Virtual business worlds and cyberagents

Search the Web for a site that uses a cyber character or cyber agent to host a business site. (If you create a successful cyber agent, you may be able to get large companies to use it to sell their products online.)

1.Differentiate the various types of software agents.

Software agents carry out tasks associated with software. For example, Windows Update notifies the user of any new updates to an existing system, downloading updates and even applying an update when it is received (Ince 2005, p.396). Other agents normally only collect information from websites with specific purposes. For example, Governments agents collect statistics or extract the updates from the regulations of government and News agents notify you the breaking news and news updates.

2.Describe how techniques such as artificial intelligence and statistical techniques are used in software agents.

Like an auction agent, Bidder Edge, it scans auction sites onthe Web and continuously updates its catalogue of products. There are two ways that you can access the Bidder’s Edge Web site: first by scanning the various categories that are listed; second by personalising the Web site to your own interests, for example you can inform the site that all you are interested in is bidding for computer equipment and it will then only display items which fall under this category (Ince 2005, p.396). Certainly, it adopted the AI technique to identify you interests and the statistical technique to interpret your shopping habits. That's why it can recommend you the desired products or services.

3.Identify various activities in e-commerce where software agents are currently in use.

Amazon also employed similar techniques as mentioned above. It sends you the product update by email according to your shopping habits and interests.

4.Computing ethics and bot programming case study: rocky

a.Get an account username and password from the lecturer to LC_MOO at http://ispg.csu.edu.au:7680 and login to the Welcome Lobby.

b.Hold a 5-minute discussion with Rocky on a special topic. Commands: act rocky (start bot) hush rocky (stop bot)

c.Rocky is an ELIZA-like bot. Report your findings.

I logged in to the Welcome Lobby with the account 'train1' but couldn't get it to function as expected. But I know the bot was running because I attempted the second time and got the warning message, ' I didn't abort last time...'.