1. A method of providing personalized content recommendations, comprising: at an electronic device comprising a processor and a memory storing instructions for execution by the processor performing the acts comprising: automatically monitoring a user's information stream to identify a user's interest in a topic from a range of data sources through a publicly accessible distributed network; automatically generating a content signature that includes semantically salient content elements from the monitored user's information, a network address to the monitored user's information that the semantically salient content is based upon, and a plurality of densities of topics embodied in the salient content elements; automatically generating a personal interest profile from the monitored user information and storing the personal interest profile in a memory of the computing device, the memory stored with user's preferences based on a plurality of monitored behaviors; filtering items in an information stream with the personal interest profile and the content signatures; and transmitting only those items of information that match the user's personal interest profile to the user.
1. A method of providing personalized content recommendations, comprising: at an electronic device comprising a processor and a memory storing instructions for execution by the processor performing the acts comprising: automatically monitoring a user's information stream to identify a user's interest in a topic from a range of data sources through a publicly accessible distributed network; automatically generating a content signature that includes semantically salient content elements from the monitored user's information, a network address to the monitored user's information that the semantically salient content is based upon, and a plurality of densities of topics embodied in the salient content elements; automatically generating a personal interest profile from the monitored user information and storing the personal interest profile in a memory of the computing device, the memory stored with user's preferences based on a plurality of monitored behaviors; filtering items in an information stream with the personal interest profile and the content signatures; and transmitting only those items of information that match the user's personal interest profile to the user. 15. The method of claim 1 where the personal interest profile comprises an aggregation of user profiles having similar characteristics.