IBM Working On Wiki Instructional Tool
IBM’s Almaden Research Lab is developing a Wikipedia-like tool for how-to knowledge that would help people automate repetitive tasks performed on the Web, such as filling out forms or paying bills.
Tessa Lau, a developer at the San Jose, Calif.-based lab, demonstrated the technology called Koala at ETech, a four-day conference on emerging technology running here this week. IBM’s been developing Koala, a Firefox Web browser plug-in, over the last year. The lab has yet to release it widely to the public.
“We looked at the boring stuff we have to do on the Web, like checking the Comcast bill every month, and then paying it,” Lau said. Koala “allows you to script really mundane tasks (like that) on the Web and share your script with others. It lets you share knowledge about how to do stuff in the world.”
Here’s how it works: the Koala plug-in shows up in the left-side pane of the Firefox browser. Once the user hits record, the application will create a simple programming script of tasks performed online that appear in that pane.
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Tags: Computer, etech, Firefox, koala, share_knowledge, wikipedia
IBM Research | Almaden Research Center | Computer Science on 05 Sep 2007 at 1:39 pm #
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