Tim Finin (finin@cs.umbc.edu)
Mon, 06 Sep 1999 23:40:52 -0400
Ok. I know there are actually several hundred people out there. But
the list has been quiet and I'd like to see some discussions so we can
find out if "electronic commerce technology" is a viable topic for a
discussion list. I sometimes worry that it may be too broad.
I've been playing with a neat windows application called GuruNet (see
http://gurunet.com). After downloading it you just alt-click your
mouse on a word in any (almost any) Windows text application (e.g.,
browser, email, spreadsheet) and up pops up a window with information
relevant to the word or phrase to which you are pointing. GuruNet
delivers reference information (e.g. dictionary, thesaurus,
encyclopedia) and real-time information (e.g. news, sports, weather,
stock quotes). It tried to be clever about recognizing the most
appropriate set of words you are pointing to and deciding which data
source to query. It's also fast and free.
I can imagine interesting ecommerce related applications build on this
(as I am sure the developers have), like giving it a model of your
interests (adaptive, of course), a better ability to recognize the
meaning of what you point to given the context, and a way to have
plugin for different businesses and vendors. An CDNOW plugin might
wake up when it thinks you are looking at something related to a
music related product and give you relevant information and offer to
sell you stuff.
But, how does the low level interface work with windows? If I wanted
to prototype such a smart application, how so I get it to interact
with windows (or mac, or linux) legacy applications, like a text
editor or browser. Is there a standard API set for windows that
covers this? Is it hard to use? Anyone know?
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