A Chatty Doll of a Different Kind. New York Times Aug 1 2002 2:56AM ET... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

New breed of doll that has bulit in voice recognition, speech synthysis, and a camera that is tied  to a database of images that the can be taught to recognize.

By next year, he said, Cindy will be able to read Japanese, a notable addition to her current library of basic words in French, Spanish, German and Italian. And as processing power increases over time, Mr. Del Principe said, he anticipates creating dolls that can read sentences and recognize faces.

Now, imagine that you hook that tech to a self propelled bot that has a WiFi connection to your network, in addition to local storage of it's own, now you've got a self propelled doll that can remind you of your schedule, where you left something, stream audio, take dictation, remind you of your budget, VOIP phone calls, man, just about anything. To coin a term, a Botler for your home. Oops, some folks have already used that term.

9:28:18 AM