Over the past week I have been doing some research on the Internet to learn a little about AI. I'm working on a project of mine which is a calendar-scheduling application designed to help people better visualize their tasks and automatically schedule their busy lives - something like having a personal project/task manager.

I want to make the scheduling algorithm intelligent so figured I would delve into the world of AI - a perfect domain for solutions to this problem. I didn't take any computer science AI classes so, up to this point, I wasn't even sure what I would find.

Of course, with any kind of search on the Internet, you will learn so much through your voyage. That's what I love about it - discovering all of the cool information out there! Some of the things I've run across pertaining to AI are rules-based engines, decision trees, the A* (A-star) algorithm, programming games, personal agents, naive bayesian scheduling, semantic networks, natural language processing, Lisp, COOL, data mining, expert systems, and fuzzy logic!! There is a lot of information and some really fantastic, free tools available for use. I will post more later about the interesting finds.

There's no way I will be able to digest all of what I read, play with the tools, and roll them into my v0.1 alpha release, but at least I now have a good idea how to make a first-stab at the scheduling algorithms and how they should fit into the design. Plus I have some great information to make the v0.2 alpha release even smarter.