Agent InfoSpace (website)

Agent InfoSpace

The Agent InfoSpace home page on October 19th, 1997.
URL	http://www.argolink.com/agent/devcorner/index.html (Defunct)
Language(s)	English
Country	United States
Owner(s)	Dov Weizman (Argo Technologies, Inc.)
Launched	1996
Written in	HTML, CSS

Agent InfoSpace was a website hosted on Argolink.com by Dov Weizman that documented the early development period of Microsoft Agent, primarily Microsoft Agent Beta, Microsoft Agent Beta 2.0, Microsoft Agent 1.3, and Microsoft Agent 1.5.

As a result, much of what is known about these early versions comes from research based on this website, which remained active until Weizman’s passing around 1998-1999.

Impact

Throughout the late 90s, the Agent InfoSpace proved to be a very valuable resource for Microsoft Agent developers at the time, with over 30 mentions of the site in the official Microsoft Agent newsgroup from 1997 to 1999. Alongside providing information about different versions of Microsoft Agent, the website also gave examples of how to incorporate Microsoft Agent in programs and websites, various documentation of how to use the software, and having a showcase area featuring other Microsoft Agent websites.

Mission and focus

According to its mission statement, Agent InfoSpace was positioned as a hub for conversational characters and social user interfaces (SUI), combining voice recognition, speech output, animation, and Microsoft Agent technology. The site aimed to serve both end users and developers by explaining how to build and use agent-based interfaces on the early web.

As part of this mission, the early well-known "Program the Genie" page invited any visitors to the website to experiment with scripting a character directly from the web browser themselves and as a result drew visitors from around the world and thus became one of the site’s most popular demonstrations of Microsoft Agent’s potential.

Character vote

For five months in 1997, the Agent InfoSpace held a vote on who the most popular Microsoft Agent character is at the time, with Merlin achieving first place with 55%, Genie in second place with 36%, and Robby in third place with 9% of the vote. Another character vote was scheduled for 1998, featuring Al, Birdie, Claude, Genie, Merlin, Ozzar, Peedy, Robby, and Totem, but was never completed.

A similar community-wide character vote would not be held again until 2024, when TMAFE held a character vote featuring many classical Microsoft Agent characters, with Bonzi and Peedy securing first (29.2%) and second place (11.1%) respectively, with the former first place Microsoft Agent (Merlin) dropping down to third place with 9.7%.

Gallery

• 
  Screenshot of the Agent InfoSpace home page on October 19th, 1997.
• 
  Logo of the Agent InfoSpace.

Trivia

• The Agent InfoSpace is one of the earliest known Microsoft Agent sites, being created while Microsoft Agent was in its development period.
• Many developers, including Gordon Scott Bell, found the site's contents extremely useful, with Gordon Scott Bell even having a site listed in their site directory as early as 1997, a year before the development of the Microsoft Agent Scripting Helper.
• Argolink.com also featured the ActiveX InfoSpace, a similar concept to the Agent InfoSpace but for ActiveX instead.