Alan is really a great pattern matching chatterbot based on the principles of Artificial Intelligence.Alan is founded to create true artificial intelligence, making it possible for humans and computers to speak to each other in everyday language.Read more..
Talk to Jack the Ripper...well at least the chatterbot version of him.Wiki: A chatterbot (or chatbot) is a type of conversational agent, a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods.Read more..
WowWee Robotics has done it again. Another plastic toy you don?t need. But if you are feeling lonely stuck and trapped at your computer, check ?em out. These usb companions come in three varieties. Shown here is the dog and cat combo. Read more..
HOW-TO: Make an online assistance by javascript chatterbot
IKEA Miss Anna is one of the examples of online assistance that bring you to different webpages when you ask question in the chat bot. This post have a short tutorial on how to make a similar online assistance by chatterbot ( chatbot ) in a website. The tutorial used a javascript chatbot by Alkali Software.Read more..
BREAKING: researchers uncover indian AI posing as normal user in chatroom
Researchers from Australia and the Netherlands in cooperation with an advanced 'chatterbot' have uncovered an Indian AI that was posing in a chatroom as a normal user. The key point in the discovery is that westerners are very forgiving when it comes to dealing with entities whose english is not 100%, this will mask a bot quite nicely.Read more..
IM Street is the latest addition to AOL Instant Messenger chatterbots. Similar to the invasion of new bots, IM Street now was added in automatically to users? buddy lists worldwide. While it doesn?t have a personality like some of the other prominent bots such as Smarterchild and Spleak, it is a great resource.Read more..
Don't lie waiting for hours on the phone while a computer continuously informs you that "a representative will be available in 10 minutes?". DoMore software has a solution.They recently rolled out "Erin", an AI tech support/customer service agent. She/it's built on a knowedge base of information about Multitasker, as well as being a "chatterbotRead more..
MSN's most popular chatter-bot had its alpha mirror released today. It's taken over 220 of development and will probably be a while until final release. Major thumbs up !Read more..
Jabberwacky is an artificial intelligence - a chat robot, often known as a 'chatbot' or 'chatterbot'. It aims to simulate natural human chat in an interesting, entertaining and humorous manner.Read more..
Bored? Have no one to talk to? Check out these chatterbots!
Don't know what a chatterbot is? It's a computer program that you can talk to! This is a great site to learn about them in a hands-on environment. It's a great way to understand how AI has evolved over time. Some of the bots are pretty cool (some, like Niall, are teachable), and some are pretty basic.Read more..
Wilf is a chatterbot with Articificial Intelligence. He operates directly via this vBulletin Forum.He is showing some promising signs of reasonable conversation and at times could be mistaken for being human.Read more..
"On this page, you can talk with Oliver, our chatterbot."Its a website where you talk to a computer.He seems to have a response for everything, amazing!Read more..
"...So, I figured a conversation with a chatterbot would be a good idea. First I tried infocombot, but it was down. So, I gave the Encarta bot a whirl, and I asked it something that would give a few readers a chuckle. I was very surprised by its response!"Read more..
1/6/08, Accessing Hulu, Pandora And Other Sites From Outside Of the United States»»
I can remember when OpenHulu launched thinking that the name was nearly false advertising; essentially it provided access to Hulu content away from Hulu, but only to those in the United States. Veoh and MSN have since followed suit and provide Fox and NBC content from Hulu on their sites, but like OpenHulu it still remains IP blocked to those outside of the United States (and possibly Canada).
Web based proxies have been around for a long time, but most don’t work with video, and even those that do don’t provide decent enough bandwidth from which to view content from sites such as Hulu.
One alternative service that has been in use for business for a long time now are Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). VPN’s offer a secure pipe from where you can access the web, and in turn disguise the location of the user on the end connection.
There’s quite a few paid VPN services available, many at reasonable cost ($5-$20/ mth were a few I found on Google) but one service doing the rounds at the moment offers a VPN connection for free.
HotSpot Shield is a plugin for Windows or OS X that offers a free VPN service. There is a catch, it rather annoyingly adds a banner ad to the top of every page you visit, but at the ultimate price point of $0 most people will be able to live with it…well, at least whilst getting access to sites that were currently blocked, and the ads can be switched off on each page, but only after they have appeared.
Does it work? From Western Australia I’m currently listening to Pandora for the first time since May (still a great service.) Earlier this weekend I caught up with a new Simpsons episode, complete with ads from Hulu, then watched archival footage of the Nixon Resignation just for good measure. The only thing it didn’t work on was Joost which told me I should stop using a proxy…no matter, the blocked stuff is mostly on CBS.com anyway, and yes CBS.com works as well.
The speed wasn’t always great, but it was enough to watch video, varying between 600kbps and 1.3mbps on my 2mbps Cable connection.
I hesitated in writing this post because the more people who use services such as HotSpot Shield, the more chances we might end up killing them, or worse still Hulu and others might get smart and find ways of blocking it. Even if we lose HotSpot Shield today I’m betting given the strong demand services like this will have that others will offer VPN services as well, and hopefully free ones at that. At least I hope so, now I have Pandora again I’m really going to struggle if I’m forced to give it up again
1/6/08, Super Bowl Tickets At A Fraction Of The Price: Super Deal Or Super Swindle?»»
The world of secondary tickets for sporting events, shows and concerts is murky at its best, and downright fraudulent at its worst. I have first hand knowledge of this industry and wrote about it a year ago.
A lot of cash changes hands, making accounting difficult and tax evasion a competitive necessity for ticket brokers that want to stay ahead. A common practice among brokers is to sell a ticket to a consumer first and then go and find the ticket afterwards. If the broker misjudged the pricing - which is common - they often back out of the transaction. And since many states regulate or outright prohibit the secondary sale of tickets, the whole market tends to be a grey area, leading to further erosion of consumer confidence and even higher prices. Adding to the confusion - counterfeit tickets are still very common.
That never stopped eBay from diving into the business head first (while avoiding relatively tame markets like virtual goods). And they doubled-down last January with their $310 million acquisition of secondary ticket marketplace Stubhub.
But a new class of startups is emerging that is starting to securitize the ticket industry in ways that work very similar to the stock market. One startup, Yoonew, is pushing the envelope more than most.
For now Yoonew is focusing on football tickets, and the Super Bowl is their big event. People pay $2,000 or more (lots more) for Super Bowl tickets. If you want a good seat, and buy from a reputable broker (this is a relative term), you are quite simply going to be paying a staggering amount of money. If you wait to the last minute you might get a deal, particularly if the teams aren’t a draw. But you also run the risk of paying a lot more, or not getting in at all.
Behind the scenes are the market makers - the very select few individuals who actually have their hands on the tickets. These include players and NFL officials, official partners to the NFL, and the people who purchase tickets from them. How much they pay for those tickets is based on their analysis of the game economics, and they are putting serious capital at risk every year. They then turn around and sell those tickets to the public. If they’re good they make a lot of money. If not, they can lose their business over a single game.
Yoonew is productizing that risk and bringing it down to the level of the individual ticket buyer - people who actually want to attend the game. Instead of buying a ticket early and not knowing if your team will even make it, people can simply buy a contract that delivers a ticket at no additional charge if their team makes it. If the team doesn’t make it, they’re out whatever they paid for the contract.
Prices are market based - and contracts can be purchased for as little as a few hundred dollars (prices are rising steadily now as the chances of any particular remaining team making it go up dramatically). That’s a big lure for rapid fans who can’t otherwise afford to attend the game. They pay now, and hope for the best.
Yoonew says they guarantee their contracts, and have never had an incident of fraud or non delivery. But I can’t find a link anywhere on the site to exactly what that guarantee is. An article in Forbes suggest it’s three times the price paid, but I don’t see evidence for that on the site. Even 3x your money won’t make up for the losses if your team makes it and you don’t get a ticket. So, as they say, Caveat Emptor.
There’s a good overall history of the company and founders here. The company was actually founded in 2004 but seems to have gone through some contractions and near bankruptcies as they perfected their model.
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1/6/08, Advertlets Joins The Deadpool, Or Maybe Just Forgets To Renew Their Domain Name»»
Asian blog advertising network Adverlets is down for the count today, although we’re not 100% sure whether this is a deadpool entry or simply forgetfulness.
Edward Khoo emailed us to let us know that the Advertlets.com domain had expired and was currently showing a holding page. Other blogs are reporting ongoing issues with Adverlets leading up to today.
We last mentioned Advertlets in a post November 3 when their main competitor, Nufnang, was experiencing some negative press from users. Both companies cater to bloggers in Singapore and Malaysia. We have no way of confirming the current status of Advertlets because all the contact details naturally lead back to Advertlets.com email addresses. If anyone locally has any more let us know.
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Amit Agarwal at Labnol created a video that shows an image of the TechMeme home page taken page every five minutes. 500 screen shots total are shown over a fifty hour period, sped up so that it all fits in a 50-second video. See how headlines develop, grow and eventually shrink over time. A high res version is here.
1/6/08, Kucinich Banned By ABC, Talks To TechCrunch (sort of)»»
Well, I thought we had a really interesting interview on our hands. Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich was banned from the ABC/Facebook presidential debates tonight because he didn’t have enough support in the polls. But he is an exciting candidate anyway - he speaks his mind, he’s got a lot of support on the Internet and tends to, like Mike Gravel, stir things up in his own party. He’s also doing well in our own Tech President primary - polling a strong second behind Barack Obama.
We did speak for a few minutes this morning, but didn’t get much past the niceties before Kucinich pulled the plug on the interview. I was not able to ask for his opinion on a single issue. In particular, I was looking for him to defend his position against H1B visas. We never got to the actual questions, though.
What we did get was about 11 minutes of salutations, a rant on nuclear weapons and a few detours on NASA and the internal combustion engine. I was able to ask him if he was going to consider running as an independent candidate. He said he would not. Just before we ended he offered to do a follow up. To the extent he stays in the race, we’d be happy to do it again, and talk about the issues.
The podcast is up at TalkCrunch and embedded below, as well as a transcript of the conversation.
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Yoonew is productizing that risk and bringing it down to the level of the individual ticket buyer - people who actually want to attend the game. Instead of buying a ticket early and not knowing if your team will even make it, people can simply buy a contract that delivers a ticket at no additional charge if their team makes it. If the team doesn’t make it, they’re out whatever they paid for the contract.
Well, I thought we had a really interesting interview on our hands. Democratic candidate