Internet agents
URL minder
http://www.netmind.com/URL-minder/URL-minder.htmlThe URL-minder is a one-trick pony of an Internet agent. It keeps track of changes at Web pages. Tell it the URL of a the site that you're interested in, and URL-minder will send you an e-mail message notifying you whenever that site changes. You can give it the URLs of several sites -- you can even have it keep track of FTP sites or gopher resources.

I like it feed it the URLs of the front page or "what's new" page of sites that are updated on an irregular basis. URL-minder is a great way to keep track of changes to your favorite sites. But that's all it does -- it won't tell you what changed on a page, just that it changed. (See CJ Eagle's column about Smart Bookmarks for a Web tracking agent that does a whole lot more.)InReference
http://www.reference.com/InReference is another favorite Net agent, and a powerful one at that. You can use it to search for postings on Usenet and mailing lists based on subject, keyword, date, author and other criteria. Useful, but the cool part that makes it an agent is the fact that it can do your search on a scheduled basis and e-mail the results to you.

For instance, I use InReference to keep tabs on gossip about my favorite musical groups. Whenever anyone on Usenet mentions Negativland or They Might Be Giants, InReference takes notice. Once a week (more often if I wanted,) it e-mails abstracts describing the relevant messages. From there I can get the full messages if I want.

InReference is a great way to keep track of subjects that interest you on Usenet without having to sort through the morass of other stuff there. Agent technology at its best.Mercury Mail
http://www.merc.com/Some of Mercury Mail's features are perfect examples of Internet agents -- and pretty darn useful too. Take its stock function: go to its Web page and tell it what companies you're interested in. Every day, Mercury Mail will send you the closing quotes as well as any news about those companies. Or, use its customizable reminder service, with which Mercury Mail will tell you about birthdays and so on.News Profiles
Keyword: News ProfilesNews Profiles searches AOL's vast news sources for articles that match your interests, and whenever it finds something of interest, e-mails the news item to you. With it, you can create "profiles" using keywords to describe your interests. Every day, your profiles will be compared to the day's news from the Associated Press, PR Newswire and Business Wire. Relevant articles are e-mailed to you. You can have up to five profiles per screen name. There is no additional charge for the News Profiles service.

It's simple to create a news profile. You give it a name and set the maximum number of articles per day that you want to receive from it. Then identify the keywords the News Profile will use to search articles on your behalf. You can even narrow your search by defining words that must or must not appear in the article. For example, if I wanted to find articles about or by Martha Stewart, I would use those two words. But if I don't really want to read any articles about Martha's gardening, I can exclude articles that contain the word "garden" or "gardening". Kewl, huh?

You can modify the News Profiles that you created at any time: You can turn them off or on (turning them off while you are away on vacation is a good thing), or edit the profile -- maybe you are getting too many articles that don't relate to your interests (in which case add words to narrow the search.) Or, you may not be getting any articles (in which case you can expand the search).Smart Bookmarks
Keyword: Smart Bookmarks
(Windows computers only)Bookmarks is a program that allows you to automatically maintain copies of sites that you choose, including their images and links, on your hard drive. After Smart Bookmarks downloads a site to your computer, you can enjoy it while NOT logged on to AOL -- everything is on your hard drive.

The software also allows you to schedule agents to check for Web pages that have changed -- like every Tuesday at 2:00 A.M. when everyone is sleeping -- and put those changes on your hard drive, too. So you'll always have an up-to-date, personal copy of the site available, even when you're off-line.

You can use Smart Bookmarks with the most popular search engines, including Yahoo, WebCrawler, Excite, and DejaNews. Smart Bookmarks can automatically re-run your search at any search engine, showing you any new hits since the last update. Nifty!

Smart Bookmarks is an add-on to the AOL software. In order to use it you'll have to download and install it.FarCast
http://www.farcast.com/don't often talk about Internet resources that aren't free -- there are so many great, free tools out there for getting information. But FarCast, is an exception. If you're serious about getting all the relavent news delivered to you, its $9.95 a month charge it well worth it.

ForCast calls its agents "droids."  You tell the Droids what to do, such as find articles on real estate in San Diego, and they report their findings, in plain English, at exactly the times you specify. You can have as many as 15 Droids working for you (more than enough!) 

With Farcast, you can get the latest and greatest information and data from today or up to 30 days ago. You can search at 3 am or have your droids do it for you while you sleep. You can update data, such as stock quotes, every 15 minutes or check in every week. Information in delivered to you via electronir mail.

FarCast's information soucres include stock quotes from NYSE, AMEX, and the NASDAQ markets, Hoover's Guide.to businesses, and news from AP, UPI, Businesswire, PR Newswire, and Newsbytes.CareerSite, at http://www.careersite.com uses an intelligent program to match workers with prospective jobs that suit them (based on occupation, industry, location, education and skills), and provides a messaging service through which you can contact employers. Best of all, once you fill out a profile describing your qualifications and such, CareerSite will automatically search job listings once a week looking for new opportunities that match your profile, and e-mail you the good news. (Try to get the Sunday classifieds to do that :) 
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