Download Automated bookmark management

Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Problem definition
Users of the World Wide Web often want to keep track of the valuable Web sites they
have visited and where they would like to return. This is usually done by a personal list
of URLs, which is commonly called as bookmarks. Well organized bookmarks facilitate a user’s work and constitute his or her personal information space. Unfortunately,
the current Web browsers offer very limited functionality for the bookmark management, mainly only manual sorting bookmarks into manually created folders. There is
no surprise that the bookmark management was one of the main problems of work with
the Web reported by users in the recent large survey reported by [Abrams98].
The research of [Kaasten01] outlines several user’s problems with the bookmark
management, mainly the troubles with long alphabetical bookmark lists, which make
desired pages difficult to find. Keeping a list effective for searching requires ideas for
organizing and a constant maintenance, and that is something what people are often
unable or unwilling to do. Considering these problems, some other ways of bookmark
organizing and management should be explored.
1.2 Goals
This thesis wants to address the previously mentioned issues and explore the possibilities for an automated organizing and managing of bookmarks, which would lead to
better adaptability to the user’s needs. The research comprises an examination of new
techniques of information retrieval with respect to the Web and then their application
in a prototype system as a proof of concept. Such a system should serve as a personal
bookmark assistant, which organizes bookmarks in an automated way and thus saves
user’s time for their processing and maintenance. The way of bookmark’s organizing
should be adaptive and incremental, enabling smooth additions of new bookmarks to
the recent structure.
In order to make the system more personal and assistant, it should be able to recommend to a user other Web hyperlinks, which are similar to the already organized
bookmarks and thus facilitates a user’s searching for interesting Web pages.
The work should accompany several testings, from tests of the automated system
up to a test of the application by users.
9