Solid Software's Information Page

News:

Taiwan News: We host a news service about Taiwan. It includes timely overviews and condensations of articles reported in both the Taiwan news outlets, and articles in Australia that have extra interest to people in Taiwan. This service is offered to help foster a cultural and trade conduit between Australia and Taiwan. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

For Taiwan News click here.

Samples of our Papers:

Goschnick, S.B. (2003). Enacting an Agent-based Digital Self in a 24x7 Web Services World. In proceedings of ISMIS 2003, the 14th Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, Maebashi, Japan. Springer LNAI vol. 2871, pp187-196. Version of this paper is available here as a pdf file: GoschnickISMIS-2003.pdf (2340 Kbytes) The published version of this paper is now available online (as of 30th Mar'06), here: Springer link
Abstract:
As broadband access to the Internet becomes pervasive, the need for a 24 hours a day, seven days a week (24x7) interface within the client devices, requires a level of sophistication that implies agent technology. From this situation we identified the need for a user-proxy++, something we have termed the Digital Self that acts for the user gathering appropriate information and knowledge, representing and acting for them when they are off-line. With these notions in mind we set about defining an agent architecture, sufficiently complex to deal with the myriad aspects of the life of a busy time-poor modern user, and we arrived at the Shadowboard architecture. For the theory, for the model of mind, we drew upon the Psychology of Subselves, a modern strain of Analytical Psychology. For the computation engine we drew upon Constraint Logic Programming. For the hundreds of sources of sub-agency and external intelligence needed to enact a Digital Self within the 24x7 Internet environment, we drew upon the Web Services paradigm. This paper presents the theory, the architecture and the implementation of a prototype of the Shadowboard agent system.
Goschnick, S.B. & Sterling, L. (2002). Psychology-based Agent Architecture for Whole-of-user Interface to the Web, Proc. of HF2002 Human Factors Conference: Design for the Whole Person - Integrating Physical, Cognitive and Social Aspects, Melbourne, Nov. 2002. Paper (in pdf format, 169 KBytes) Short paper.
Abstract:
This paper argues that the user interface of a workstation connected continuously (24x7) to a network would be most effective with a sophisticated agent architecture embedded deep in the workstation system software. In the user's absence an embedded agent system could act as something more than a proxy for the user, the multiple sub-agents within it should act in concert as a Digital Self, one representing and empowering the user. Our proposed agent architecture, called Shadowboard, is based on a sophisticated model of the user drawn from the Psychology of Subselves, a modern stream of Analytical Psychology.
S.B. Goschnick (2000). Shadowboard: A Whole-Agent Architecture that draws Abstractions from Analytical Psychology (this links to an 243 KBytes .pdf file), Proc. PRIMA 2000, Melbourne, Aug 2000.
Abstract:
This paper presents an intra-agent architecture called Shadowboard, one that takes abstractions from analytical psychology. The Shadowboard architecture is a foundation upon which to build a whole-agent - an individual autonomous agent no more, but one made up of many sub-agents. Such a whole-agent approach to modelling enables a psychologically sound, finer-grained approach to applying behavioural abstractions such as BDI, while incorporating the selection of capabilities and plans, together with learning and optimization. An individual agent built upon Shadowboard is also capable of collaboration and cooperation in a wider MAS system. The strong degree of self-awareness that a Shadowboard agent intrinsically has, not only allows it to improve its own performance and effectiveness over time, it also offers significant advantages in modelling other agents in an encompassing MAS system.
Nov, 1998: Melbourne, TOOLS Pacific '98: Steve Goschnick delivers a paper to the Tools Pacific'98 conference, held in Melbourne Australia, in late November. The paper is about the analysis, design and development of an Online Education System called Melbourne IT Creator. Details of the paper are:
Title: Design and Development of Melbourne IT Creator™ – a System for Authoring and Management of Online Education.

Keywords: HTML, authoring tools, Java, SQL, Internet, dynamic content, XML, metadata, Relational DBMS, online education, multimedia, hypermedia, web development.
Author: Steven B. Goschnick
Affiliation: Department of Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia
Email: stevenbg 'at' unimelb 'dot' edu 'dot' au
Abstract:
This paper presents a Case Study in the symbiotic use of new internet based technologies and an SQL server, to develop a software tool in a new category of generic software: a system for authoring and delivery of web-centric learning. In the design and implementation of the system, the developers drew upon the latest available languages and platforms, aiming for a high benchmark in this new software genre: Java for cross platform authoring tools; JavaScript and HTML V4 for scripting and markup; applets, video and other media types as object components; IIS (Microsofts Internet Information Server technology) to deliver dynamically constructed HTML markup. Behind the interfaces and business rules is robust SQL server technology, which is taking on an expanded role in proliferating web-based information systems. In the latter half of the paper, problems and solutions are discussed, including the use of metadata and XML (the eXtensible Markup Language) as part of the solutions.
For the full paper online: Click here.
Oct, 1998: New York, Christine Sun delivers a paper at the 40th Annual Conference of the American Association for Chinese Studies (AACS), "China Entering the 21st Century", New York City, USA.
Paper Title: Negotiating between ‘Bounded Spaces’: Introducing Australian Chinese Writers to the world.

Articles:

We've had numerous newspaper and magazine articles published over the years. Some that have ongoing relevance are available online, are accessable from here:

After the Flood by Christine Sun. Published in The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend magazine.

An interview with a C++ guru by Steve Goschnick. Published in The Age.

Computers fast becoming the universal relator of concepts by Steve Goschnick. Published in The Age.

Two roads lead to quality street by Steve Goschnick. Published in The Age.

C++ing out the Millenium by Steve Goschnick. Published in The Age.

Programming Part I: Choosing Your Tools. S.B. Goschnick (1991). Aust. PC User magazine, pp.56-74, June 1991.

C++ - A Language of Liberation. S.B. Goschnick (1991). Your Computer magazine, Sep'91, pp82-88.

C++ Programming - Putting Large Projects Back in the Hands of a Few People. S.B. Goschnick (1991). Your Computer magazine, Aug'91, pp74-81.

The C++ Language - A Cornerstone of the 90's. S.B. Goschnick (1990). Your Computer mazagine, Dec. pp 64-72, The Federal Publishing Company, NSW.

Press Releases

Contact/Feedback:

Solid Software Pty Ltd

ACN: 084 786 498
Postal Address: P.O. Box 218, Belgrave, Victoria 3160, Australia
Fax: +61 (0)3 9754 2419
Email: gosh 'at' solidsoftware 'dot' com 'dot' au

This page last updated: 15th July 2006.