NEW KNOWLEDGE AGENT USES ON-THE-JOB TRAINING FOR SMARTER, MORE EFFICIENT
FILTERING

(Miami, FL, January 15, 1996) - Personal Library Software's unique search
tools have been used for years to help you find the information you need.
Now, these tools can be used to help the right information find you. Today
in Miami, at a meeting of the Interactive Services Association, PLS
unveiled PERSONAL-AGENT, a powerful new software product that monitors
incoming information for Web publishers and users and automatically
selects the most pertinent items. Most importantly, this new software can
actually teach itself -- adapting to changing currents in the information
stream. This revolutionary feature puts PERSONAL-AGENT a generation ahead
of other information agents.

PERSONAL-AGENT is designed for organizations that want to disseminate
information to individuals on a timely and selective basis, based on
personal profiles that each individual can create and customize easily.
Publishers can use PERSONAL-AGENT to provide their subscribers a
personalized, value-added service. Any organization can use PERSONAL-AGENT
to share information internally -- the rapidly growing intranet
application.

For example, PERSONAL-AGENT enables employees of a consulting firm to
continually monitor industry-related developments, news about competitors
and vendors, requests for proposals, memos and papers on company
resources, and other critical information. This could be information
arriving from outside sources or could be electronic documents produced
and circulated internally. Users are notified by e-mail whenever an
incoming item matches their profile and are guided to a private HTML
report linking the new-found documents.

PERSONAL-AGENT enables end users to create and maintain their profiles
using familiar HTML forms accessed by a common web browser such as
Netscape Navigator. Users (or owners of agents) can define the scope and
content of their information needs in natural language or take advantage
of the advanced search features found in PLS'S powerful query language. In
addition, agent owners can specify how much or how little information they
want, how often they want to be updated and how time-critical their
information need is.

Each PERSONAL-AGENT regularly tries to improve itself by exploring word
usage patterns in the incoming data stream, and informing its owner of
unanticipated associations. These associations often indicate new words
that could be added to the profile to help detect future relevant
documents that would otherwise be missed. For example, a profile created
to keep track of information about the English Royal Family would have
suggested recently that divorce is an important new concept within that
topic.

"This is really interactive learning on the part of the agent-owner team",
noted Dr. Matthew Koll, President of PLS. The PERSONAL-AGENT suggests new
words and concepts. The owner tells the agent which words and phrases seem
likely to be useful. This in turn helps the agent be on the lookout for
still better ways to describe the owner's interests. Over time, the agent
evolves into a finely-tuned expression of its owner's needs -- yet it s
always looking for change, ready to adapt to the unexpected.

"Users come to depend on their PERSONAL-AGENT", added Jo Ann Mandinach,
PLS'S Director for Information Industry Alliances. "People like it because
it's a convenient time-saver and it's a security-blanket for busy people
who need to ensure they haven't missed anything even if they don't have
time to search for it each day."

The high speed and highly flexible PERSONAL-AGENT eliminates the need for
dedicated hardware and proprietary interfaces for profile maintenance. It
features easily configurable scripts and forms, and utilities that can be
configured for such functions as deleting expired documents and agents.
Many different types of text can be indexed and presented in HTML using
simple, on-the-fly formatting scripts. PERSONAL-AGENT offers easily
installed CGI form action and uses built-in server authentication.

PERSONAL-AGENT works in conjunction with PLWEB, PLS'S popular Internet
searching and publishing system, providing a web site with the best in
both archival searching and current awareness service. PERSONAL-AGENT is
available today on Sun Solaris, and will be released over the next few
months on other major platforms such as Windows NT and Unix servers from
Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, Digital Equipment Corp., and IBM.
PERSONAL-AGENT can be used with most common World Wide Web browsers and
servers. Servers supported include those from Open Market, Netscape,
Spyglass and NCSA. Prices for PERSONAL-AGENT start at $12,995.

About PLS

PERSONAL LIBRARY SOFTWARE is the leading supplier of information retrieval
software for use on the Web, on-line services and CD-ROM. PLS products
combine intelligent retrieval techniques with the flexibility of graphical
user interfaces. PLS software is well known for the power and speed of its
search technologies, its automatic concept searching, ease of use,
robustness, dynamic updating and scalability. The PLS family of products,
introduced in 1983, is used by several thousand organizations and several
million individuals in electronic publishing as well as in workgroup and
enterprise applications.

PLS technology is at the core of products and services from leading
information companies, including America Online, Prodigy, Dow Jones,
DataTimes, Knight Ridder Information, and the Associated Press.

PERSONAL LIBRARY SOFTWARE
2400 Research Boulevard, Suite 350
Rockville, Maryland 20850
(301) 990-1155
info@pls.com
 
 =========================================================
 From the 'New Product News' Electronic News Service on...
 AOL (Keyword = New Products) and Delphi (GO COMP PROD)
 =========================================================
 This information was processed from data provided by the
 company/author mentioned. For additional details, please
 contact them directly at the address/phone# indicated.
 Trademarks are the property of their respective owners!
 =========================================================
 All submissions for this service should be addressed to:
 BAKER ENTERPRISES,  20 Ferro Dr,  Sewell, NJ  08080  USA
 Email:   rbakerpc@delphi.com   --or--   rbakerpc@aol.com
 =========================================================
