44402607
SPHINX: A Framework for Creating Personal, Site-Specific Web Crawlers
Abstract Crawlers, also called robots and spiders, are programs that browse the World Wide Web autonomously. This paper describes SPHINX, a Java toolkit and interactive development environment for Web crawlers. Unlike other crawler development systems, SPHINX is geared towards developing crawlers that are Web-site-specific, personally customized, and relocatable. SPHINX allows site-specific crawling rules to be encapsulated and reused in content analyzers, known as classifiers: Personal crawling tasks can be performed (often without programming) in the Crawler Workbench, an interactive environment for crawler development and testing. For efficiency, relocatable crawlers developed using SPHINX can be uploaded and executed on a remote Web server.
5731309
Synchronizing clipboards of multiple computers
This paper describes a new technique for transferring data between computers, the synchronized clipboard. Multiple computers can share a synchronized clipboard for all clipboard operations, so that data copied to the clipboard from one computer, using the standard Copy command, can be pasted directly on another computer using the standard Paste command. Synchronized clipboards are well-suited for a single user moving data among several computers in close proximity. We describe an implementation of synchronized clipboards that works across a wide range of existing systems, including 3Com PalmPilots, Microsoft Windows PCs, Unix workstations, and other Java-capable platforms. Our implementation adds no noticeable overhead to local copy and paste operations.
207156342
How to make secure email easier to use
Cryptographically protected email has a justly deserved reputation of being difficult to use. Based on an analysis of the PEM, PGP and S/MIME standards and a survey of 470 merchants who sell products on Amazon.com, we argue that the vast majority of Internet users can start enjoying digitally signed email today. We present suggestions for the use of digitally signed mail in e-commerce and simple modifications to webmail systems that would significantly increase integrity, privacy and authorship guarantees that those systems make. We then show how to use the S/MIME standard to extend such protections Internet-wide. Finally, we argue that software vendors must make minor changes to the way that mail clients store email before unsophisticated users can safely handle mail that is sealed with encryption.
14812134
Multiple selections in smart text editing
Multiple selections, though heavily used in file managers and drawing editors, are virtually nonexistent in text editing. This paper describes how multiple selections can automate repetitive text editing. Selection guessing infers a multiple selection from positive and negative examples provided by the user. The multiple selection can then be used for inserting, deleting, copying, pasting, or other editing commands. Simultaneous editing uses two levels of inference, first inferring a group of records to be edited, then inferring multiple selections with exactly one selection in each record. Both techniques have been evaluated by user studies and shown to be fast and usable for novices. Simultaneous editing required only 1.26 examples per selection in the user study, approaching the ideal of 1-example PBD. Multiple selections bring many benefits, including better user feedback, fast, accurate inference, novel forms of intelligent assistance, and the ability to override system inferences with manual corrections.
6575212
Lightweight Structured Text Processing
Text is a popular storage and distribution format for information, partly due to generic text-processing tools like Unix grep and sort. Unfortunately, existing generic tools make assumptions about text format (e.g., each line is a record) that limit their applicability. Custom-built tools are one alternative, but they require substantial time investment and programming expertise. We describe a new approach, lightweight structured text processing, which overcomes these difficulties by enabling users to define text structure interactively and manipulate the structure with generic tools. Our prototype system, LAPIS, is a web browser that can highlight, filter, and sort text regions described by the user. LAPIS has several advantages over other systems: (1) the ability to define custom structure with a simple, intuitive pattern language; (2) interactive specification, showing pattern matches in context and letting users choose the most convenient combination of manual selection and pattern matching; and (3) external parsers for standard text formats. The pattern language in LAPIS, text constraints, describes text structure in high-level terms, with region relationships like before, after, in, and contains. We describe an implementation of text constraints using a novel, compact representation of region sets as collections of rectangles, or region intervals. We also illustrate some examples of applying LAPIS to web pages, text files, and source code.
9330046
User interface continuations
Dialog boxes that collect parameters for commands often create ephemeral, unnatural interruptions of a program's normal execution flow, encouraging the user to complete the dialog box as quickly as possible in order for the program to process that command. In this paper we examine the idea of turning the act of collecting parameters from a user into a first class object called a user interface continuation. Programs can create user interface continuations by specifying what information is to be collected from the user and supplying a callback (i.e., a continuation) to be notified with the collected information. A partially completed user interface continuation can be saved as a new command, much as currying and partially evaluating a function with a set of parameters produces a new function. Furthermore, user interface continuations, like other continuation-passing paradigms, can be used to allow program execution to continue uninterrupted while the user determines a command's parameters at his or her leisure.
914575
Building a speech interface to a medical diagnostic system
A description is given of the design of an interface for QMR-DT, an evolving decision-theoretic version of Quick Medical Reference, which performs diagnostic reasoning about diseases in internal medicine. QMR-DT encompasses the part of QMR's functionality that provides differential diagnoses for a set of patient characteristics, but it uses a different algorithm to compute diagnoses. The work described includes two programs that integrate off-the-shelf speech technology with programs that manipulate medical terminology. The term identifier program uses an isolated-word, speaker-dependent speech product to provide an interface for entering medical findings into QMR-DT. Frame browser is an auxiliary program used by the developers of term identifier to examine frame structures. Frame browser was also used to experiment with a continuous-speech system.<<ETX>>
12403884
Preserving mapping consistency under schema changes
Abstract.In dynamic environments like the Web, data sources may change not only their data but also their schemas, their semantics, and their query capabilities. When a mapping is left inconsistent by a schema change, it has to be detected and updated. We present a novel framework and a tool (ToMAS) for automatically adapting (rewriting) mappings as schemas evolve. Our approach considers not only local changes to a schema but also changes that may affect and transform many components of a schema. Our algorithm detects mappings affected by structural or constraint changes and generates all the rewritings that are consistent with the semantics of the changed schemas. Our approach explicitly models mapping choices made by a user and maintains these choices, whenever possible, as the schemas and mappings evolve. When there is more than one candidate rewriting, the algorithm may rank them based on how close they are to the semantics of the existing mappings.
17723951
DIALOG: A Model Of Diagnostic Logic For Internal Medicine
A system for computer assisted medical diagnosis has been developed, which incorporates an innovative model of diagnostic logic. A supporting medical data base has also been assembled, now comprising approximately fifty percent of the major diseases of internal medicine. Using weighted associations between disease entitles and their manifestations, and employing a powerful attention focusing heuristic, the system has demonstrated competence In dealing with difficult clinical problems involving multiple diagnoses.
5593182
Representing and querying data transformations
Modern information systems often store data that has been transformed and integrated from a variety of sources. This integration may obscure the original source semantics of data items. For many tasks, it is important to be able to determine not only where data items originated, but also why they appear in the integration as they do and through what transformation they were derived. This problem is known as data provenance. In this work, we consider data provenance at the schema and mapping level. In particular, we consider how to answer questions such as "what schema elements in the source(s) contributed to this value", or "through what transformations or mappings was this value derived?" Towards this end, we elevate schemas and mappings to first-class citizens that are stored in a repository and are associated with the actual data values. An extended query language, called MXQL, is also developed that allows meta-data to be queried as regular data and we describe its implementation scenario.
12976067
Reasoning about Discontinuities in the Event Calculus
This paper describes a logic-based formalism which combines techniques for reasoning about actions with standard mathematical techniques for modelling dynamic systems using the diierential calculus. The formalism inherits a robust solution to the frame problem which can handle con-currency, non-determinism, domain constraints and narrative. It also incorporates a mechanism for reasoning about the boundary conditions associated with systems of diier-ential equations deened over various intervals. This mechanism overcomes a number of drawbacks of previous systems .