Using Memex to archive and mine community Web browsing experience

Abstract

Keyword indices, topic directories and link-based rankings are used to search and structure the rapidly growing Web today. Surprisingly little use is made of years of browsing experience of millions of people. Indeed, this information is routinely discarded by browsers. Even deliberate bookmarks are stored passively, in browser-dependent formats; this separates them from the dominant world of HTML hypermedia, even if their owners were willing to share them. All this goes against Vannevar Bush's dream of the Memex: An enhanced supplement to personal and community memory. We present the beginnings of a Memex for the Web. Memex blurs the artificial distinction between browsing history and deliberate bookmarks. The resulting glut of data is analyzed in a number of ways. It is indexed not only by keywords but also according to the user's view of topics; this lets the user recall topic-based browsing contexts by asking questions like `What trails was I following when I was last surfing about classical music?' and `What are some popular pages related to my recent trail regarding cycling?' Memex is a browser assistant that performs these functions. We envisage that Memex will be shared by a community of surfers with overlapping interests; in that context, the meaning and ramifications of topical trails may be decided by not one but many surfers. We present a novel formulation of the community taxonomy synthesis problem, algorithms and experimental results. We also recommend uniform APIs which will help managing advanced interactions with the browser.