Organizing Your Interests

To organize your interests, place them in an interest profile document. Myallo uses the profile to help it search for and to evaluate articles to predict your interest in them.

This section explains the interest profile and shows how to create and arrange interests within them to show their relationships.

The Interest Profile

An Interest Profile is a document that contains a set of interests. An interest specifies how interested you are in a particular topic or article. A topic is a word or phrase or advanced search term that you specify. An article is a web page on the Internet, or an HTML or text file on your local computer; or a computer attached to your local network.

The figure below shows an interest profile with three interests in it.

The "Name" column contains an icon that represents the type of interest, and the name of the interest. The light bulb icon represents an interest, and a light bulb with an arrow on it represents an alias to an interest. In this figure, there are no aliases.

You can edit an interest's name by double clicking it and typing the new name.

The check mark column contains a mark that indicates that the Agent should use the interest when it does a "Start Agent" type of search. (The "Fast Lookup..." type of search ignored the checkmarks and searches on a single string you enter.) If you click a check mark it will toggle off and on. However, it usually doesn't need to be changed. When you choose the "New Interest" command, the check mark is turned on by default. When the Agent creates results, those do not have check marks. This is how the Agent tells them apart.

The "Interest Level" column contains a slider which shows your level of interest. The center setting is the normal "average" level of interest. Settings toward the right indicate more interest, and settings toward the left indicate less interest. When the slider is toward the right, the Agent is attracted to articles that mention the Interest's name. When the slider is toward the left, it is repelled from articles that match.

You can set an interest to the center, average, level more easily by Control-clicking on it and choosing the "Center Interest Level" command from the pop-up contextual menu that appears.

The "Opened" column shows the date and time you last opened the interest's location to view the associated article in your Internet browser (by double clicking the interest in the "Opened" column, typinf the Return key, or using the "Open Interest" command in the Interest menu.)

The "Location" column shows the location of the article you are interested in. The location is blank when the interest is not for a specific article. The location is a URL (Universal Resource Locator) which indicates the location of a file or an Internet web page.

You can edit an interest's location by double clicking it and typing in the new location, which must be a validly formed URL (or an empty string.)

Creating a Profile

When you first open the Myallo application, it may display a new, empty interest profile window.

Selecting the "New" command in the File menu will also create a new, empty profile window.

Elements of an Interest

An interest holds a topic and optionally the location of an article. It also holds your interest level in the topic or article, and some details.

A topic is a word or phrase or advanced search string you specify. The Interest's name is its topic, unless you have specified an advanced search string, which is part of the detail settings.

An article is a source of text whose location can be specified with a URL (Universal Resource Locator) string. The article is usually a web page on the Internet, but can be a text or HTML file that resides on your computer, a computer on your local network, or on the Internet.

A detail is a minor setting that helps Myallo's searching or learning process.

The interest profile window holds a list of interests, and displays the icon, name, interest level, last opened date and time, and location of each interest. An interest in a profile looks like this:

If an interest has a location, then the thing of interest is the article that location points to. The location of the article is shown in the "Location" column of the profile window. You can add or edit a location by double clicking it in the profile window.

If an interest does not have a location, the thing of interest is the topic. The "Location" column will be blank (shown with a gray double-dash.) The topic is usually the Interest's name - a word or phrase.

The interest Name is in the left column of the profile window. You can edit the name by double clicking on it. 

The check mark column indicates if the interest is "marked." You can turn the check mark off and on by clicking in the check box. A marked interest with an empty location whose interest level is not left of center is used by Myallo's agent when it submits topics to search sites during a "Start Agent" type of search. Normally, the interests you add are marked, and the results of a session are unmarked.

The "Opened" setting holds the date and time when you last asked Myallo to show you the article. Myallo maintains this setting automatically.

The rarely changed detail settings for an interest can be adjusted with the "Interest Details" command in the Interests menu, which causes this drawer to appear at the side of the profile window:

The detail settings mainly affect Myallo's learning function, and are described in another section. The tabs at the top edge of the drawer change the display in the drawer, from interest details to agent status or interest location content.

If you select another Interest in the profile window, the Details window changes to reflect the settings for that Interest.

Adding Interests to the Profile

There are several ways to add new interests to a profile, select the "New Interest" command in the Interest menu.

After adding an interest, the default name "New Interest" is selected so you can type in the proper name, which should be a word or phrase describing the interest topic. Generally, the name should be suitable for use as a search engine search term. Since searches are normally case-insignificant, upper or lower case doesn't matter.

Next make sure the interest level is set properly. If you have an "average" interest, leave the slider alone, otherwise move it a little to the left for less interest, or a little to the right for more interest.

Note that dragging the interest level slider for one interest will cause interests that are linked with it (its parents, children, their parents and children and so on) to be adjusted too, by lesser amounts. If you need to prevent this and just want to adjust the one interest, drag the slider, but when it is in the right position, hold down the Option key and then release it. This suppresses the linked adjustments.

Note that an interest set to the left of center expresses more than low interest, it is an active disinterest. Myallo will not only not search for the topic, it will be repelled by articles it happens across that mention the topic.

New interests are marked with a check mark that indicates it should be considered by the Myallo agent when it searches for interesting articles in a "Start Agent" type of search. This is the normal setting. Unchecked articles without locations may still be used when evaluating articles in light of the profile, but the topic will not be used as a search engine term.

You can set more details for the interest, although this is not usually done. But for more detailed searching, you can set an advanced search string there. When set, the interest name may still be used as search engine term, but the advanced string will be used instead of the interest name during the evaluation of articles. The search string is treated as a "regex" matching pattern that can specify matches in many ways such as on multiple strings, parts of words, and ranges of characters. Some of them are described in the appendix.

The New Interest Command

Choosing the "New Interest" command in the Interest menu will add a new interest item to the profile.

The new interest will be added after the first selected interest in the profile. If no interest is selected, it will be added at the end of the profile.

The interest will have the name "New Interest". You should rename it, and the name will already be selected so you can just type it in. Usually, you'll want to use a word or phrase that describes a topic of interest.

If your interest is in a specific article, click in the "Location" column and then enter the URL that locates the article.

Deleting Interests

To delete an Interest, click on it so it is selected, then choose the "Clear" command in the Edit menu, or just press the Delete key.

Arranging the Interests

The interests in a profile are usually viewed as an outline, where sub-interests are indented under interests that are more general. A very simple profile might not have any sub-interests.

To arrange your interests into an outline, you can drag them around. Dragging up or down will change their order, and dragging left or right will arrange them into interests and sub-interests.

To make one interest a sub-interest of another, drag it onto the interest you want to be the "parent" so the parent is highlighted with a rectangle surrounding it, then release.

To move an interest so it will be between two others, drag it between then so a horizontal line highlights the space between them, then release.

You can also view all the interests as a sorted list. For example, you can see them alphabetically by name, or see items with the highest interest levels first. The View menu allows this. Selecting any of the "by" commands will sort the interests by that column. You can also simply click in the column heading for the column you want to sort by. To return to the outline view, select "as Outline" or click on the small outline icon at the top right of the outline in the profile window.

When you are viewing the profile in an order other than "by Outline" you can't add or rearrange interests.

For non-trivial profiles, the outline you create is important because it tells Myallo the relationships between interests. Whenever an interest is adjusted, Myallo automatically adjusts its related parent and children interests as part of the learning process.

Interests can also have stand-in aliases, which allow an interest to appear in several places in the profile. This allows for relationships that are more complex than the outline's tree structure normally permits.

Viewing as an Outline

Normally, the interests in a profile are viewed as an outline. When in this view, the View menu will have a check mark next to the "as Outline" command. In the outline view, you can drag Interests as we've described to create a hierarchical outline format for your interests. When you do this, triangular controls will appear on the "parent" interests that allow you to collapse and expand the "child" sub-interests under it.

The outline view is the only one which lets you rearrange the Interests in the profile.

Viewing as a List

To sort the Interests by name, you can select "by Name" in the View menu, or click on the word "Name" in the window header. The "Name" header will become highlighted.

To sort the items by mark, you can select "by (check mark)" in the View menu, or click on the check mark in the window header. The check mark will become highlighted. Items that are unmarked will move to the top of the list. Items that are marked will move to the end of the list. 

To return the everything to the original order, you can select "as Outline" in the View menu, or click on the outline icon past the rightmost column header. The Interests and aliases will return to the original outline order as you had placed them.

The other list views work similarly. You can make selections from the View menu or click the column headings in the profile window to view the Interests sorted by interest level, opened date and time, or location. These views are handy for reviewing the results of searches. For example, viewing by Interest Level will show the items with the greatest interest at the top of the list.

Topic and Article Interests

An interest which has no location URL associated with it is sometimes called a topical interest. An interest with a location URL is sometimes called an article interest.

Moving the Interests

You can move an interest either by dragging, or by cutting and pasting. You must be viewing as an outline to move interests, and the agent must not be running a search session.

To move an interest, press on the interest and drag to the new position. A horizontal line appears between interests in the profile to indicate where the dragged items will be inserted when you release the button.

You can drag several Interests at once by selecting them first, and then dragging the group to the new position.

To select multiple Interests, you can shift or command click on them, or drag across them. To drag across, start in the space to the left of an interest's icon, then drag up or down. The highlighting will change to show which interests will be selected.

Changing an Interest Name

You can change the name of an Interest by clicking on the Name. A rectangle will appear around the Name, and you can edit it directly.

If the Interest doesn't have a location URL associated with it, the name should be a word or phrase that describes a topic of interest, and it should be suitable as a search engine search term. Myallo searches for articles that contain the word or entire phrase (as opposed to containing the words in the phrase anywhere in the article.)

If the Interest does have a location, the name is not as significant, because Myallo doesn't use the name to help find articles. You can set the name to something that describes the article at the specified location. However, Myallo may still use the name when it evaluates articles to predict interest levels.

If a marked interest has a location and an advanced search string, Myallo doesn't use the name at all - it uses the location as an article candidate, and the search string when evaluating articles. If it has a search string but no location, the name may be used in a search engine, while the search string is used during evaluations.

An interest can not have a blank or empty name.

Changing an Interest Level

You should adjust the interest level on each Interest you create when you create it, to tell the Agent how interesting you find that topic or article.

The center position on the slider is an average level of interest. Slide it to the right to say you are more interested than average, or to the left to say you are less interested. An interest set to the left of center causes the agent to actively avoid that topic. One set to the right of center is a topic the agent actively seeks out.

If you have arranged your interests into an outline that has sub-interests, then the interest are linked. When you adjust a sub-interest's level, the higher-level "parent" will be automatically adjusted as well, though not as much. The figure below shows that after sliding the "flower" interest to the right, the parent "gardening" interest has automatically been adjusted upward.

Since you have now indicated a higher level of interest in flower gardening, your level of interest in the general category of gardening must also have increased a little, so the agent makes the adjustment. The amount of its adjustment is determined by the interest level, the number of "relatives" the Interest has, and detail settings of the Interests involved.

And, since the gardening interest has been automatically adjusted, the vegetable interest is also automatically adjusted by a lesser amount, since it is a child of gardening.

In a large profile, moving one interest slider can end up making a large number of small adjustments throughout the profile. Since the adjustments get progressively smaller as they go, and there are protections in the mechanism used, endless looping, echoes, and ringing does not occur. This intricate connection and adjustment scheme is the most important element in Myallo's learning system.

Changing an Interest Mark

When an interest is marked, a check mark is displayed in the check mark column of the profile window.

To place or remove a check mark, click in the check box. Clicking will alternately mark and unmark the Interest. 

Normally, interests that you create are marked, and interests that are placed in the profile as a result of a Myallo session are unmarked.

When you start a Myallo session (and are not using the Fast Lookup command) Myallo sends the names of marked interests (and only the marked interests) to the search sites to get starting points for its search.

Changing an Interest Location

You can open the Interest location for editing by double clicking on it. For an Interest with no location, a gray double dash is shown. The location must either be blank, or contain a valid URL.

Adjusting Interest Details

The Interest details help control Myallo's searching and learning process and normally do not need to be adjusted, but on some occasions, it can be useful to change them.

To see the details of an interest, select it, then choose the "Show Details" command in the Interest menu. A detail drawer will appear. The drawer will show the details of any interest in the profile that you select.

You can keep the details drawer open, and as you click on different interests in the profile window, the details window will change to reflect the setting of each interest.

The details window is dimmed if one Interest isn't selected.

Viewing Articles

When you open an interest with a location, Myallo will call upon your Internet browser to display the article at the Interest's URL location. Only interests with an associated location can be opened.

Opening an Interest

To open an interest, select it and press the Return key, or select Open Interest from the Interest menu, or double-click on the interest in the Opened column (the other columns open their fields for editing.)

If you select several interests, you can open them all at once. Myallo will ask your browser to open all the items. Most browsers respond by opening each interest in its own window.

If you are using the Spotlight search site, Myallo may include local files on your computer in the results. If you open an interest that points to a local file, the file will be opened in the appropriate application.

You can set the Preferences to automatically open all the result articles when a session finishes. Most browsers will open each article in its own window, with the highest rated article in front.

You can also peek at an interest's article by selecting it and opening the Contents drawer, with the Show Contents command in the Interest menu. The contents drawer will show the article for any interest that you select. You can widen the drawer by dragging its edge, but the drawer is generally too small to see the whole article page. It is useful to remind you which article goes with which interest when you are adjusting result interest levels to give your feedback.

Interest Aliases

An Interest alias is a stand-in for an interest that resides elsewhere in the profile. Like the aliases in the Macintosh Finder, interest aliases allow an object (an interest) to be in more than one place at a time. This is usually done to tell Myallo that one interest is related to several others. You can create aliases in your profile, but it is the Agent which usually creates interest aliases.

An Interest can have any number of aliases, but an alias only refers to its one original interest. You can't make an alias to an alias. Trying will make a new alias that points to the other alias' original interest.

Interest aliases look like any other interest, except the interest icon has an arrow within it.

You can make changes to the settings of an Alias normally. An interest and all of its alias interests are all linked together. Any change you make to one of them is immediately reflected in the original and any other aliases it may have. The names, however, are independent. You can change an alias name to make it different from its original.

If you delete an interest, all aliases to that interest are also automatically deleted. The reverse is not true - if you delete an alias, the original interest and any other aliases will remain.

Uses for an Alias

Aliases allow one interest to be a "child" of more than one interest. For example, when Myallo's agent performs its search, it places aliases for a result article under each interest in the profile that matched something in the article. This links each result with all the interests that participated in its evaluation.

For example, if you have Interests for "gardening" and "flower", Myallo might find an article about gardening flowers. It would add a result interest representing the article, and also add aliases under both "gardening" and "flower." 

This linking is done so that when you adjust the level for an article in the results list, Myallo knows to adjust your interests in "gardening" and "flower." This is the mechanism by which the Agent learns.

Creating an Alias

To make an Alias for an Interest, select the Interest, then select the "Make Alias" command in the Interest menu. The new Alias will appear under the selected Interest. You can then drag it to its proper location.

If the item you selected is already an Alias, the "Make Alias" command will create an Alias of the original Interest. There is no such thing as "an alias of an alias."

Normally, you don't need to create aliases yourself unless you are making a complex profile. Most aliases will be those automatically created by the Agent itself.

Editing an Alias

You can edit the name, location, interest level, and details of any alias. All the changes you make, other than the name, will immediately cause the original interest and any other aliases of that interest to change as well.

Deleting an Alias

You can delete an Alias the same way any other Interest is deleted. Select it, then drag it to the trash, select the "Cut" or "Clear" command in the Edit menu, or press the Delete key.

When you delete an Interest, all Aliases to it are automatically deleted as well.

 When you delete an Alias, only the Alias itself is deleted. The original Interest and any other Aliases remain.

Locating the Original Interest

To find the original interest for an alias, select the alias then select the "Find Original" command in the Interest menu. The original interest will become selected.