Programming Collective Intelligence is a new book from O'Reilly
and Associates on the concept of collecting data from disparate
sources – like, say, users – and integrate that data into your
programs. It's an excellent book for anyone who wonders how to
use data from other websites or how to use user behavior to
learn how to service those users better. Toby Segaran, the
author, uses a clear and expository style that allows you to
learn how collective intelligence techniques work, in addition
to seeing implementations of the techniques (in Python, but
porting from Python isn't difficult, especially with how clear
his explanations are.) It's not a book to learn programming, by
any means – it's about the process of using data to create
"smarter" applications. It also covers some techniques used in
mashups, with web sites like del.icio.us, kayak, ebay, hotornot,
and akismet. The first chapter is an introduction to collective
intelligence, explaining the concepts behind machine learning.
Machine learning in this c