| | |
Summary: Searching the World Wide Web in Low-Connectivity Communities
William Thies, Janelle Prevost, Tazeen Mahtab, Genevieve T. Cuevas, Saad Shakhshir,
Alexandro Artola, Binh D. Vo, Yuliya Litvak, Sheldon Chan, Sid Henderson, Mark Halsey,
Libby Levison
, and Saman Amarasinghe
thies@mit.edu, prevostj@alum.mit.edu, {tmahtab, gtcuevas, saads, aartola, bdv}@mit.edu,
ylitvak@eecs.tufts.edu, {sheldons, sid, mhalsey, libby}@mit.edu, saman@lcs.mit.edu
Laboratory for Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Abstract
The Internet has the potential to deliver information to communities around the world that have
no other information resources. High telephone and ISP fees - in combination with low-
bandwidth connections - make it unaffordable for many people to browse the Web online. We
are developing the TEK system to enable users to search the Web using only email. TEK stands
for "Time Equals Knowledge," since the user exchanges time (waiting for email) for knowledge.
The system contains three components: 1) the client, which provides a graphical interface for the
end user, 2) the server, which performs the searches from MIT, and 3) a reliable email-based
communication protocol between the client and the server. The TEK search engine differs from
others in that it is designed to return low-bandwidth results, which are achieved by special
|
