SHOCK: communicating with computational messages and automatic private profiles

A computationally enhanced message contains some embedded programmatic components that are interpreted and executed automatically upon receipt. Unlike ordinary text email or instant messages, they make possible a number of useful applications. In this paper, we describe a general and flexible messaging system called SHOCK that extends the functionality of prior computational email systems by allowing XML-encoded SHOCK messages to interact with an automatically created profile of a user. These profiles consist of information about the most common tasks users perform, such as their Web browsing behavior, their conventional email usage, etc. Since users are sensitive about such data, the system is designed with privacy as a central design goal, and employs a distributed peer-to-peer architecture to achieve it. The system is largely implemented with commodity Web technologies and provides both a Web interface as well as one that is tightly integrated with users' ordinary email client...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: WWW
• Authors: Rajan M. Lukose, Eytan Adar, Joshua R. Tyler, Caesar Sengupta
• Keywords: Internet Technology, Ordinary Email Clients, Ordinary Text Email, WWW 2003, XML-encoded SHOCK Messages