Very cool. While AI bots for chat have been around for a while, this onw puts a flash based face on the bot, and has a decent form of voice synthesis going on. If the tech is compact enough, run it on your Pocket PC or Clie. Now you've got a wireless stream for data that you can hit for answers, as well as get information from all in real time, and by listening.

I imagine you could have different vocies/faces for differing situations, so that you can then have emergency alerts sound different from an email notification.    

Bot Mots.

Lori found some interesting chat mates:

"Meet Julia, the bot, at http://www.verbots.com. She is an interactive virtual personality and she can answer what the meaning of life is, why the sky is blue, and if she does not know the answer, she brings up the term in a google search which appears on the screen. I brought Julia up this evening and had both children (Katie, 9 and Patrick 6) at my shoulder wanting to ask her questions.  Verbot came out with a public library bot at the Computers in Libraries conference, but the link which was sent to me does not work. http://www.talkie.com is very interesting too. My kids really liked Barkie, the 'talkie' at www.pets911.com, a talking puppy."

Unfortunately, the kids were already asleep when I got home tonight or I would have gotten their reactions, too.

[The Shifted Librarian]

This would also make an excellent replacement for/supplement to a chatbot/AIMbot on a site, providing a more human tone to the information that it has to give.

8:25:58 AM