X-Technologies Ease Customization of Web Interfaces W ith the recent introduction and adoption of software tools to support collaboration, more work is being done cooperatively, with results stored in shared virtual environments. Traditionally, collaborators have benefited from support mechanisms such as physical containers, individual computers, and supporting staff. IMPs are a specialized class of software agents that exist in virtual environments to support collaborators. While IMPs currently support human collaborators, a longer-term goal is to have them support other agent collaborators.
IMPs participate in virtual environments on an equal footing as human participants.
IMPs have several important qualities that make them the ideal candidate to support collaborators in virtual environments. They are persistent. They depend only on the persistency of the collaboration environment itself. Consequently, they can assist collaborators in ways that are not easy for humans. These behaviors define the IMP's purpose and its interaction with the human collaborators.