Subject: Re: WAIS, agents, indexes and Las Vegas was Re: WAIS not a "retro" .. From: dwhite@april.iii.net (Donovan White) Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 10:12:08 -0400

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Nitin Borwankar said in a dialogue with Jeremy Allaire (who is on Sergio's
Public Enemies list):


>Could you explain what you mean by a "generalized" index.  In reality,
>i.e. working practice, is there anything other than text indexing ?
>WAIS is quite capable of handling other matter eg images, Word Perfect
>files, SGML files etc. 
>
>> It is quite super for
>> text-indexing, but real "agent" technology combined with concept
>> level indexing and 
>
>Whoa! Slow down here. Are you suggesting "agents" are a substitute for
>an index ? I am assuming "concept level indexing" is not something
>that works today.
>
>Currently, on one of the "agent technology" lists, the experts
>were debating what is and what isn't an agent - with no definite
>result.  And, to suggest "agent" technology is superior to a text
>indexing engine, seems to be mixing metaphors at best.
>The word "agent" is often used as a "colorful" term for
>"customized filter".
>
>In addition could you explain whether there are working
>examples of "concept level indexing" or even an unambiguous definition
>of what this is ? How does one index "concepts" aside from indexing
>the text expressing them and doing "intelligent" things with the resulting
>index ? ( intelligent as in AI ). 
>In any case, one must work with the underlying text and index it first.
>

... Lots of stuff deleted>>>

>I recently indexed all my mail and can now instantly call up old 
>e-mail messages based on words in mail messages.
>There is a whole other area of information services that is purely
>text-based, has no real need for the Web and can be delivered over
>e-mail.  This includes electronic newspapers especially customized
>ones.  I subscribe to Individual's Heads Up through e-mail and rarely
>use the Web to read news at all. 


If you're using Individual's Heads Up, then you're using a product created
by passing news feeds through concept filtering technology that matches the
concept profiles of articles against the concept profiles of subscribers to
generate a custom list of articles.

dw


        Donovan White

        Online Information Development and Design

        dwhite@iii.net           DonovanWhite@ichange.com

        (508) 597-5321           (508) 597-3285


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