Principles of Internet Agents (Fall, 1999)
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering,
National Chiao-Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
The SHOPBOT TOOLKIT manual is here!
1. Introduction
"Shopbots" are the comparison shopping agents of the Web. More precisely,
"shopbots" are computer programs that go in search of the products and
services users request. They have already become standard features
at search sites like Yahoo!, Excite, and HotBot and at shopping networks
like go2net's Web Market. Currently, none of Web site in Taiwan
possesses such capability because building and maintaining such a program
is still very expensive, only large portal sites with substantial financial
resources are afford of this. As online shopping sites (e.g.,
amazon.com) become popular in Taiwan, it can be seen that comparison shopping
agents will be proliferate in Taiwan soon. The goal of this project
is to give you a hands-on experience of building such an agent using the
"shopbot toolkit" we have developed at the institute of Information Science
of Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
2. What you need to do
|
When
|
What
|
| 11/22/1999 |
Find a teammate --- 2 students form a team. This will be the same team
for the presentation. |
| 11/22/1999 |
Select from one of the given domains. |
| 11/22/1999 |
Your domain will be finalized and assigned during the classmeeting |
| 11/29/1999 |
Read the instruction of the "shopbot
toolkit" which willbe released by 11/22/1999. |
| 11/29/1999 |
Write a proposal on the system you will build |
| From 12/1999 to 1/2000 |
Build your "cross-century" system |
| On 1/10 or 1/17/2000 |
Give a final presentation |
| 1/10/2000 |
Write a final report on your system |
3. Grading
| Proposal |
20% of final grade |
| Final Report |
30% of final grade |
| Final presentation |
10% of final grade |
Every project must integrate at least 5 web sites. In addition
to the Web sites given in the table of domains, you
will need to find additional sites if your domain contains less than 5
sites. It's ok to select the additional sites from the
table. The grade is approximately proportional to the number
of sites you have integrated successfully. The grade also depends on novelty
and excellence of your idea, technical challenging and robustness of your
system.
Both team members will gain the SAME grade.
4. Proposal Requirements
Your proposal must contain the following topics:
-
What is your domain?
-
Will your agent running locally as a personal agent, or running on a Web
server? Justify your choice.
-
What can users query the agent? what answer is expected to return?
-
All additional components required to achieve your goal and their data
flow chart.
-
Don't forget to write your ID numbers.
Turn in a hardcopy on the due date in the beginning of the class meeting.
You may write it in BIG-5 Chinese or in English, but please don't mix them
together at the sentence level (e.g., It is prohibited to write a sentence
like "Basically, 這是一個 interesting 的 project.") Use either WORD or
LaTeX to edit your proposal.
Page limit: 11pt, single space, 5-10 pages.
5. Final Report Requirements
Your final report must contain the following topics:
-
What is your domain? What is your goal?
-
Overview of system architecture
-
Domain relation templates with plain nature language explanation
-
Connected Web sites and their configurations with plain nature language
explanation
-
Any known limitations and bugs
-
Self-evaluation, experience and conclusion
-
Installation and system requirements
-
Don't forget to write your ID numbers.
Turn in a hardcopy on the due date in the beginning of the class meeting.
You may write it in BIG-5 Chinese or in English, but please don't mix them
together at the sentence level (e.g., It is prohibited to write a sentence
like "Basically, 這是一個 interesting 的 project.") Use either WORD or
LaTeX to edit your final report.
Page limit: 11pt, single space, 20-30 pages.
Also, submit your source code to chunnan@csie.nctu.edu.tw
Use either WINZIP for Window machines or GZIP for UNIX to compress the
files. Instruction of how to decompress and install the code should
be given in the report. Please submit it on the given due date before
the class begin.
6. Final Presentation Requirements
Your final presentation must contain the following topics:
-
Brief introduction
-
System demonstration
-
Conclusion
in 20 minutes
Questions about the problem please direct it to Chun-Nan Hsu. Others
please direct it to TA 張哲航. Good luck!
chunnan@iis.sinica.edu.tw
