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technical statement The "brains" behind the SPv2 server uses Comet Way's Agent Kernel written in Java. The SPv2 project depends on dynamic retrieval of information from the Internet. For this purpose, Java agents search, retrieve and interpret online information. Since none of this data is directly readable by Macromedia Flash (the program used to create the SPv2 web site), agents must translate the gathered information into a Flash-compatible format. Java agents make the translation using shareware called Swift-Generator (http://www.swift-tools.com). For example, a java agent is at work in SPv2 when a viewer clicks on the "Incoming Email" option under the DataMine menu. A java agent accesses Brooke's POP3 account, dynamically generates text files based on email contents and then serves these files as Flash properties to the SPv2 web site. Another instance of agents at work in SPv2 is when the web search option is activated. Here the Comet Search agents handle the more complex process of using popular search engines to find links related to Brooke Singer that are then crawled to find image files. These image files are deposited onto the SPv2 server and later appear in the SPv2 browser window. The entire SPv2 server is, in fact, comprised of Comet Way agents--even the webserver is an agent and has been running on Macintosh servers under Mac OS 10.1. The Comet Ways Agent Kernel is open source and available at http://www.cometway.com/downloads. |
