I was feeling nostalgic today so I looked up this co-authored old paper (1997) about personalizing the web. It was such a new field then. I’ve always been proud of the fact that I wrote the first version. Remember when the internet was slow? Advertisers were upset because we could model the relative response times of destination sites using an exponential distribution and place predictive green, yellow and red blocks next to each link. True, it destroyed the page layouts—but web pages weren’t as finely crafted back then. It was wildly useful during a time when a significant percentage of all links went to dead sites.
From the referenced web page…
IBM releases a software agent called Web Browser Intelligence that makes it easier for users to obtain, distribute, and control information on the Web.Source: IBM unveils intelligent agent – CNET (from 1997)
Technostology 