Assignment 12
Push and Pull Technologies
Due: Monday, April 19, in class (max: 2 page)

• In Dynagloss these terms are defined as follows:

  1. Pull Technologies are retrieval mechanisms to search for information once information needs are specified. A limitation of pull technology is that users must know what their information needs are, and they must know how to specify their information needs in a manner that will achieve the desired results.

  2. Push technologies automatically retrieve and deliver information for users once the users specify what their interests are. For example, to use a push technology, a user might fill out a "user profile" which is then used to determine what information will be delivered to that user in the future. Most push technologies are limited with respect to deliver information relevant to the user's task at hand.

• Questions:

  1. do you consider these definitions adequate/meaningful? can you think of better ones?

  2. give the 3 most prominent examples of "pull" and "push" systems you are aware of with a brief justification for each choice!

  3. discuss for each of the systems types

     • 3 strengths and

     • 3 weaknesses

  4. discuss for each of the systems types the most challenging technical and social problems to make them real, usable, useful, and learnable!

  5. should pull and push systems be integrated?

     • if yes: how? what are the difficulties to do so?

     • do you know any integrated systems?