Personal Proxy
0xDECAFBAD has recently been musing about a PersonalWebProxy:
«[A]n assistant in a sidecar attached to my browser. I want this assistant to watch me, learn, and pipe up from time to time with suggestions. I also want to be able to ask questions and to remind me of things I vaguely remember. Eventually, I’d like this assistant to be able to drive for me from time to time, doing some info hunter-gatherer work for me while I do other things.»
I wonder just how many people want this. Has a pesonal proxy become the next page parser, something that anyone who’s anyone has (at least partially) implemented? 0xDECAFBAD points at Russel Beatie discussing a universal personal proxy.
I think what would be neat about these (aside from the personal wayback-machine and cookie jar) would be to have a portal-like interface to the proxy. A home page that would summerize what the proxy was up to: “Here are the pages I know you want today, already downloaded. You may be interested in the coverage on Mars in the news. Also, here are some patterns that you seem to follow while browsing. Shall I base future decisions on these patterns?”
By running with the universal proxy idea (beyond just the scope of the web), I can also imagine the proxy:
- Alerting me to new files on a hotline server (possibly scheduling a time to download those files)
- Integrating Mail::Miner features
- Integrating Infobot features
- factoids, possibly inline in webpages
- seen queries (when was wonko last seen on AIM?)
- IM proxying (send this message to zazoo the next time he’s online)
Woo! I think you want the same thing too - another reason for me to jot down everything in my head and get other heads dumped in on it as well. I really want to see a portal-like page generated from the companion proxy that can guess browsing patterns, show change notification for pages I’ve marked for monitoring or for scheduled viewing, etc.
Posted by: l.m.orchard on December 28th, 2002 10:00 PM