from an email:
Rhombic Corp (NUKE) has recently released a news release about the two new technologies they have in development. I thought my readers would appreciate a little more technical information on them. Following is a breakdown of both products in development from the Rhombic web site at rhombic.com.
The Active Engine
When a new type of software automates a task that people perform manually, or gives them the power to do something that they could not do before, it creates a tremendous market. Past examples include spreadsheets, database software, word processing, and desktop publishing. In each case, the first company to develop and exploit the market made a fortune. The software industry is always looking for "The Next Big Thing".
The Active Engine automates Web searching, the most commonplace and time wasting task performed on the Internet. This task has only been possible for a few years so software to automate it has not appeared, but it will. The Active Engine integrates familiar design principles from other kinds of software, making it easy to use and to understnad. It provides new powers and tremendous convenience and timesaving to every individual and every organization that uses the World Wide Web. It is a new type of software, with all the potential that that statement implies.
Millions of individuals and knowledge workers spend more time surfing the Web than on any other Internet activity. Searching the Web is fun, but it is also a slow, painstaking and inefficient manual process. The fun wears off but the work remains. Studies of the Internet useage by SunSoft and others reveal harried workers racing through web pages under deadlines, scanning rather than reading web copy, missing most of the available information for research tasks, and duplicating their own searches and those of their co-workers. The costs and waste are enormous.
Individual users suffer the same frustration and inconvenience. Stymied by slow response times and frequent droupouts during peak useage hours, many North American users do their Web research in the small hours of the morning, when they should be sleeping, or after getting up very early. This leads to increased fatigue and stress, and a host of secondary health and productivity effects in the workplace.
The Active Engine solves these problems neatly. It provides an easy, convenient way to automate manual work. The benefits provided to individuals are multipled when used by organizations. The Active Engine is a new class of software that creates a vast new market. Powerful cost/benefit justifications open up the corporate and government markets.
The Active Engine provides a way to automate and accelerate research on the web. It slashes waste and duplication of effort.
Individual Benefits
- Automates a slow, manual task
- Uses off peak hours
- Prevents redundant searching
- Provides condensed versions of sites
- Reduction of online charges
Corporate Benefits
- Reduced staff costs. Employees are freed to perform other tasks.
- Improved staff productivity
- Reduced communication costs. Queries can be consolidated and executved at the most cost effective times and dates.
- Central coordination of searches for improved efficiency and supervision
- Elimination of duplicate searches
- Accelerated response when queries yeild sites already searched. Instead of downloading and scanning a site, taking many minutes, the database constructs a response in much less than a second.
- Automated construction and maintenance of a corporate knowledge base.
Main Components
Query Setup Screens
Query Setup Screens look like search engines and are familiar to almost everyone who uses the Web. The user types in words or phrases and then submits the query to be run. Execution can be immediate or deferred, and the user can present as many different queries as desired. Queries are stored in the Query Database along with their results, and teh Query Scheduler uses this database.
The Setup Screen will activate the Scheduler if it isn't running.
Query Scheduler
Patterened on tape backup schedulers familiar to most PC users, the Query Scheduler acts as a control program to set up queries and present them to the Web. Running in either foreground or background, it can present queries instanto or at a specific time and date. The schuduler coordinates easily with tape backup schedules to prevent overlap of disk updates with backups.
The scheduler will automatically refresh information stored in the knowledge base according to thresholds at the global, query, and website levels.
If the computer is not logged onto the Internet, the Query Scheduler activities the Automatic Dialer (the default) or prompts the user to log on to the Internet manually. This second option is available for flexibility, but is unlikely to be used much in practice.
Automatic Dialer
If the computer is not logged onto the designated ISP (Internet Service Provider), the dialer closes any conflicting connections, dials in to the designed ISP, supplies the user password, and then executes the scheduled queries.
Query Database
The Query Database provides the means to organize web searches and exploit accumulated knowledge. The larger the set of users the greater the leverage it provides.
The database component provices the means to:
- Accumulate an individual or corporate knowledge base
- Eliminate duplicate searches
- Acceralte response times
- Maintain and control corporate site licensing
The Query Database used the default database engine included in the product but can be set up to use any database management system. This creates secondary business opportunities for implementation and consulting.
Site Analyzer
This is the central element of the Active Engine. It operates in the following sequence;
- Present queries to the princepal search engines using their automated protocols
- Search and analyze the returned sites
- Follow secondary links
- Rank sites according to match
- Update Query Database and produce link reports
- Download condensed site copy to specified disk areas according to parameters set in the Query Database, providing instant access to users.
The Site Analyzer includes a natural language parser (NLP). The NLP employs public domain algorithms available from a variety of sources including the extensive libraries at Carnegie-Mellon. It analyzes site copy only, ignoring graphics, sound, video, etc. Parsing rules are applied to rate the fit of the site copy to the query.
Condesing site copy can be performed over a range of levels. The simplest is verbatim translation with adjustment of link references tolocal values and cleanup of graphics references. Abstraction of site copy is the most complex. All downloaded web information includes embedded hypertext links back to the original source.
Design Overview - How the Active Engine Works
All search engines use similar interfaces. The user types key words and phrases and then submits the query. The engine uses its own search logic and database to return a list of all the sites that match the query. Typically, if two different engines are presented with the same query they will return partially overlapping result sets.
All the major search engines have protocols that allow programs other than browsers to submit queries and receive the results.
Fundamental Logic (Pseudo-code)
The user types in a set of queries The user submits the query set to the scheduler At the designated time (or immediately) the scheduler Searches the query database for matches If matches are found the database The query updates the control records for that query The query terminates If matches are not found The query engine submits its query to each of its search engines The response sets for all the major search engines are combined The Active Engine analyses the web pages Producing result sets Producing site reports Downloading condensed web pages to a local hard drive Updating the query database
Implementation
Research and Development: Virtually nil. The Active Engine Integrates widely known design techniques and publicly available algorithms.
Programming Language: Java
Operating Environments: Initially Windows 95/98 and Windows NT. This encompasses 85% of all computers. The only component dependent on the operating system is the Automatic Dialer. The selection of Java as the programming language means that almost all of the system will run under any operating system unaltered, but Java compilers will probably be employed to generate native code for targeted environments.
Database Engine: To be selected.
System Design: Fundamental logic already designed. Making a working product is a matter of implementation, testing and debugging.
Help Screens and Documentation: To be done.
Conclusion
This product establishes a completely new class of Web software. The enormous productivity gains provided to individual users are dwarfed by the gains in a corporate setting. The huge costs currently involved in paying people to surf the Web manually would be reduced almost to zero. Speed and convenience are much greater. The query database eliminates duplication of effort when different workers surf the same sites.
With so many interacting factors boosting productivity, any analysis of the costs and benefits will uyield impressive numbers. Financial and human resource departments like this type of product because it produces measurable gains in reducing costs and increasing productivity, The Active Engine will revolutionize corporate use on the Internet.
The FaxKey
The FaxKey will be a compact, simple device to send, store and receive secure facsimile documents without demanding any action beyond the insertion of a key. Both the sender and the receiver are freed from the need to key in pass codes or instruction sequences. The security provided would be equivalent to that provided by more complex protocols without without demanding error-prone extra steps.
A variety of products offer secure communications to fax users. The competitive advantage of this design lies in its ability to offer convenient and flexible security at low cost.
The FaxKey will be a separate device, able to operate with any fax. The only connection to the fax unit would be a short length of phone line. Power requirements will be small because the FaxKey design will employ low power chipsets like those in palmtop or laptop computers. No power cord is required because it will draw power from the phone jack (as standard telephones do). The FaxKey would be a simpler device than a computer, with a low parts count.
When not encrypting, decrypting, or storing secure faxes the FaxKey will act as a passive buffer, taking no action. The FaxKey will offer the option of storing printout faxes if the connecting fax unit is unavailable, for example when connected to a personal computer, which may be turned off or removed.
By monitoring incoming fax transmissions it will recognize when another FaxKey is attempting to send an encrypted document. If no key has been inserted, it will receive and store the incoming document and acknowledge transmission to the sending unit. The document remains encrypted in the FaxKey's internal RAM until the enabling key is inserted, a preset time limit expires, or the FaxKey's storage capacity is exhausted.
When a recongnized key is inserted, both the FaxKey encryption and decrypton functions become active. The FaxKey can seek to establish connection with another FaxKey in send mode. If no FaxKey is found at the other end the transmission can be aborted with a report to the sending fax, or the user can be advised that secure transmission is not available, leaving him or her the option of sending in the clear.
If any incoming messages await the owner of the key, they are decrypted and printed out by the fax upon insertion of the key. The recipient will have the option of sending secure faxes first if that task has greater priority. If the key is already inserted when an encrypted fax is received the fax will be decrypted immediately and printed out normally.
Usage
To send an encrypted fax: insert a key and send the faxes.
To receive an encrypted fax: insert a key and receive the faxes.
Except for insertion of the correct key at the proper times, no extra steps are required beyond those needed to operate the fax machine normally. The only other requirement is to remove the key when secure fax operations are completed, analogous to removing the keys from your car's ignition. |
