They're better than nothing, but you'll still have to paddle hard to stay afloat. Intelligent filters store your interests and preferences. They are most often used in conjunction with the Internet. For example, many news services have built in filters that sift through news stories to show you only the ones that match your interests. You can also find Web sites that use filters to recommend movies, music or entertainment to match your tastes.
Filters simply screen out information.
ZDNet's Personal News Service uses this approach. Many other news sites have similar features. In the intranet space, CompassWare's InfoMagnet maintains profiles for an entire company and applies them against information from many different sources. Firefly Network's Firefly tools, Net Perceptions' GroupLens, and LikeMinds' Preference Server are three examples already in use on various Internet sites. The Affinicast Interaction Manager is a leading example of this approach.