NatShop is a natural language shopping bot that compares price for new and previously owned products. It also compares products in auctions. Buyers can be alerted by e-mail when a specific product is available.

The new Beta version 10.3 of Napster, the file sharing program, incorporates new file identification technology that allows it to continue complying with the U.S. Federal court's injunction.
The company will soon disable previous versions of the Napster application in order to comply with the court order.

BBC now has a Real Player streaming video of the Lampry Eel Cyborg (The Robot With the Mind of an Eel - read the related article in agentland -). See how the robot tries to move away from a light pointed at its sensor.

Troody is a two legged robot, modelled on the Late Cretaceous dinosaur Troodon. It is an exploration of the application of walking robot technology to dinosaur robots. The goal of the robot is to stand up, balance, and walk around. This technology will have useful applications where there is interest in dinosaurs, the study of biomechanical locomotion and robotics in general.

The 22nd meeting of the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) standards group will be held in Sendai, Japan from 23-27 July, 2001 at the invitation of Communication Technologies. The main purpose of this meeting is to allow researchers and developers in the field of agents to collaborate in the discussion and production of FIPA specifications.

This book by Lind, J. presents one of the first attempts to develop a methodology for a broad class of agent-based systems. It provides a clear introduction to the key issues in the field of agent-oriented software engineering and a comprehensive overview of the state of the art.

Nextel Communications, Inc. has announced an alliance with etrieve, Inc. that will enable Nextel's customers to listen to corporate email, calendar and contact information from any Internet-ready Nextel phone.
The application, offered in both individual and corporate versions, supports Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, Lotus Notes, POP3- and IMAP4-based e-mail. Additionally, Nextel users can also print their e-mail and attachments through a fax machine using their mobile phones.

The EMIR emotion system was developed to make it easy for software engineers to build programs that act as if they have human emotions. Applications include computer games, aircraft crew management training systems, the creation of "virtual humans", and online survey systems.
The example Mr. Guerin (CEO of I&A Research Inc) uses to illustrate the concept is the EMIRThermostat used to control the temperature of a refrigerator. The device is programmed in such a way that it "feels frustrated when the door is left open, happy and in-control when the temperature is in range, and a full range of emotions on situations in between."

Networkissima is 100% virtual 3D creation developed by Semaphora. It's an innovative agent that presents Networkissimo services through a virtual and interactive visit.

MIThril is the next-generation research platform for wearable computer currently in development at the MIT Media Lab. The design goal for MIThril is a system that is light, ergonomic, reliable, flexible, and scalable. MIThril is a collection of low-aspect ratio, small, low-power components which connect with each other through the MIThril body-bus and body network.

International Conference on Intelligent Agents, Web Technology and Internet Commerce - IAWTIC'2001 will be held on July 9-11, 2001 in Las Vegas, USA.
Consisting of both plenary sessions and contributory sessions , this conference provides a medium for researchers and practitioners to exchange and explore the issues and opportunities in the area of intelligent agents, web technologies and Internet commerce.

TopDog, the Web position agent, has been updated. Many search engines have been added such us Espotting.com, GoTo.com UK and Google Canada. Some engines have also been removed (Raging Search, which has merged with Alta Vista) or updated: (Alta Vista Australia, LookSmart Australia, GoTo.com, SAPO etc.).

Volkswagen will launch a new Internet-enabled Golf equipped with a PDA and a handy speech mechanism allowing access at any time to extensive services such as route planning, traffic and weather information. It is also possible to listen to MP3 files or make a phone call.
Volkswagen will begin selling the Golf eGeneration over the Internet on July 9 for a price of $19,319--about $1,760 more than a standard Golf without the high-tech gadgetry.
The new car, available only in a German pilot program, comes only in blue.

This article by Phillip G. Bradford, Herbert E. Brown and Paula M. Saunders, provides a overview about Internet buying. The Internet has changed the way people buy things. A pointed difference is the use of Internet auctions and bots. But, are these differences actually changing the role and function of price in the firm's marketing program? Are they possibly changing options for pricing, and perhaps even, the very notion of perceived value? Or in fact, does the new set of Internet pricing mechanisms merely require marketers to do what good marketers have always done, and that is to build customer-perceived value and use price to recapture it?

Ohaha, the file sharing program that allowed you to exchange music, movies and other files with users around the world, is no longer available since 17 June 2001.
300,000 users have downloaded Ohaha. The application combined the features of Gnutella, Freenet, and Napster.

Check&Get, the software that checks HTTP or FTP sites for changes, has been updated. The new version supports and checks secure HTTPS web pages for updates. Now Check&Get also supports Netscape 6 and Opera browsers.
Users can receive e-mail notifications of changes in specific sites.