CHAPTER 1

1 . 8 Customized Profiles

As the quantity of on-line information continues to explode, one of the principal problems users face is finding the information. Even if you happen to have a high speed Internet connection and lots of time to spend surfing from link to link, chances are you will not be able to scour all the relevant information sources. However Internet searching starting points such as Yahoo and Lycos have made it much easier to find information.
An alternative to spending the time searching yourself is to specify a set of topics or interests and have an automaton wander through the Web locating the information, and compiling it into a tidy summary. These personalized knowledge robots, knowbots, can spend the time locating information and you can review the results at your leisure.
Check out the World Wide Web Robots, Wanderers, and Spiders page for a list of over 70 web wandering programs. (See Section 1.4 Worms, Spiders, and Knowbots for more information on these.) Most are free. Many include source code. Some wanderers perform validation services, but most are used to generate resource discovery databases that can be searched at later times.
More traditional news clipping services have long been available for busy corporate executives. Although costly, they can prove invaluable.
Individual, Inc. offers a customized news service called First! It sifts through news. Its existing products include BookWire(29) and NewsPage.(30)
Dow Jones, a long time provider of clipping services, offers a service called Custom Clips. The information can be delivered via email or fax. In addition it has a product called DowVision, which offers real time filtered news feeds from such information sources as The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones News Service, and Press Release Wire services.

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