In the EU-financed research project SELECT (see
http://cmc.dsv.su.se/select) for more info), we are looking at ways
of providing rating services on web pages. By rating services we do
not mean the PICS kind of services, established to protect children
from unsuitable web content, but collaborative filtering, where
people store their ratings of web pages and these ratings can help
other people find the most interesting pages on the web.
One major problem is that we want people to be able to give ratings
on any web page, anywhere. This can be done either by adding a rating
button to their web browsers through a plugin, or by letting a proxy
server add the rating button in a small frame at the top of the web
page. The advantage with the proxy server solution is that it will
work for all web browsers. Modifying web browsers with a plug-in will
only work with particular web browsers.
One problem with adding a rating button in a small frame, is that the
URL in the address field will be the URL of the frame and not the URL
of the web page below the small frame. I believe, however, that a
proxy server can fix this, too.
Of course a proxy server cannot start adding rating buttons to all
web pages, people would scream at them. The proxy server will have to
have two addresses, one address for those who do not want to make
ratings, and one alternative address used only for those who want to
provide ratings.
Is there any proxy software developer, or proxy server, which is
interested in co-operating with our project in adding such a facility?
(Please excuse that this message may not be appropriate for the wrec
mailing list. And please, if you write replies to this message, which
are not related to the issues of the wrec working group, please send
these replies personally to me, and not to the list. I am not sure,
but there may be issues related to the problem presented in this
message which are relevant to the issues of the working group, too.
Replies on such issues can of course be sent to the list.)
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Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 18 2004 - 11:21:26 MST