Instant messaging is poised to become an instant information tool. A start-up has created a way to use instant messaging for information retrieval.
In a few weeks, a new "buddy" will appear on instant messaging lists that could substantially change the way information is distributed and retrieved on the Net.
The new buddy won't be real. It will be a "bot" created by New York company ActiveBuddy, which is developing technology that lets popular software for trading short text messages be used to grab information stored on Web sites and computer databases.
Rather than visiting a Web site for stock market information, for example, a person could send an instant message with the text "IBM stock" and instantly receive a response with the current price of IBM shares.
An early version of the technology is already quietly living inside AOL Time Warner, Microsoft and Yahoo chat networks, providing movie schedules, stock quotes, and news headlines. It also can search for dictionary terms or answer maths questions.
Although it's still new, the service holds the potential to expand consumers' ideas of the possibilities far beyond the traditional Internet. It could even increase use of an IM service - for example, AOL Instant Messenger - as it siphons traffic from popular Web portals.
At the least, it will change people's view of the lowly chat window.
"This opens up some areas (for the Net) that really haven't been explored," said Michael Pazzani, a University of California at Irvine computer science professor who studies interactive technologies and also heads a company focusing on personalized information. "This opens up a lot of possibilities."
ActiveBuddy's data application is just the latest twist in the development of instant messaging, which is slowly evolving from an informal chat network into software with the ability to support many applications for both consumer and corporate uses.
Underground programmers have harnessed AIM as a way to swap free music and other media files through a program called Aimster. Microsoft, meanwhile, is leaning heavily on the technology in its .Net software-as-a-service strategy.
The company is using instant messaging in a new set of software building blocks grouped under the code name HailStorm, which is being billed as a way for consumers and business customers to access their data - calendars, phone books, address lists - from any location on any device.
Despite its successes, however, instant messaging has been hampered by a lack of standards and nagging questions about its true commercial potential.
AOL Time Warner's AIM and ICQ services do not work with each other or rival offerings such as Microsoft's MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, forcing a battle over interoperability that could slow the development of new features such as ActiveBuddy's data bots. In addition, while almost everyone wants a piece of the IM market, no one has yet figured out a way to generate significant revenues from the technology in its current form.
Old robots in new houses
ActiveBuddy is putting a new twist on an old idea of bots or "intelligent agents" - small pieces of software that can act more or less independently of direct human control. The service meshes the "chatterbots" that have populated the Net for decades, badly mimicking human conversation.
One of the earliest and best known of these "chatterbots" was named Eliza, replicating the often-maddening responses of a psychologist to a patient. Responding to questions and conversation with new questions of "her" own, even this rudimentary bot was able to fool many people online into thinking that "she" was a real person.
