AGENTLINK UPDATE # 54 -- 2 July 2003

This is the email newsletter of AgentLink -- Europe's Network of
Excellence for Agent-based Computing. The AgentLink WWW site is

           http://www.AgentLink.org/

IMPORTANT: Please take the time to ensure that every member of your
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* AgentLink III and FP6

* AgentLink News Issue 13 now available

* AgentLink Evaluation Questionnaire

* Agent papers clearinghouse

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* AgentLink III and FP6

Initial news of the AgentLink III proposal is that it passed the
thresholds set, and a meeting will be held with the Commission later
in July. At this point, there are no guarantees of success, but
getting to this stage is in itself a positive sign.

The final outcome will not be known for a while, but we will keep you
posted on any progress as it becomes clear. *IF* the proposal is
successful, it may yet be in a different form to that proposed, so we
must still wait and see what happens.

AgentLink III is proposed as a Coordination Action in the area of
Semantic based knowledge systems, to continue the successful work of
the current AgentLink project.

The proposal was put together by a team who will also lead the
project: Peter McBurney and Mike Wooldridge of the University of
Liverpool; Terry Payne and Michael Luck of the University of
Southampton. Coordination will be shared between Liverpool and
Southampton, but Peter McBurney will become the named coordinator if
successful.

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* AgentLink News Issue 13 now available

The thirteenth issue of the AgentLink newsletter is now available online --
go to http://www.agentlink.org/newsletter/ As usual, hardcopies will
be sent to all AgentLink members in due course.

Features

AgentLink: Promoting Research and Deployment of Agent Technologies
        Michael Luck

        Software Agents in Business: Do They Provide a Competitive Advantage?
        Navi Radjou

        Agent-based Systems: Do They Provide a Competitive Advantage?
        Onn Shehory

        Agents and the Semantic Web
        V. R. Benjamins, J Contreras, J.A. Prieto

        The KTweb Initiative
        Steve Glange

Conference Reports

        Ontologies for Multi-Agent Systems
        Valentina Tamma

SIG Reports

        Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce
        Frank Dignum

        Agents that Learn, Adapt and Discover
        Daniel Kudenko

        Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems
        Franco Zambonelli

        Agent Based Social Simulation
        Paul Davidsson

        Intelligent Information Agents
        Sonia Bergamaschi, Matthias Klusch

        Agentcities, AgentLink and Ontoweb Liaison
        Sonia Bergamaschi, Valentina Tamma

Events Calendar

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* AgentLink Evaluation Questionnaire

As AgentLink II draws to an end, we are keen to evaluate the benefit
of the network and its activities. This is important for the
development of future initiatives, and for further funding for such
activities. In order to gain feedback, therefore, an evaluation form
is now available from the AgentLink website. 

Even if you were not able to meet the deadline given earlier, this
information will still be useful later.

Thanks to those of you who have responded to this. If you have not yet
done so, please take a few minutes to download and complete the form,
and return it by email to sr2@ecs.soton.ac.uk or by post to the
address on the form. 

You may download the form from the Document Archive at:
      http://www.agentlink.org/admin/docs/index.html

in pdf or doc formats:
     http://www.agentlink.org/admin/docs/2003/2003-41.pdf
     http://www.agentlink.org/admin/docs/2003/2003-41.doc

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* Agent papers clearinghouse

AgentLink has established a clearinghouse for agent papers.  In
essence, this is a repository for bibliographic details and URL's to
provide a resource for the community. To date, the clearinghouse has
not been used greatly, but we have improved the pages and are seeking
to provide a comprehensive resource for researchers, students, etc.

To make this work, we need your help. Simply go to the form at
http://www.agentlink.org/resources/clearing-house/enter-pubs.php and
enter your publication details (together with URL) and submit it to
us. Alternatively, mail sr2@ecs.soton.ac.uk with the relevant
information.

Please note that you MUST include the appropriate section number so
that we can classify the paper correctly. See 
http://www.agentlink.org/resources/clearing-house-view.html
for details.

If you have comments about the classification of papers, email
sr2@ecs.soton.ac.uk