Telos, 1 (1999): 1-19
Maurizio Decina, Eddo Rigotti, Fiorenzo Scaroni, Lorenzo Cantoni, Paolo Jannuzzi, Benedetto Lepori, Riccardo Mazza[*]
The SwissCast information push service
A multidisciplinary research, a multifaceted experience
Foreword
This paper aims at three different purposes:
(1) to briefly present the push technologies and services, what they are and what they can be useful for;
(2) to present the SwissCast Project, a Lugano based project concerned with push technologies and services;
(3) to discuss some outcomes of the project activities, among those:
(3.a) a few conditions under which a push service seems to work;
(3.b) a deeper awareness of the fact that a multidisciplinary research is needed when meeting a complex object like that of push services.
1. Some lines on push technologies
The most popular Internet communication metaphor for information access is that of browsing information from the World Wide Web. Here, users actively search for information they need by browsing websites. To do so, they use most often search engines (e.g.: AltaVista) or directory services (e.g.: Yahoo).
In the last few years, due to the astounding grow of the Internet community and of information pieces available via the web, this first paradigm has shown some relevant shortcomings, which can be summarised under three main headlines: Quantity & Relevance, Quality, Updating.
Quantity & Relevance. Due to the well known information overload, it is quite difficult to find out what one is looking for, both in general (having a question, and finding relevant material over the Internet), and in a specific website: answering the question: is there anything relevant for me in this website? (or: is there something more on the subject here? and how much?). This means that every search over the Internet is becoming more and more time demanding (efficiency issue), and needs special ad-hoc skills in order to be really useful (effectiveness issue).
Quality. Once relevant items are found, the quality issue arises: are they good quality or not? Everybody can publish everything over the new electronic place, and many new actors are struggling to get audience and credits. Professionals, who are well equipped when having to judge other media, are not always able to assess with the same certainty information providers’ quality over the Internet. Other subjects are needed in order to monitor and assess new information providers in specific content areas.
Updating. Information available over the Internet changes continuously, and users can never say if they accessed the newest version or not. Neither can they come back again and again to check if there is something new in given sites or in the Internet in general. Automatic checking activities are needed to offer at each time the most updated available information pieces.
Information casting
The paradigm of information casting or “push” (also known as WebCasting, PushCasting, Channel Broadcasting, etc.) could offer relevant answers to these issues.
Information casting is the term used for the automatic delivery of content to a computer desktop over the Internet. Although a proper definition of “push” arises quite a few issues, a good one seems to be the following:
Push is the automatic deliver of content to users’ computer desktop; content is organised by topic defined by a publisher and users receive information according to their own pre-defined profile.
Three elements thus integrate a would-be complete definition: Automatic delivering, Content organisation, User profile.
Automatic delivering. In order to have a push service you need some sort of automatic delivering of information pieces to the end-users. This is much like what happens in radio and TV broadcasting, where end users simply receive what is sent. Automatic delivery is done through special technologies, ranging from point to point casting to multicasting.
A major emphasis on the technological aspect has let to stress more and more bandwidth requirements and supported technologies (e.g.: live audio/video) than the communicational issue in itself. The above suggested definition wants, on the contrary, leave room to many possibilities, from plain text e-mail messages to audio/video clip delivery. In our opinion, what is most important are neither bandwidth nor technologies, which all are communicational tools, but the fact that each single message has not to be solicited, but is automatically delivered to its receivers in a given, suitable way.
This last observation helps to better outline the general SwissCast philosophy: trying to follow the natural communication hierarchy: moving from meanings and human communication needs towards suitable communication tools, and not vice-versa. In other words, the question which leads the research programme is: what technologies are useful for what communication flows?
This point of view explains also the project choice of using many different communication tools to build up the push service prototype, including e-mail messages and web browsing (personal page approach).
Content Organisation. A main added value an information service can offer, is that of selecting, organising and editing, according to its clients’ interests, information items coming from different sources. Another relevant advantage will be that of presenting selected items formatted following a given, homogeneous format, helping end users to process more items in less time.
User profile. Push technologies and services are quite similar to the traditional TV broadcasting: an information provider delivers news on given subjects. The inner nature of the electronic medium offers much more customisation possibilities, both offering pre-defined thematic channels to which end users can subscribe, or allowing end users themselves to define their own channel/s (user profile), this last one is the choice made by the SwissCast Project.
Coming back to the TV broadcasting, if we think of the new thematic channels and the pay-per-view services, we can notice the convergence flow in the new media world.
After a first enthusiastic welcome, push technologies don’t seem to have revolutionised the web. Both Netscape and Microsoft are not developing and upgrading their proprietary channel technology any more (nor do they make an extensive use of it), and many push technology providers have changed their interest direction.
In our opinion, this situation can be explained by a rather one-sided vision of push services, which emphasises almost only the technological side of the overall “push story”[1].
Instead, we believe that push services are neither only nor mainly technological tools that help finding information in Internet, but true information brokerage services, which try to bridge the gap between the information contents available on Internet and the user’s needs. To do so, they perform a series of actions which include[2]:
- the definition of the scope and of the information content of the service;
- the search and the selection of reliable information sources;
- the mapping of user’s information needs;
- the semantic mapping of available information, including the definition of a suitable classification scheme;
- the systematic search for new information items and their delivery to the service users according to their interests.
In this process, technology can be very helpful, mainly in order (1) to access information through the Internet, (2) to perform very repetitive tasks as regularly searching web sites or matching new information items against users’ profiles and (3) to regularly monitor information flows and users’ behaviours.
Information brokerage
If we consider the activity of a push service as being that of an information broker, we have to take into account three main elements: information providers, information receivers and available information the broker has to manage.
Let us consider the brokerage function in more detail.
(1) Brokers have to know their clients, and their information needs, taking into account that both information providers and end users are clients.
(2) They have to find out relevant information sources according to their clients’ profiles and collect them.
(3) The broker works as a translator. Actually, available information must be semantically mapped following a subject-oriented schema. This mapping is of the main importance because it is a kind of a shared language between information providers and clients. On one hand it helps classifying information, on the other, to better define one’s own user profile. Only if keywords are well defined, and adequate for the subject area, a good communication exchange can be granted.
(4) Information brokers have to build up a platform where their clients can easily access information they are interested in.
(5) Lastly: clients have to be notified – following precise guidelines for what concerns method and time – when something matches their profiles. This task can be completed by automatic tools.
2. A brief presentation of the SwissCast Project
Purpose of the SwissCast Project is studying and working out a prototype communication service — Internet based — which can select and broadcast information organised to meet different user-profiles in well defined professional/interest groups: “push service”.
The Project also tries to examine a number of relevant issues, among which the following should be listed: classification and choice of the most suitable hardware/software tools, analysis of information providers’ and information users’ communication needs, design of user oriented graphical interface, realisation of suitable validation procedures.
In order to implement and validate the service, two different areas in the communication market were chosen: namely Research & Development in the University setting, Pharmaceutics. In the SwissCast Project activities both information providers and end-users actively co-operate with the researchers who work at the building and validation of the service.
The SwissCast project was approved and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). It started in autumn 1997 and is currently run by the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the University of the Italian Switzerland, and the Department of Applied Arts of the Tessin High School for Applied Sciences.
Project leaders, managers, researchers and consultants come from very different scientific areas, all of them being connected in some sort with the communicational issue.
In addition, some pharmaceutical companies are involved in the SwissCast Project as Project partners, namely: Pfizer AG, IBSA, Institut Biochimique; Künzle, and ActaMed Services: an agency specialised in information brokering in the health area, with a deep insight and a long experience in the concerned information market.
Project activities at first were those of analysing the two research areas and the involved information market. Bibliographic research as well as interviews with professionals helped in getting the needed knowledge.
In parallel, a deep analysis of information push available research, technologies and services was undergone. A collaboration with Eurospider — a spin-off company of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Switzerland), led by professor Peter Schäuble — helped the SwissCast team to better focus its research object and understanding the main differences between information retrieval services and push services.
In spring 1999, a full-functioning version of the SwissCast push service has been put on-line and it will be tested and assessed till spring 2000. The project will end on March 2000.
Architecture of the SwissCast push service
In this section, we will present the architecture and the functionalities of the push service built in the framework of the SwissCast Project.
Information flows
From the point of view of the information flows, the system contains the elements displayed in the picture.
Information retrieval & information classification. Information is in part directly inserted into the push service by the active information providers (those who have signed a special agreement with the SwissCast service) or it is retrieved by the information editor (namely, but not exclusively, from the web) and inserted by the information editor in the information storage. All insertion activities are done via web forms.
Ad hoc software modules were implemented to interface external databases with the SwissCast document database; this is the case of active information providers whose data are stored in corporate databases.
All pieces of information items must be classified according to a standard keyword scheme and formatted along a pre-defined structure[3]; this is done either by the information provider or by the information editor with the assistance of technical tools.
Information storage (document database). The document database is a key element in the system, because it contains what will be pushed to end users in a standard format. Many items in the document database will also contain a reference to a web page that gives more information on the subject.
Push module. This module periodically matches new information items inserted in the document database against users’ profiles and attributes new relevant documents to the corresponding profiles; users can read relevant documents through a common web browser (personal web page approach). Moreover, this module contains an agent that regularly checks for new documents and sends notification to each user via e-mail.
After four weeks of displaying in a (at least once visited) profile, every document is removed, unless end users checked it to maintain it. This activity is performed due to the “push” nature of the service, and in order not to have too big — and thus useless — document lists.
The complete management tool set is accessible to the information editor through the web. It provides utilities to the overall system monitor and running as well as many statistical utilities.
Technical realisation
Since the goal of the project is to study the communicational flows in push services, rather than to develop new technologies, most of the SwissCast system has been developed using freeware software tools adapted to the Project needs and interfaced with the web using CGI programming. In more detail, the following tools were used:
- MySql from T.c.X DataKonsult AB as database server, due to its fastness, robustness and easiness; moreover, it is free for universities and research centres;
- Compbine harvesting robot, created by the NetLab Department at the Lund University (Sweden);
- DBI interface to interact with the database; this provides a standard interface for most of the possible relational database system in commerce, thus leaving the possibility to replace MySql with other database servers without having to modify the software;
- Apache Web server; this web server is used by over 50% of the Unix servers in the world, because is reliable, fast and freeware;
- Perl 5 as programming language, because it provides the best support for CGI programming, being fast, concise and simple.
Moreover, the interface of the service with the information editor, the information providers and the end-user is completely web-based and thus all the necessary tasks – including the management of the service and the input of documents – can be done via a web browser.
The SwissCast system is thus based on a database, which acts as a container both for information and user’s profiles data. Information are classified and inserted within the database manually from active providers (filling information via web forms) or automatically through dedicated gateways from other databases accessed via Internet. An account (username and password) is assigned by the information editor of the service to each active provider, in order to guarantee its identification.
A gathered unit is being implemented in order to help the information editor to perform repetitive tasks. In detail, it constantly checks a list of web pages and automatically receives last updates; through a filter unit the information editor will be able to discard all useless information and to insert into the SwissCast documents’ database only relevant information items.
Once a new document is inserted into the SwissCast documents’ database, a match against all existing profiles is performed, and the document will be automatically and instantly assigned to the corresponding profiles. The match criteria is based on Boolean operators, working on the keywords schema through which every document is classified and every profile is created.
Moreover, an agent periodically checks each profile for new documents, and sends notification to the corresponding user via e-mail if new documents were found.
Other pieces of software were developed in order to monitor and assess the service (usage statistics, keywords schema efficiency, etc.) as well as the system administration.
What’s currently on-line and the service assessment
Since May 1999 a running prototype has been working for the area of University R&D information[4].
The R&D area has been chosen as the first area of application due to the possibility of a close co-operation with the Research Office of the University of Italian Switzerland, thus having from the very beginning of the Project an interested partner that knows very well the specific application field. At the same time, R&D information is a domain well suited for the development of push services because most of the internal communication and of the information exchange in the scientific community already develops via Internet, researchers are thus used to this medium. A very important push service in the research area is already run by the European Community[5] and another service — in its project phase — is being developed by the University of Bochum[6].