GRDDL-aware agents (Was Re: "GRDDL Agents" ...)

I think that I was the one who coined "GRDDL-aware Agent" and I think that
I should try to explain why I felt that "-aware" was originally suggested...

On one hand, we can certainly expect to see a proliferation of stand-alone
agents which meet the criteria laid out by Dan earlier in this thread. And I
can see how "GRDDL Agent" seems much more suitable for that class
of processor.

On the other hand, and for reasons that I cannot express, I expect to see
GRDDL-awareness being built into future generations of Web Browsers
-- which are otherwise known as "User Agents."  In such cases, I do not
like to think of the UA as a GRDDL Agent, because it does so much more.
Rather, I think of them as being "GRDDL-aware."

Further, since I do not believe that such an agent has an obligation to perform
transformations at will, but will rather perform transformations only at the
behest of the user -- who presumably initiates the transformation by clicking
over an anchor or UA button, or by way of user preferences -- I think that
GRDDL-awareness as being critically important to the user experience.

That is, I do not expect to transform every web page that shows up in my
browser window. Rather, I expect that my GRDDL-aware UA will notify
me when it is aware of GRDDL transformations being available, and perhaps
offer a pop-up or some-such to show me useful triples. In time, my UA would
learn from me which transformations I consider valuable. My UA could also
notify other agents which might use the GRDDL results to populate my
address book or calendar.

I guess that what I saying that I don't find a GRDDL Agent, in and of itself,
that interesting. Rather, I see GRDDL-awareness being a highly desirable
for Semantic Web applications and agents.

Finally, since Dan is a stickler for sticking with decsions, I'll point out 
that
we already made a decision to use the term "GRDDL-aware agent"

Regards,

Murray

Received on Monday, 19 February 2007 23:00:22 UTC