Web mobile agents

UTILISING THE services of agents to carry out tasks that need more effort or skills is not restricted to real world activities alone but has been implemented in the Net world as well. This week NetSpeak draws your attention to an exciting technology that helps you engage virtual agents to perform many many of your routine on-line activities.

A software agent is a program destined to execute a task on your behalf. A mobile agent is a software agent that travels across a network (Intranet or Internet) and performs tasks such as searching the Net and locating relevant information or buying products for its principal. Your agent travels from your system to an agent server, which acts as a meeting place for many similar agents. Agents meet other agents and if they find one with some information on the task they are assigned, grab that information and share with them the information they have.

When you send an agent from your system, you can specify the time it can take to accomplish the task so that it will return after the specified time with whatever information it has gathered. Once the agent is sent on a the mission, you can disconnect your machine from the Net and the next time when you get linked to the Net the agent comes back with the task output. Tryllian Software's product, Gossip, is an implementation of this exciting technology.

Gossip

Gossip is a client/server system, that helps you locate web links that have information you need or brings in document/graphic files that have some link with your information search. If you want to experiment with this technology, download the client program (8 MB) from the site www.tryllian.com and install it.

Gossip has four major elements and comes with five agents. You can make use of the services of all these agents as they have an interface through which you can communicate with them.

Play ground: This is where your agents are housed in the Gossip system. Actually this is the main Gossip interface where they agents wander awaiting your commands.

Backpacks: Another component is backpacks (colourful discs located at the bottom right), the information containers through which you give instructions for the tasks to be undertaken by the agents. Whenever you send an agent on a mission, it has to be given a backpack, which is the mechanism through which the whole process gets realised. You can pack the backpack with various information bits such as subject of the search, keyword and some known web links.

Meeting points: A meeting point is where your agent meets others and makes consultations. Actually they are the servers with which agents communicate and exchange resources with each other.

How to send an agent?: First fill in the details of your requirement in a backpack. To store the backpacks with task details, click at one of them and its interface pops up. Fill in the boxes with appropriate details (such as keywords, text files and picture files). After equipping a backpack with these details, connect it to an agent. During this process you can also specify the time within which the job has to be done - say one- hour. Once an agent is equipped with necessary information, next step is to send it over the Net to perform its duty. To do this, connect to the Net and open the door to the Net in the playground, drag the agent towards this door and drop it there. The agent disappears and you can disconnect your machine from the Net if you want. Connect to the Net after one hour, open the 'Internet' door in the playground and after a few seconds you will see your agent coming from the Net through the door. Open the backpack, which will most probably contain the information resources you are looking for.

Auto form-filler

One of the major inconveniences we face while registering with a Net service is the lengthy forms that we are forced to fill in. Though most of the services have made much of the input parameters optional to make the signing-up process less cumbersome, this continues to be a major irritant for regular Netizens. Here is a utility that can help you out in the form- filling process. Obongo, the free personal tool bar that gets attached to the bottom of your browser window aids you in filling-up forms by just clicking at its Fill form button.

Apart from this form-filling service, it has some other features such as Quick search, Shopping assistant and Privacy control among others. To bring the Obongo tool bar into your browser, you need to download a small file from the site: www.obongo.com.

The file once downloaded gets installed automatically. During the sign-up process you have to provide all the personal details properly. Whenever you try to use the `Form fill up' feature, the service loads this information kept in its server and fills up the form box. To activate the tool bar click at the symbol of the IE tool bar and select the Obongo button and immediately you will see a tool bar at the bottom of your browser window.

J.Murali

(The author can be contacted at:

murali27@satyam.net.in)

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