An agent framework for inter-personal information sharing with an RDF-based repository

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a framework for personal agents that supports inter-personal information exchange and sharing. The framework offers a repository-centered architecture in which a user can store information resources and annotations. On this framework, applications work collaboratively with the help of the event notification mechanism. The personal agent especially targets the collecting and utilizing of information that describes how the user handled information resources. The descriptions of interactions are obtained by applications on the agent framework and stored into the RDF repository as annotations to the original information resources. A personal agent consists of applications that utilize these "annotations about interaction" for infortion sharing. We first discuss "annotation about interaction" in personal environments, then describe the current implementation of our framework that offers an RDF-based repository. The experimental implementation of both communication-oriented and information-sharing-oriented applications on this framework is introduced as a starting point for our approach. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.