Please give me a definition of each of the above stated terms and
concepts. I also need to know how they are interconnected with each
other (especially intelligent agents and recommender systems). The
term 'collaborative filtering' could also help with the research.
www.webopedia.com has been checked by me already.
Thanks a lot!
Ugschle

Information filtering is a process of ranking data according to
pre-defined criteria applied by an algorithm with the intent of
eliminating data judged to be irrelevant, or, alternatively, ranking
such data.

Intelligent agents are software programs designed to perform specific
tasks in an autonomous manner (i.e., w/o user involvement). These
tasks are often complex and of a repetitive nature. An example is a
Web search program which automatically queries search engines for new
data regarding a particular topic, and then reports back to the user
when such new data are found.

Recommender systems apply a model which specifies the user's interest
in a domain of knowledge, by which information can be filtered and
rank-ordered according to the model. An example of such a system is
the book recommendation feature of Amazon.com

In case you want to reference some definitions, here are some:

agent
<networking> In the client-server model, the part of the system that
performs information preparation and exchange on behalf of a client or
server. Especially in the phrase "intelligent agent" it implies some
kind of automatic process which can communicate with other agents to
perform some collective task on behalf of one or more humans. (from
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=agent)

Another definition:

"Subject: [1-6] What's an agent?

A very misused term.  Today, an agent seems to mean a stand-alone
piece of AI-ish software that scours across the internet doing
something "intelligent."  Russell and Norvig define it as "anything
that can can be viewed a perceiving its environment through sensors
and acting upon that environment through effectors."  Several papers
I've read treat it as 'any program that operates on behalf of a
human,' similar to its use in the phrase 'travel agent'.  Marvin
Minsky has yet another definition in the book "Society of Mind."
Minsky's hypothesis is that a large number of seemingly-mindless
agents can work together in a society to create an intelligent society
of mind.  Minsky theorizes that not only will this be the basis of
computer intelligence, but it is also an explaination of how human
intelligence works.  Andrew Moore at Carnegie Mellon University once
remarked that "The only proper use of the word 'agent' is when
preceded by the words 'travel', 'secret', or 'double'.", from
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ai-faq/general/part1/


Good general resources for your questions include CMU Artificial
Intelligence Repository
(http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/AI/html/air.html) and
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/ai.html