WBI: A confederation of agents that personalize the Web

Abstract

Agents offer the possibility of personalizing otherwise impersonal computational systems. The World-Wide Web is an information collection that presents the same appearance to every user regardless of that user's past activity. Web Browser Intelligence (WBI, pronounced `WEB-ee') is an implemented system that provides a loosely confederated group of agents on a user's workstation capable of observing user actions, proactively offering assistance, modifying resulting web documents, and performing new functions. For example, WBI will annotate hyperlinks with network speed information, record pages viewed for later access, and provide shortcut links for common paths. WBI is an architecture in which small programs, or agents, connect to the information stream by registering their trigger conditions and then performing operations on the stream. This structure provides rich opportunities for personalizing the web experience by joining together personal and global information, as well as enabling collaboration among web users.