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The short answer: There isn’t going to be an AIMLBot 3.0.

However…

I have some time on my hands in the evenings at the moment so I hope to do some extensive re-factoring and development on the AIMLBot project.

The primary objective is the release of version 3.0 of the library. This article lists the aims and objectives required for this work and provides an update on a couple of my other projects.

Since releasing the open-source version of Program# I have been planning and developing the commercial version, writing a web-based expert system and working on the TalentTool project.

This post is a summary of my vision of how TalentTool works, how various emerging technologies are incorporated into the application to support this vision and the progress made so far.

An expert system is a program that uses a set of rules to analyse information about a specific subject with a view to solving problems or giving advice. It emulates a human expert’s problem solving ability by performing relevant tasks as well as, or better than, the expert. Often, the expert system will explain and justify its output and provide a measure of certainty in the appropriateness of the output. Furthermore, the output given by an expert system is, as is the case with humans, heuristic (a rule of thumb) rather than algorithmic (guaranteed to succeed).

Expert systems are incredibly useful tools. Traditional tasks have included:

• Data interpretation – such as responding to business “intelligence” like key performance indicators.
• Problem diagnosis – such as advising on equipment failure or human diseases.
• Configuration of complex systems – such as guiding the set-up of computer software.
• Planning actions – such as advising on business strategy or suggesting robotic manoeuvres.

This article briefly explains the capabilities of yet another project I am currently developing: an easy-to-use web-based expert system that acts as a marketplace for sharing and disseminating knowledge and expertise.

The Economist magazine recently contained a survey of current trends in the Human Resources (HR) field. One article, “Everybody’s doing it”, examined how companies organise and manage “talent”. The authors explained that ”[c]ompanies are also trying to give their people-managers better tools” and that “the market [for talent-management technology] will nearly double by 2009.” They make it explicit that companies of all sizes are focusing more resources on attracting, retaining and managing “talent”.

Why is this interesting? Well, for the past twelve months I have been contracted to produce bespoke vacancy / applicant management systems. My impression of this market (as a technologist on the inside) is that the products on offer are overly complex, difficult to use, expensive and cumbersome. Informal conversations with various HR professionals confirm this opinion.

So an opportunity presents itself: there exists a relatively large yet growing market, serviced by immature or inappropriate applications that users don’t feel meet their needs.

As a result I’m going to develop a web-based candidate management. This article describes how it is going work.