Those of you interested in personalization issues might want to take a look at a couple of interesting presentations (PowerPoint slides) from a Yahoo Research Labs workshop on recommender systems that was held in August
A recommender system is an automated algorithm for providing personalized recommendations (for movies, or music, or restaurants, for example) to a user, often by looking for relationships between that user and a large base of other users. In a sense, a recommender system automates the social process of obtaining referrals or recommendations from like-minded friends.
The presentations were given by:
+ Professor John Riedl, University of Minnesota
"Recommender Systems: Evolution of Collaborative Filtering Recommender Interfaces"
Note: Dr. Riedl is a member of the Group Lens project. One of their projects, MovieLens, offers free access to a movie recommendation service.
and
+ Jon Herlocker, Oregon State University
Collaborative Filtering: Some Comments on the State of the Art
