and major mechanisms that implement the common requirements and design in a specific application domain. They were first developed to free application programmers from the chores involved in displaying menus, windows, dialog boxes, and other standard user interface elements for personal computers.
Frameworks also represent a change in the way programmers think about the interaction between the code they write and code written by others. In the early days of procedural programming, the programmer called libraries provided by the operating system to perform certain tasks, but basically the program executed down the page from start to finish, and the programmer was solely responsible for the flow of control. This was appropriate for printing out paychecks, calculating a mathematical table, or solving other problems with a program that executed in just one way.
The development of graphical user interfaces began to turn this procedural programming arrangement inside out. These interfaces allow the user, rather than program logic, to drive the program and decide when certain actions should be performed. Today, most personal computer software accomplishes this by means of an event loop which monitors the mouse, keyboard, and other sources of external events and calls the appropriate parts of the programmer's code according to actions that the user performs. The programmer no longer determines the order in which events occur. Instead, a program is divided into separate pieces that are called at unpredictable times and in an unpredictable order. By relinquishing control in this way to users, the developer creates a program that is much easier to use. Nevertheless, individual pieces of the program written by the developer still call libraries provided by the operating system to accomplish certain tasks, and the programmer must still determine the flow of control within each piece after being called by the event loop. Application code still “sits on top of” the system.
Even event loop programs require programmers to write a lot of code that should not need to be written separately for every application. The concept of an application framework carries the event loop concept further. Instead of dealing with all the nuts and bolts of constructing basic menus, windows, and dialog boxes and then making these things all work together, programmers using application frameworks start with working application code and basic user interface elements in place. Subsequently, they build from there by replacing some of the generic capabilities of the framework with the specific capabilities of the intended application.
Application frameworks reduce the total amount of code that a programmer has to write from scratch. However, because the framework is really a generic application that displays windows, supports copy and paste, and so on, the programmer can also relinquish control to a greater degree than event loop programs permit. The framework code takes care of almost all event handling and flow of control, and the programmer's code is called only when the framework needs it (e.g., to create or manipulate a proprietary data structure).
A programmer writing a framework program not only relinquishes control to the user (as is also true for event loop programs), but also relinquishes the detailed flow of control within the program to the framework. This approach allows the creation of more complex systems that work together in interesting ways, as opposed to isolated programs, having custom code, being created over and over again for similar problems.
Thus, as is explained above, a framework basically is a collection of cooperating classes that make up a reusable design solution for a given problem domain. It typically includes objects that provide default behavior (e.g., for menus and windows), and programmers use it by inheriting some of that default behavior and overriding other behavior so that the framework calls application code at the appropriate times.
There are three main differences between frameworks and class libraries:
Thus, through the development of frameworks for solutions to various problems and programming tasks, significant reductions in the design and development effort for software can be achieved. A preferred embodiment of the invention utilizes HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to implement documents on the Internet together with a general-purpose secure communication protocol for a transport medium between the client and the Newco. HTTP or other protocols could be readily substituted for HTML without undue experimentation. Information on these products is available in T. Berners-Lee, D. Connoly, “RFC 1866: Hypertext Markup Language-2.0” (Nov. 1995); and R. Fielding, H, Frystyk, T. Bemers-Lee, J. Gettys and J.C. Mogul, “HypertextTransfer Protocol—HTTP/1.1: HTTP Working Group Internet Draft” (May 2, 1996). HTML is a simple data format used to create hypertext documents that are portable from one platform to another. HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of domains. HTML has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information initiative since 1990. HTML is an application of ISO Standard 8879:1986 Information Processing Text and Office Systems; Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).
To date, Web development tools have been limited in their ability to create dynamic Web applications which span from client to server and interoperate with existing computing resources. Until recently, HTML has been the dominant technology used in development of Web-based solutions. However, HTML has proven to be inadequate in the following areas:
Sun Microsystem's Java language solves many of the client-side problems by:
With Java, developers can create robust User Interface (UI) components. Custom “widgets” (e.g. real-time stock tickers, animated icons, etc.) can be created, and client-side performance is improved. Unlike HTML, Java supports the notion of client-side validation, offloading appropriate processing onto the client for improved performance. Dynamic, real-time Web pages can be created. Using the above-mentioned custom UI components, dynamic Web pages can also be created.
Sun's Java language has emerged as an industry-recognized language for “programming the Internet.” Sun defines Java as: “a simple, object-oriented, distributed, interpreted, robust, secure, architecture-neutral, portable, high-performance, multithreaded, dynamic, buzzword-compliant, general-purpose programming language. Java supports programming for the Internet in the form of platform-independent Java applets.” Java applets are small, specialized applications that comply with Sun's Java Application Programming Interface (API) allowing developers to add “interactive content” to Web documents (e.g. simple animations, page adornnents, basic games, etc.). Applets execute within a Java-compatible browser (e.g. Netscape Navigator) by copying code from the server to client. From a language standpoint, Java's core feature set is based on C++. Sun's Java literature states that Java is basically “C++, with extensions from Objective C for more dynamic method resolution”.
Another technology that provides similar function to JAVA is provided by Microsoft and ActiveX Technologies, to give developers and Web designers wherewithal to build dynamic content for the Internet and personal computers. ActiveX includes tools for developing animation, 3-D virtual reality, video and other multimedia content. The tools use Internet standards, work on multiple platforms, and are being supported by over 100 companies. The group's building blocks are called ActiveX Controls, small, fast components that enable developers to embed parts of software in hypertext markup language (HTML) pages. ActiveX Controls work with a variety of programming languages including Microsoft Visual C++, Borland Delphi, Microsoft Visual Basic programming system and, in the future, Microsoft's developmenttool for Java, code named “Jakarta.” ActiveX Technologies also includes ActiveX Server Framework, allowing developers to create server applications. One of ordinary skill in the art readily recognizes that ActiveX could be substituted for JAVA without undue experimentationto practice the invention.
In accordance with a preferred embodiment, BackgroundFinder (BF) is implemented as an agent responsible for preparing an individual for an upcoming meeting by helping him/her retrieve relevant information about the meeting from various sources. BF receives input text in character form indicative of the target meeting. The input text is generated in accordance with a preferred embodiment by a calendar program that includes the time of the meeting. As the time of the meeting approaches, the calendar program is queried to obtain the text of the target event and that information is utilized as input to the agent. Then, the agent parses the input meeting text to extract its various components such as title, body, participants, location, time etc. The system also performs pattern matching to identify particular meeting fields in a meeting text. This information is utilized to query various sources of information on the web and obtain relevant stories about the current meeting to send back to the calendaring system. For example, if an individual has a meeting with Netscape and Microsoft to talk about their disputes, and would obtain this initial information from the calendaring system. It will then parse out the text to realize that the companies in the meeting are “Netscape” and “Microsoft” and the topic is “disputes.” Then, the system queries the web for relevant information concerning the topic. Thus, in accordance with an objective of the invention, the system updates the calendaring system and eventually the user with the best information it can gather to prepare the user for the target meeting. In accordance with a preferred embodiment, the information is stored in a file that is obtained via selection from a link imbedded in the calendar system.
A computer program in accordance with a preferred embodiment is organized in five distinct modules: BF.Main, BF.Parse, Background Finder.Error, BF.PatternMatching and BF.Search. There is also a formMain which provides a user interface used only for debugging purposes. The executable programs in accordance with a preferred embodiment never execute with the user interface and should only return to the calendaring system through Microsoft's Winsock control. A preferred embodiment of the system executes in two different modes which can be specified under the command line sent to it by the calendaring system. When the system runs in simple mode, it executes a keyword query to submit to external search engines. When executed in complex mode, the system performs pattern matching before it forms a query to be sent to a search engine.
The system in accordance with a preferred embodiment utilizes three user defined structures:
The user-defined structure, tMeetingRecord, is used to store all the pertinent information concerning a single meeting. This info includes userID, an original description of the meeting, the extracted list of keywords from the title and body of meeting etc. It is important to note that only one meeting record is created per instance of the system in accordance with a preferred embodiment. This is because each time the system is spawned to service an upcoming meeting, it is assigned a task to retrieve information for only one meeting. Therefore, the meeting record created corresponds to the current meeting examined. ParseMeetingText populates this meeting record and it is then passed around to provide information about the meeting to other functions.
If GoPatternMatch can bind any values to a particular meeting field, the corresponding entries in the meeting record is also updated. The structure of tMeetingRecord with each field described in parentheses is provided below in accordance with a preferred embodiment.
There are two other structures which are created to hold each individual pattern utilized in pattern matching. The record tAPatternRecord is an array containing all the components/elements of a pattern. The type tAPatternElement is an array of strings which represent an element in a pattern. Because there may be many “substitutes” for each element, we need an array of strings to keep track of what all the substitutes are. The structures of tAPatternElement and tAPatternRecord are presented below in accordance with a preferred embodiment.
Public Type tAPatternElement
Many constants are defined in each declaration section of the program which may need to be updated periodically as part of the process of maintaining the system in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The constants are accessible to allow dynamic configuration of the system to occur as updates for maintaining the code.
Included in the following tables are lists of constants from each module which I thought are most likely to be modified from time to time. However, there are also other constants used in the code not included in the following list. It does not mean that these non-included constants will never be changed. It means that they will change much less frequently.
For the Main Module (BF.Main):
For the Search Module (BF.Search):
For the Parse Module (BF.Parse):
For Pattern Matching Module (BFPatternMatch): There are no constants in this module which require frequent updates.
The best way to depict the process flow and the coordination of functions between each other is with the five flowcharts illustrated in
One key thing to notice is that functions depicted at the same level of the chart are called by in sequential order from left to right (or top to bottom) by their common parent function. For example, Main 200 calls ProcessCommandLine 210, then CreateStopListist 220, then CreatePatterns 230, then GoBackgroundFinder 240.
The Alta Vista search engine utilizes the identifies and returns general information about topics related to the current meeting as shown in function block 270 of FIG. 2. The system in accordance with a preferred embodiment takes all the keywords from the title portion of the original meeting text and constructs an advanced query to send to Alta Vista. The keywords are logically combined together in the query. The results are also ranked based on the same set of keywords. One of ordinary skill in the art will readily comprehend that a date restriction or publisher criteria could be facilitated on the articles we want to retrieve. A set of top ranking stories are returned to the calendaring system in accordance with a preferred embodiment.
The NewsPage search system is responsible for giving us the latest news topics related to a target meeting. The system takes all of the keywords from the title portion of the original meeting text and constructs a query to send to the NewsPage search engine. The keywords are logically combined together in the query. Only articles published recently are retrieved. The Newspage search system provides a date restriction criteria that is settable by a user according to the user's preference. The top ranking stories are returned to the calendaring system.
The limitations associated with a simple searching method include the following:
Here's how the pattern matching system can address each of the corresponding issues above in accordance with a preferred embodiment.
A pattern in the context of a preferred embodiment is a template specifying the structure of a phrase we are looking for in a meeting text. The patterns supported by a preferred embodiment are selected because they are templates of phrases which have a high probability of appearing in someone's meeting text. For example, when entering a meeting in a calendar, many would write something such as “Meet with Bob Dutton from Stanford University next Tuesday.” A common pattern would then be something like the word “with” followed by a person's name (in this example it is Bob Dutton) followed by the word “from” and ending with an organization's name (in this case, it is Stanford University).
The common terminology associated with pattern matching is provided below.
There are five fields which are identified for each meeting:
In parentheses are the placeholders I used in my code as representation of the corresponding meeting fields.
Each placeholder has the following meaning:
Here is a table representing all the patterns supported by BF. Each pattern belongs to a pattern group. All patterns within a pattern group share a similar format and they only differ from each other in terms of what indicators are used as substitutes. Note that the patterns which are grayed out are also commented in the code. BF has the capability to support these patterns but we decided that matching these patterns is not essential at this point.
Now that we have identified fields within the meeting text which we consider important, there are quite a few things we can do with it. One of the most important applications of pattern matching is of course to improve the query we construct which eventually gets submitted to Alta Vista and News Page. There are also a lot of other options and enhancements which exploit the results of pattern matching that we can add to BF. These other options will be described in the next section. The goal of this section is to give the reader a good sense of how the results obtained from pattern matching can be used to help us obtain better search results.
The strength of the Alta Vista search engine is that it provides enhanced flexibility. Using its advance query method, one can construct all sorts of Boolean queries and rank the search however you want. However, one of the biggest drawbacks with Alta Vista is that it is not very good at handling a large query and is likely to give back irrelevant results. If we can identify the topic and the company within a meeting text, we can form a pretty short but comprehensive query which will hopefully yield better results. We also want to focus on the topics found. It may not be of much merit to the user to find out info about a company especially if the user already knows the company well and has had numerous meetings with them. It's the topics they want to research on.
The strength of the News Page search engine is that it does a great job searching for the most recent news if you are able to give it a valid company name. Therefore when we submit a query to the news page web site, we send whatever company name we can identify and only if we cannot find one do we use the topics found to form a query. If neither one is found, then no search is performed. The algorithm utilized to form the query to submit to Alta Vista is illustrated in FIG. 7. The algorithmn that we will use to form the query to submit to News Page is illustrated in FIG. 8.
The following table describes in detail each function in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The order in which functions appear mimics the process flow as closely as possible. When there are situations in which a function is called several times, this function will be listed after the first function which calls it and its description is not duplicated after every subsequent function which calls it.
Processing commences at function block 610 where a command line is utilized to update a calendar entry with specific calendar information. The message is next posted in accordance with function block 620 and a meeting record is created to store the current meeting information in accordance with function block 630. Then, in function block 640 the query is submitted to the Alta Vista search engine and in function block 650, the query is submitted to the Newspage search engine. When a message is returned from the search engine, it is stored in a results data structure as shown in function block 660 and the information is processed and stored in summary form in a file for use in preparation for the meeting as detailed in function block 670.
Alternative embodiments for adding various specific features for specific user requirements are discussed below.
To increase BF's performance, more patterns/pattern groups are added to the procedure “CreatePatterns.” The existing code for declaring patterns can be used as a template for future patterns. Because everything is stored as dynamic arrays, it is convenient to reuse code by cutting and pasting. The functions BindName, BindTime, BindCompanyLocTopic which are responsible for associating a value with a placeholder can be enhanced. The enhancement is realized by increasing the set of criteria for binding a certain meeting field in order to increase the number of binding values. For example, BindTime currently accepts and binds all values in the form of ##:## or #:##. To increase the times we can bind, we may want BindTime to also accept the numbers 1 to 12 followed by the more aesthetic time terminology “o'clock.” Vocabulary based recognition algorithms and assigning an accuracy rate to each guess BF makes allowing only guesses which meet a certain threshold to be valid.
Depending on what location the system identifies through pattern matching or alternatively depending on what location the user indicates as the meeting place, a system in accordance with a preferred embodiment suggests a plurality of fine restaurants whenever it detects the words lunch/dinner/breakfast. We can also use a site like company finder to confirm what we got is indeed a company name or if there is no company name that pattern matching can identify, we can use a company finder web site as a “dictionary” for us to determine whether certain capitalized words represent a company name. We can even display stock prices and breaking news for a company that we have identified.
The 8-ounce RICOCHET SE Wireless Modem is about as large as a pack of cigarettes and setup is extremely simple, simply attach the modem to the back of your portable's screen with the included piece of VELCRO fastener, plug the cable into the serial port, flip up the stubby antenna, and transmit. Software setup is equally easy: a straightforward installer adds the RICOCHET modem drivers and places the connection icon on your desktop. The functional aspects of the modem are identical to that of a traditional telephone modem.
Of course, wireless performance isn't nearly as reliable as a traditional dial-up phone connection. We were able to get strong connections in several San Francisco locations as long as we stayed near the windows. But inside CNET's all-brick headquarters, the RICOCHET modem couldn't connect at all. When you do get online, performance of up to 28.8 kbps is available with graceful degradation to slower speeds. But even the slower speeds didn't disappoint. Compared to the alternative—connecting via a cellular modem—the RICOCHET modem is much faster, more reliable, and less expensive to use. Naturally, the RICOCHET SE wireless modem is battery powered. The modem has continuous battery life of up to 12 hours. And in accordance with a preferred embodiment, we ran down our portable computer's dual cells before the RICOCHET modem_started to fade.
Thus, utilizing the wireless modem, a user may utilize the web server software 940 to identify the right product 950 and then use an appropriate device's key(s) to select a supplier and place an order in accordance with a preferred embodiment. The BargainFinder Service Module then consummates the order with the appropriate third-party Web supplier 960.
mySite! is a high-impact, Internet-based application in accordance with a preferred embodiment that is focused on the theme of delivering services and providing a personalized experience for each customer via a personal web site in a buyer-centric world. The services are intuitively organized around satisfying customer intentions—fundamental life needs or objectives that require extensive planning decisions, and coordination across several dimensions, such as financial planning, healthcare, personal and professional development, family life, and other concerns. Each member owns and maintains his own profile, enabling him to create and browse content in the system targeted specifically at him. From the time a demand for products or services is entered, to the completion of payment, intelligent agents are utilized to conduct research, execute transactions and provide advice. By using advanced profiling and filtering, the intelligent agents learn about the user, improving the services they deliver. Customer intentions include Managing Daily Logistics (e.g., email, calendar, contacts, to-do list, bill payment, shopping, and travel planning); and Moving to a New Community (e.g., finding a place to live, moving household possessions, getting travel and shipping insurance coverage, notifying business and personal contacts, learning about the new community). From a consumer standpoint, mySite! provides a central location where a user can access relevant products and services and accomplish daily tasks with ultimate ease and convenience.
From a business standpoint, mySite! represents a value-added and innovative way to effectively attract, service, and retain customers. Intention value networks allow a user to enter through a personalized site and, and with the assistance of a learning, intelligent agent, seamlessly interact with network participants. An intention value network in accordance with a preferred embodiment provides superior value. It provides twenty four hour a day, seven days a week access to customized information, advice and products. The information is personalized so that each member views content that is highly customized to assure relevance to the required target user.
An Egocentric Interface is a user interface crafted to satisfy a particular user's needs, preferences and current context. It utilizes the user's personal information that is stored in a central profile database to customize the interface. The user can set security permissions on and preferences for interface elements and content. The content integrated into the Egocentric Interface is customized with related information about the user. When displaying content, the Egocentric Interface will include the relationship between that content and the user in a way that demonstrates how the content relates to the user. For instance, when displaying information about an upcoming ski trip the user has signed up for, the interface will include information about events from the user's personal calendar and contact list, such as other people who will be in the area during the ski trip. This serves to put the new piece of information into a context familiar to the individual user.
The Intention Database 1030 stores all of the information about the structure of the intention and the types of products and services needed to fulfill the intention. Information in this database includes intention steps, areas of interest, layout templates and personalization templates. The Content Database 1040 stores all of the information related to the intention, such as advice, referral information, personalized content, satisfaction ratings, product ratings and progress reports.
The Supplier Profile Database 1050 contains information about the product and service providers integrated into the intention. The information contained in this database provides a link between the intention framework and the suppliers. It includes product lists, features and descriptions, and addresses of the suppliers' product web sites. The Customer Profile Database 1060 contains personal information about the customers, such as name, address, social security number and credit card information, personal preferences, behavioral information, history, and web site layout preferences. The Supplier's Web Server 1070 provides access to all of the supplier's databases necessary to provide information and transactional support to the customer.
The Product Information Database 1080 stores all product-related information, such as features, availability and pricing. The Product Order Database 1090 stores all customer orders. The interface to this database may be through an Enterprise Resource Planning application offered by SAP, Baan, Oracle or others, or it may be accessible directly through the Supplier's Web Server or application server. The Customer Information Database 1091 stores all of the customer information that the supplier needs to complete a transaction or maintain customer records.
The system allows the user to create a number of different personas that aggregate profile information into sets that are useful in different contexts. A user may create one persona when making purchases for his home. This persona may contain his home address and may indicate that this user is looking to find a good bargain when shopping. The same user may create a second persona that can be used when he is in a work context. This persona may store the user's work address and may indicate that the user prefers certain vendors or works for a certain company that has a discount program in place. When shopping for work-related items, the user may use this persona. A persona may also contain rules and restrictions. For instance, the work persona may restrict the user to making airline reservations with only one travel agent and utilizing booking rules set up by his employer.
Satisfying Customer Intentions, such as Planning for Retirement or Relocating requires a specialized interface. Customer Intentions require extensive planning and coordination across many areas, ranging from financial security, housing and transportation to healthcare, personal and professional development, and entertainment, among others. Satisfying Intentions requires a network of complementary businesses, working across industries, to help meet consumers' needs.
An Intention-Centric Interface is a user interface designed to help the user manage personal Intentions. At any given point, the interface content is customized to show only content that relates to that particular Intention. The Intention-Centric Interface allows the user to manage the process of satisfying that particular Intention. This involves a series of discrete steps and a set of content areas the user can access. At any point, the user can also switch the interface to manage a different Intention, and this act will change the content of the interface to include only that content which is relevant to the satisfaction of the newly selected Intention.
An agent keeps track of key statistics for each user. These statistics are used in a manner similar to the Tamagochi virtual reality pet toy to encourage certain behaviors from the user. The statistics that are recorded are frequency of login, frequency of rating of content such as news articles, and activity of agents, measured by the number of tasks which it performs in a certain period. This information is used by the system to emotionally appeal to the user to encourage certain behaviors.
The system provide Consumer Report-like service that is customized for each user based on a user profile. The system records and provides ratings from users about product quality and desirability on a number of dimensions. The difference between this system and traditional product quality measurement services is that the ratings that come back to the users are personalized. This service works by finding the people who have the closest match to the user's profile and have previously rated the product being asked for. Using this algorithm will help to ensure that the product reports sent back to the user only contain statistics from people who are similar to that user.
This system provides one central storage place for a person's profile. This storage place is a server available through the public Internet, accessible by any device that is connected to the Internet and has appropriate access. Because of the ubiquitous accessibility of the profile, numerous access devices can be used to customize services for the user based on his profile. For example, a merchant's web site can use this profile to provide personalized content to the user. A Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with Internet access can synchronize the person's calendar, email, contact list, task list and notes on the PDA with the version stored in the Internet site. This enables the person to only have to maintain one version of this data in order to have it available whenever it is needed and in whatever formats it is needed.
One possible use of the ubiquitous profile is for a hotel chain. A consumer can carry a Smart Card that holds a digital certificate uniquely identifying him. This Smart Card's digital certificate has been issued by the system and it recorded his profile information into the profile database. The consumer brings this card into a hotel chain and checks in. The hotel employee swipes the Smart Card and the consumer enters his Pin number, unlocking the digital certificate. The certificate is sent to the profile gateway server (using a secure transmission protocol) and is authenticated. The hotel is then given access to a certain part of the consumer's profile that he has previously specified. The hotel can then retrieve all of the consumer's billing information as well as preferences for hotel room, etc. The hotel can also access the consumer's movie and dining preferences and offer customized menus for both of them. The hotel can offer to send an email to the consumer's spouse letting him/her know the person checked into the hotel and is safe. All transaction information can be uploaded to the consumer's profile after the hotel checks him in. This will allow partners of the hotel to utilize the information about the consumer that the hotel has gathered (again, given the consumer's permission).
In an Intention Value Network, the overall integrator system coordinates the delivery of products and services for a user. The integrator manages a network of approved suppliers providing products and services, both physical and virtual, to a user based on the user's preferences as reflected in the user's profile. The integrator manages the relationship between suppliers and consumers and coordinates the suppliers' fulfillment of consumers' intentions. It does this by providing the consumer with information about products and suppliers and offering objective advice, among other things.
A suite of software agents running on the application and web servers are programmed to take care of repetitive or mundane tasks for the user. The agents work according to rules set up by the user and are only allowed to perform tasks explicitly defined by the user. The agents can take care of paying bills for the user, filtering content and emails, and providing a summary view of tasks and agent activity. The user interface for the agent can be modified to suit the particular user.
The above scenario requires the web site to maintain a guarantee of privacy of information according to a published policy. This system is the consumer's Trusted Third Party, acting on his behalf in every case, erring on the side of privacy of information, rather than on the side of stimulation of commerce opportunities. The Trusted Third Party has a set of processes in place that guarantee certain complicity with the stated policy.
This word extends the word “eCommerce” to mean “personalized electronic commerce.”
An Event Backgrounder is a short description of an upcoming event that is sent to the user just before an event. The Event Backgrounder is constantly updated with the latest information related to this event. Pertinent information such as itinerary and logistics are included, and other useful information, such as people the user knows who might be in the same location, are also included. The purpose of the Event Backgrounder is to provide the most up-to-date information about an event, drawing from a number of resources, such as public web sites and the user's calendar and contact lists, to allow the user to react optimally in a given situation.
This software looks for opportunities to tell the user when a friend, family member or acquaintance is or is going to be in the same vicinity as the user. This software scans the user's calendar for upcoming events. It then uses a geographic map to compare those calendar events with the calendar events of people who are listed in his contact list. It then informs the user of any matches, thus telling the user that someone is scheduled to be near him at a particular time.
The term information overload is now relatively understood in both its definition as well as its implications and consequences. People have a finite amount of attention that is available at any one time, but there is more and more vying for that attention every day. In short, too much information and too little time are the primary factors complicating the lives of most knowledge workers today.
The first attempts to dynamically deal with information overload were primarily focused on the intelligent filtering of information such that the quantity of information would be lessened. Rather than simply removing random bits of information, however, most of these approaches tried to be intelligent about what information was ultimately presented to the user. This was accomplished by evaluating each document based on the user's interests and discarding the less relevant ones. It follows, therefore, that the quality was also increased.
Filtering the information is only a first step in dealing with information is this new age. Arguably, just as important as the quality of the document is having ready access to it. Once you have entered a meeting, a document containing critical information about the meeting subject delivered to your office is of little value. As the speed of business continues to increase fueled by the technologies of interconnectedness, the ability to receive quality information wherever and whenever you are becomes critical. This new approach is called intelligent information delivery and is heralding in a new information age.
A preferred embodiment demonstrates the intelligent information delivery theory described above in an attempt to not only reduce information overload, but to deliver high quality information where and when users' require it. In other words, the system delivers right information to the right person at the right time and the right place.
Active Knowledge Management System Description
Back-end Server (2400) Processes
The Awareness Machine (2446 & 2448 of
The Awareness Machine is a combination of hardware device and software application. The hardware consists of handheld personal computer and wireless communications device. The Awareness Machine reflects a constantly updated state-of-the-owner's-world by continually receiving a wireless trickle of information. This information, mined and processed by a suite of intelligent agents, consists of mail messages, news that meets each user's preferences, schedule updates, background information on upcoming meetings and events, as well as weather and traffic. The Awareness Machine is covered by another patent application.
The Magic Wall
The Magic Wall hardware includes:
The Web client is a standard browser navigating to a set of Web pages which allow user to see the same information that is available via the Magic Wall.
The e-mail client is any standard e-mail program.
Intelligent Agent Coordinator Description
This piece of code is the coordinating agent (or meta-agent) for the Active Knowledge Management system. This means that all communications between the system and each user, as well as communication between the different minion agents are handled (coordinated) by the Intelligent Agent Coordinator. Examples of these minion agents are:
The Intelligent Agent Coordinator 2580 of
Monitoring User Activities
Anytime a user triggers a sensor the Intelligent Agent Coordinator receives an “environmental cue.” These cues not only enable the Intelligent Agent Coordinator to gain an understanding where users' are for information delivery purposes, but also to learn the standard patterns (arrival time, departure time, etc.) of each persons' life. These patterns are constantly being updated and refined in an attempt to increase the system's intelligence when delivering information. For instance, today it is not uncommon for a person to have several email accounts (work-based, home-based, mobile-based, etc.) as well as several different computers involved in the retrieval process for all of these accounts. Thus, for the Intelligent Agent Coordinator to be successful in delivering information to the correct location it must take into account all of these accounts and the times that the user is likely to be accessing them in order to maximize the probability that the user will see the information. This will be discussed further in another section.
Handling Information Requests
The Intelligent Agent Coordinator handles information requests from other agents in order to personalize information intended for each user and to more accurately reflect each user's interests in the information they are given. These requests will commonly be related to the user's profile. For instance, if an agent was preparing a traffic report for a user it may request the traffic region (search string) of that user from the Intelligent Agent Coordinator. All access to the user's profile data is accessed in this method.
Maintaining User Profiles
User profiles contain extensive information about the users. This information is a blend of user-specified data and information that the Intelligent Agent Coordinator has learned and extrapolated from each user's information and activities. In order to protect the data contained in the profiles, the Intelligent Agent Coordinator must handle all user information requests. The Intelligent Agent Coordinator is constantly modifying and updating these profiles by watching the user's activities and attempting to learn the patterns of their lives in order to assist in the more routine, mundane tasks. The Intelligent Agent Coordinator also employs other agents to glean meaning from each user's daily activities. These agents mine this data trying to discover indications of current interests, long-term interests, as well as time delivery preferences for each type of information. Another important aspect of the Intelligent Agent Coordinator's observations is that it also tries to determine where each user is physically located throughout the day for routing purposes.
Information Routing
Most people are mobile throughout their day. The Intelligent Agent Coordinator tries to be sensitive to this fact by attempting to determine, both by observation (unsupervised learning) and from cues from the environment, where users are or are likely to be located. This is certainly important for determining where to send the user's information, but also for determining in which format to send the information. For instance, if a user were at her desk and using the web client, the Intelligent Agent Coordinator would be receiving indications of activity from her PC and would know to send any necessary information there. In addition, because desktop PCs are generally quite powerful, a full-featured, graphically intense version could be sent. However, consider an alternative situation: the Intelligent Agent Coordinator has received an indication (via the keycard reader next to the exit) that you have just left the building. Minutes later the Intelligent Agent Coordinator also receives notification that you have received an urgent message. The Intelligent Agent Coordinator, knowing that you have left the building and having not received any other indications, assumes that you are reachable via your handheld device (for which it also knows the capabilities) and sends the text of the urgent message there, rather than a more graphically-oriented version.
Inherent Innovations
The Active Knowledge Management system represents some of the most advanced thinking in the world of knowledge management and human computer interaction. Some of the primary innovations include the following:
The following code is written and executed in the Microsoft Active Server Pages environment in accordance with a preferred embodiment. It consists primarily of Microsoft Jscript with some database calls embedded in the code to query and store information in the database.
While various embodiments have been described above, it should be understood that they have been presented by way of example only, and not limitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of a preferred embodiment should not be limited by any of the above described exemplary embodiments, but should be defined only in accordance with the following claims and their equivalents.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/110,818 filed Nov. 12, 1998.
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| Number | Date | Country |
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| WO 9826357 | Jun 1998 | WO |
| Number | Date | Country | |
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| 20030009430 A1 | Jan 2003 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
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| 60110818 | Nov 1998 | US |
