About Byoms
What is a byom?
A byom is a personal search that you create to search trusted sources. Your byom conducts searches based on your natural language questions or keywords. Using a Messenger service, byoms give you fast, relevant results, instead of links to click on.
Creating an Account
1. Find the link labeled Create Account on the byoms home page. Click on this link. You will be directed to the Account Creation page:
2. Enter the requested information in each field. It’s important to enter a valid email address. This address will be used to validate your account.
3. Click Submit button to submit your information. If the system could not accept any of your information, you will see the form again. You’ll notice a highlighted area. Correct any mistakes or problems here.
4. If your account has been created, you’ll see a Thank You message.
5. Check the email account you used in creating the account. You will receive an email from byoms. Follow the link in the email to activate your account.
6. You’re ready to log on and begin creating byoms!
Creating a Byom
1. After you create a byoms account, create a Messenger account for your byom. Each byom must have its own Messenger account. Create your account by going to the website for your Messenger service:
AIM.com Signup
MSN.com Signup
Yahoo.com Signup
Jabber.com Signup
After creating your account, make sure to write down the username and password. You’ll need to use them in the byoms system.
2. Log in at the byoms site. After logging on, begin at the Create byoms screen.
3. Enter a name for your byom. Use the drop down menu to select a search index to use. The search index will determine which results set your byom will use. Click the Save button to create your new byom.
4. Next, you will set the properties for your byom. On the byoms Properties page, first click Edit. Now, enter URLs for sites you want your search to include. Click Save.
Note that if you enter the root URL for a large site, you will search all the pages of that site. Therefore, choosing a specific page within the site will yield fewer results.
You can return to this page to edit your URLS anytime by clicking the Edit button.
5. Add keywords for your search. The words you enter here will determine your results. Click Save.
6. Publish your byom by clicking Publish in the Profile Tab of your byom.
7. You can check the status of your byom on the Profiles section on the byom Properties page. You can also check the status by opening your byom in your Messenger client and sending it search queries. Your byom is now online.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a byom?
A byom is a personalized instant messaging search that you create from trusted information sources.
What is a Publisher?
A publisher is anyone who creates a byom that can be used online. The final step of creating a byom is publishing it.
What is a Subscriber?
A subscriber is anyone who posts a query to a byom. This is different than building a byom, since a byom can be used by anyone, not just the person who created it.
What is an autosubscribe button?
An autosubscribe button is a button you can generate when you publish your byom. When someone clicks the button it is automatically added to his or her buddy list. We also call this “One-click add”. You can see example autosubscribe buttons on the byoms web page.
What are include words?
Include words, or keywords, are words that are added to your search query. Adding include words to your byom can dramatically cut down on the number of results that you receive. Using keywords is optional.
How many keywords can I add to my byoms?
You can add up to a total of 20 URLs and include words. These can be in any combination. Be aware that using too many keywords may drastically limit your results.
What is strict matching?
Strict matching is a feature of the include words used in byoms. Strict matching means that include words are sent to the index of your choice (e.g. Google, etc.). They are used by the index to narrow search results. These include words are also scored by the kozoru search algorithms. Strict matching does not guarantee the include words will be in the final results. Rather, it means that your include words will have the same weight in scoring as the words you enter each time for a query.
Why do I keep getting logged off from AIM?
It’s possible that you are trying to log into the AIM account rather than adding the buddy to your list. For the byom to work properly, only the kozoru system can log into the AIM account. To become a user of this byom, you, or anyone you give the handle to, must add the AIM handle to your AIM buddy list.
Where do I go to create a Messenger account for my byom?
Here are the pages for each Messenger service we support. Note that you must create an account for each Messenger service with which you will be using the byom.
The AOL instant messenger homepage
http://www.aim.com/
Yahoo messenger homepage
http://messenger.yahoo.com
MSN messenger homepage
http://messenger.msn.com
Jabber homepage
http://www.jabber.com
What are featured byoms?
Featured byoms are those created by kozoru. These byoms may use algorithms not available to user created byoms.
What is the index?
The index is an external source the kozoru system uses to narrow results before applying our Natural Language Response algorithm. This is typically a search engine (e.g. Google). Alternatively, the 'real-time' option parses the specified URL's, from the site collection, directly without using an external index source.
What does "byoms status" mean?
You can find your byom status on the profiles page . The byom status will tell you whether your byom has been published. If there was an error, you can learn more about the cause in on the profiles page as well.
What is publish?
When you publish a byom it means that a byom is ready to be used. Subscribers can add the corresponding AIM handle to their buddy list.
What is suspend?
When you suspend a byom, you put it on “pause”. While it is suspended it cannot be used by subscribers.
What is purge?
Purging a byom resets the previous results. Note: If byom cache is turned off, purge has no effect.
Why does each byom need a Messenger account?
Every byom provides a way to communicate with the kozoru system. You are, in effect, creating a byom entity each time you create a new byom. Each of these entities needs its own account. Each byom needs an account for each Messenger service with which you will use it.
