GOSSIP v. 1.0 Tryllian BV (C) January 2000
===============================================================

This README file covers the following issues:

- Getting started with Gossip
- Known issues, hints and tips
- Installation issues
- Using Gossip behind firewalls and proxy servers
- Known incompatibilities
- Thanks, Help and Contact information

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***************************************************************
GETTING STARTED WITH GOSSIP
***************************************************************

WHAT IS GOSSIP?

Gossip is a mobile agent application. Mobile agents are
autonomous programs, virtual robots that can perform tasks for
you. The agents in Gossip are designed to help you find and
exchange information on the Internet.

HOW DOES GOSSIP WORK?

Gossip is made up of four basic components:
* The Playground
This is your Gossip home base. It's where your agents hang out
on your computer, waiting for their next assignment. The
playground has a doorway to the internet that you can open to
send your agents out on missions.
* Five agents
Every Gossip application comes with five agents for your
personal use. They will talk to you and ask you questions. You
can give them names and tell them when to be back.
* Ten backpacks
Backpacks are information containers you give your agents. Use
each backpack to store links about one of your interests. Every
time you send out an agent with a backpack, he fills it up with
more info on that subject.
* The Meeting Point
Meeting Points are Gossip servers where your agents go to find
information for you. They are servers where agents exchange
information and can browse through databases and search engines
for you.

HOW DO YOU SEND AN AGENT OUT?

Before you send an agent out, you must equip it with a
backpack. Backpacks are the colorful discs initially located at
the bottom right of the Playground. The agents use these
backpacks to transport bookmarks, text files and pictures to
and from the Meeting Point.

Use your ten backpacks as storage for information relating to
your various areas of interest. For example, you can have one
backpack for game links, one for software links, one for movie
links, one for cooking info, etc.

Open a backpack by clicking on it or ask an agent to open one
for you. Specify a subject and some related keywords, and then
you can load it up with your favorite Netscape or Internet
Explorer bookmarks about this subject.

After you have loaded enough bookmarks into your backpack, you
can give them each a rating of 1 to 3 stars, so your agent will
be better able to find good matches from other agents. You can
also load text files and pictures (not exceeding 200kB in
size).

When you have loaded enough info about a subject, drag the
backpack onto an agent, open the internet door and drag the
agent with the backpack out the door.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SEND AN AGENT OUT?

The agent travels to a Gossip server via the internet. This
server is called a Meeting Point. The agent first checks in
with the Concierge, an agent that never leaves the server and
keeps track of all the agents that come and go. The agent shows
the Concierge the contents of its backpack, and the Concierge
points the agent in the direction of other agents with similar
backpacks. These agents then find each other and exchange
backpack contents. Your agent can also browse through a
bookmark database and submit its info to various search engines
from the Meeting Point. It will continue to search until the
time you have specified for its return has elapsed.

***************************************************************
KNOWN ISSUES, HINTS AND TIPS
***************************************************************

- Gossip agents trade fairly. This means that you'll get more
search results from other agents if you load an agent with more
material to trade with.

- Copying and pasting images is not supported in this version
of Java. You have to double-click on images you receive to view
them in your default image viewer.

- Sometimes Gossip crashes immediately after start-up on
Windows NT (see KNOWN INCOMPATIBILITIES). In this event, try
uninstalling HotSpot. This will slow Gossip down, but could
make it more stable.

- If Gossip is left running overnight, the application can get
a little sluggish. If this happens, please restart Gossip.

- Please note that agents will try to return home within the
time you specify in their settings. However, sometimes agents
decide to return home a bit earlier or later. This is caused by
things like network traffic, the quality of the information and
the atmosphere at marketplaces and (last but not least) the
agent's mood.

- Don't put too much information (such as large pictures or
text) in your agent wallets. This will slow down the agent when
he tries to leave or come back if you have a slow internet
connection. (Currently the limit of your wallets is 200K of
information.)

- You should set up your display to use at least 16 bit colors.
Gossip doesn't look good with only 256 colors or less.

- We advise you not to quit the Gossip application while agents
are leaving home. Just wait until the agent has disappeared. If
you do quit the application while an agent is still attempting
to leave, the agent will most likely not leave your computer.

- Pressing Enter will not always close all windows. The 'OK'
button must be pressed with a mouse click.

- When selecting files to load into a backpack, the buttons
'Create new folder', 'List' and 'View details' do not work.
This is a bug in Java2.

- When agents are online, they can not only gather the
information you want, they will also help other agents. It's a
good idea to keep your agents outside as much as possible,
especially when you're not using the Gossip application for a
while.

**************************************************************
INSTALLATION ISSUES
**************************************************************

- The Gossip installation file installs Gossip on your
computer, including Java. The Sun Java Runtime Environment
(JRE) installer is used to install Java. If you already have a
version of Java2 on your computer, Gossip will use this
version.

- There is one directory that the uninstaller doesn't delete;
this directory contains your data files (the contents of your
agents and backpacks, among other things). If you want to
completely remove Gossip without the possibility of retaining
your old backpacks in an upgrade, you will need to remove the
directory that contains these files. The location of this
directory varies between Windows versions and different
settings. On a default Windows NT installation it is located in
C:\WINNT\Profiles\<username>\Tryllian. On Windows95, either in
C:\WINDOWS\tryllian or C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\<username>\tryllian.
As a rule, if the directory containing your DESKTOP is located
in <directory>\Desktop, then the Gossip datafiles are in
<directory>\Tryllian

- If the Java Runtime Environment 1.3 and HotSpot 1.01 are
installed consecutively, and then HotSpot is uninstalled,
reinstalling HotSpot will not work correctly. As HotSpot is
installed as a part of Gossip, this could cause performance
degradation. To correct this problem, remove and reinstall the
Java Runtime Environment before reinstalling Gossip or HotSpot
for that matter.

***************************************************************
KNOWN INCOMPATIBILITIES
***************************************************************

- Previous versions of Gossip - The backpacks from previous
versions of Gossip are not compatible with those in version
1.0. The best way to export URLs from Gossip 0.9 is to open
them in your browser one by one and save them as bookmarks
before you install Gossip 1.0. You can then import them in
Gossip 1.0.

- Windows95 - No serious problems known to us.

- Windows98 - No serious problems known to us.

- WindowsNT - No serious problems known to us.

- Unix We have tested Gossip on Solaris but there is no good
installer yet, so please use the Gossip.tar.gz version. You can
start Gossip by running 'java -jar gossip.jar'. You must have at
least Sun JDK 1.2.2 (the Sun JDK 1.3 beta seems to be more
stable). The Linux Blackdown port of Sun JDK 1.2 has some known
problems (most notably with the speech balloons which show HTML
instead of normal text).

- Linux - Currently, there is a pre-release version of Java2
available for Linux, from www.blackdown.org. However, this
version is not a definitive version. We cannot guarantee that
Gossip will run properly on Linux.

- MacOS - Since there is no Java2 for MacOS yet, Gossip
currently does not run on MacOS.

***************************************************************
USING GOSSIP BEHIND FIREWALLS AND PROXY SERVERS
***************************************************************

Some Internet providers and many corporate networks restrict
Internet access by means of firewalls. This may be the case if
you find you cannot send out agents from the Gossip
application. Generally, your network administrator should be
able to help you to set up Gossip for use with a firewall.

Gossip is adapted in two ways for easy cooperation with
firewalls:

1) It can use Internet (TCP) port number 80 to connect to the
Gossip marketplace; this port is often not restricted even when
other ports are. You can choose this option in the
File>Settings menu.

2) Gossip also supports the SOCKS4 protocol. To select the use
of a SOCKS4 proxy, choose the File>Settings menu, select "Use
SOCKS4 proxy" and enter the host name and port number if the
port number is non-standard; your network administrator can
give you this information if your network supports SOCKS4.
After checking one of these options, please restart the Gossip
Application to make sure Gossip uses these network settings for
all operations. If your network does not support the SOCKS4
protocol, you will not be able to use Gossip.

***************************************************************
HELP
***************************************************************

For more information about Gossip, please ask the Gossip agents
for help by clicking on them. They will be happy to tell you
more about the Gossip system and themselves. You can also
access Gossip Help from the Help menu. The help files will open
in your browser.

You can also check the Gossip website at:
http://www.tryllian.com/

***************************************************************
THANKS
***************************************************************

Tryllian made use of some Free Software products when creating
Gossip and would like to thank the following people and
organizations that made their products freely available.

AElfred, Version 1.1 Microstar's Java-Based XML Parser
Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 by Microstar Software Ltd. Home Page:
http://www.microstar.com/XML/

package gnu.regexp; - Regular Expressions for Java Copyright
(C) 1998 Wes Biggs Home Page: http://www.cacas.org/~wes/java/

Version 1.0 of the Simple API for XML (SAX), created
collectively by the membership of the XML-DEV mailing list.
Public Domain

BrowserLauncher 1.2 Copyright 1999 by Eric Albert Home Page:
http://www.stanford.edu/~ejalbert/software/BrowserLauncher/

The licenses of these products can be found in the libs
directory.

***************************************************************
CONTACT INFORMATION
***************************************************************

For more information about Tryllian please contact us at:

Tryllian BV, the Netherlands Kruislaan 400 NL 1098 SM Amsterdam
The Netherlands

phone: +31(20) 888 40 60 fax:   +31(20) 888 40 01

Tryllian, Inc., USA 111 North Market Street Suite 1000 San
Jose, CA95113,

USA phone: +1(408) 866 67 70

e-mail: info@tryllian.com http://www.tryllian.com

THANK YOU FOR USING GOSSIP!

_________________________________________________

Dan Hassler-Forest
text editor and webmaster
Tryllian B.V.
Kruislaan 400
1098 SM, Amsterdam
+31-20-8884060
_________________________________________________

