A More Useful Internet
03-33-2002
By: Parisch Browne
Consider 'Joe' (Joe Soap), who has four children and likes to holiday in the sun and near the Mediterranean in particular. When Joe does an Internet keyword search for 'holiday', he will be presented with a mass of information, most of which will be irrelevant to him.
If you have used the Internet you will be familiar with this scenario of searching for information and being presented with numerous results that are not relevant.
At the Telecommunications Systems Software Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology we are working on the GUARDIANS project, in conjunction with seven other academic institutes and commercial organisations, to replace this scenario with one where when Joe performs a search the search system will know of Joe's preference for the sun and of his kids. It will use this and other information to ensure that Joe receives only relevant results and therefore can more quickly obtain the required information/content. In this case his search for 'holiday' will highly rate results, which are related to the Mediterranean and cater for families.
Let's consider a second scenario. 'Joanne' (Joanne Soap) is a senior astrologist working for the Irish Space Agency, and she wishes to do a search for material on the planet Venus. If the search keywords 'planet' and 'Venus' are entered Joanne will probably receive results but it is also likely (as she is the senior astrologist) that she is not interested in elementary information but only in more advanced information on the planet.
Our system will take this into account and therefore provide her with more relevant results. The system also considers accessibility preferences (e.g. whether Joanne has the ability to play videos on her machine or display certain types of fonts/documents). This is important as she may be connecting and searching from her home PC, her work PC, her WAP-enabled mobile phone, her Internet-enabled Digital TV Box or some other device, and the results that are relevant may vary depending on this device. She could be on the train travelling home from work, doing a search using her mobile phone. She may search for video satellite footage of Venus, and if she receives any relevant hits she can have them streamed to her home PC where they will be waiting on her return.
The important point here is that the system will know what platforms/devices Joanne has and what the capabilities of each are.
In a nutshell this European Commission sponsored project enables the user to exploit advanced search facilities that match his/her ever changing interests, past experiences and available resources, to the available content from a series of service providers, thus providing a more relevant Internet experience.
GUARDIANS stands for 'Gateway for User Access to Remote Distributed
Information and Network Services', and more information can be found at the Guardians website
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