Personal Information Assistants that search on user’s behalf aim to fetch relevant documents on a regular basis. We have developed such assistant system and evaluated it using a long-term, task-oriented approach involving real users. Current evaluation methodologies are inadequate and hence have resorted to a long-term real user study. This paper describes the design and development of our syst...

Why would we settle for data when we can have information? Or information when we can have knowledge? Discussions often reflect an implicit ordering of these terms: data < information < knowledge, i.e., information trumps data and knowledge trumps information. In a corporate/organizational context, information management came first as a field of inquiry, followed, beginning in the 1990s by disc...

The amount of personal data that users store and access in personal information systems has grown massively. Simple flexible search tools are a necessity for users to be able to access the data they need. In addition, the file organization that is typical in file systems is not a practical logical view anymore as applications may store information across files, or combine different objects into...

This is a response to Regina Barzilay's talk. Although it is hard for computer to do what human do in the physical world (e.g. play soccer, or cook dinners) because of the problem of perception and control, it is much easier for them to accomplish tasks in the cyber space. Here we will propose a personal assistant that helps users accomplish tasks they can do with a computer. Specifically, we w...

With the increasing importance of the Internet as a channel for conducting business, protecting consumer privacy has become a critical challenge. Privacy protection deals with methods giving the data owner control of his data so that he can decide when and to what extend he wants to disclose his information, and then enforcing the user’s privacy preferences, either through technology, business ...

By the use of declarative rules, automation of tasks can be performed through an electronic personal information management (PIM) application. Rules can be used in a variety of different scenarios, for instance to trigger information retrieval tasks or to send out notifications when a pre-determined set of conditions are satisfied. The technology described is an integral part of the IBM Tempus ...