Alexander Faaborg
ABSTRACT
Many users are familiar with the interesting but limited functionality of Data Detector interfaces like Microsoft's Smart Tags and Google's AutoLink. In this paper we significantly expand the breadth and functionality of this type of user interface through the use of large-scale knowledge bases of semantic information. The result is a Web browser that is able to generate personalized semantic hypertext, providing a goal-oriented browsing experience.We present (1) Creo, a Programming by Example system for the Web that allows users to create a general-purpose procedure with a single example, and (2) Miro, a Data Detector that matches the content of a page to high-level user goals.An evaluation with 34 subjects found that they were more efficient using our system, and that the subjects would use features like these if they were integrated into their Web browser.
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Index Terms
- A goal-oriented web browser
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Reviews
Klaus K. Obermeier
Web browsing as we know it today suffers from two major shortcomings. First, every browser access starts from scratch; it is not know what went on before, and who wants to access the information requested. Second, the lack of common sense makes browsing very cumbersome, requiring repetitive, redundant, and circuitous input to quickly derive the desired information from any given query. The authors see a way out of this two-pronged dilemma, and introduce the use of large knowledge bases together with a heuristic commonly referred to as programming by example. Programming by example is based on the idea that, when recording a transaction on the Web, you can abstract the parameters, package the transaction, and run the transaction anew by requiring only the addition of new parameters to execute it again. After a cursory discussion of the current state of the art of knowledge bases, data detection, and programming by example, the authors propose their own experimental systems: Creo, for programming by example, and Miro, for data detection. An experiment based on Creo and Miro, using 34 subjects, showed that the subjects were more proficient in attaining search results, and were very much in favor of using the two programs, even though using Creo meant spending more time up front on the setup, before reaping benefits later on while accessing the Web again. The good news here for knowledge-based research is that, if you can adequately partition the knowledge base, and limit it to sublanguage interaction (domain specificity), the usefulness of such a system is overwhelming. The bad news is that generic common sense reasoning that is not harnessed by domain or context has yet to be successfully constructed. After all, the extent and complexity of knowledge-based reasoning versus common sense reasoning has been at the crux of expert system building since day one of artificial intelligence (AI), many decades ago. Delineating the various pieces is a valiant start; constructing goal-oriented browsers, putting them back together, and making them interact naturally and generically will be the work of researchers for many years to come.
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