I just set up my own personal CIA -- at least, for the next 14 days.

To start, I have two secret agents, code-named Etop and Al, spying for me. I've put them on two weeks' probation, and if they deliver the goods I may retain them for the slave-wage of $ 12.95 monthly. Pretty cheap as intelligence agents go, and even reasonably priced for "intelligent agents." For they are customized Internet search tools, or "intelligent agents," that use my criteria to search a plenitude of news sources to find the stuff I want to know.

They work so inexpensively because, to use a current buzzword, I've outsourced the labor to Inquisit, a subscription-based personal intelligence service that tracks competitors, markets, technologies, politics, or almost anything you want information about.

Unlike standard search tools, Inquisit's agents search a wide variety of news publications, delivering information you define, on days of the week and times of day you specify. Sources include Reuters, AP, UPI, Agence France-Presse and ITAR-TASS, among others. Hundreds of daily newspapers are monitored, including International Herald Tribune, The Times of London and South China Morning Post, as well as the Miami Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and many industry trade magazines.

You can have your agent search any or all of these categories: international, high-tech, features, editorials, weather, financial, politics, science, using Boolean logic to focus your queries. For example, you can request all the news about Switzerland that mentions banks or watches, omitting those that also mention skiing or cuckoo clocks. Reports can be full text, or limited to headlines only, headline and 1st paragraph or summary.

Several services have started out to do similar tasks, but most have disappeared. I've long used (and continue to use) CompuServe's Executive News Service, which provides news on keywords I specify, from many excellent sources. But fine as ENS is (it justifies a subscription, even if one uses no other CompuServe service), its sources are more limited than Inquisit's, and it requires logging on to CompuServe. Inquisit delivers results by e-mail, or even a pager or cell-phone. As a test, I created an agent ("Etop") to deliver the full text of all news mentioning Ethiopia or Eritrea, and asked him to start by giving me the results of the last 30 days.

Following is an excerpt from the e-mail I received from Etop just minutes later: " You asked me to search for articles containing (Ethiopia OR Eritrea). Over the past 30 days, this search would have returned an average of 9 articles per day. There are 267 articles (headlines follow). Since I found so many, I will send you the report in 2 messages, [containing] 200 or less headlines. For full text, click on the appropriate link below."

I then selected an Inquisit-supplied, ready-made agent, Al, whose specialty is information on the problem of stolen identities. Al returned six articles from his 30-day archive. A free 14-day trial is available from www.inquisit.com.

Intelligent agent technology may eventually be self-modifying, learning from one's likes/dislikes. And unlike human agents, they are always on duty, don't drink martinis, or drive dangerous sports cars.

Or disobey orders.

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