::scr on bots

[Simon Wistow]

It was pointed out to me today that Activebuddy was mentioned on a
couple of blogs (don't read them myself, filthy things</troll>) owned by
subscribers to this very list.

This has been previously discussed :

http://www.thegestalt.org/scr/old/msg00040.html [0]

but didn't get anywhere really since it was mostly my post-drunken
ramblings and because the list was a mere smidgeon (<-- good word,
underused) of what it is today.

Plus it interests me and I'm hoping it might smoke out another couple of
lurkers (come in to the light, we won't bite or hurt or spank or
anything).

Since the people behind Activebuddy have conspicuously failed to respond
to my oh so polite email to them, dated October 15th

http://www.thegestalt.org/scr/old/msg00050.html

I might try and phone them after the weekend, but until then, I'll kick
off with this simple question - are there merits in putting a more human
interface onto our computers : more specifically could it benefit both
power users *and* novices whilst supplying a neat pathway between them -
an Intelligent Path to 733t enlightenment if you will - in a way that
would make even the much invoked Mr Raskin drool.

Sorry abotu the writing style, I'm feeling silly today.



[0]  Dipsy is the #london.pm infobot, hence the subject, Desktop Dipsy. 

Specifically, Dipsy is a customised Infobot (http://www.infobot.org)
that is designed to seem human ... see the dialogue at the start of this

http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1286/sam03020002/ [1]


It would be fairly easy to hook up a speech<->text<->speech pipeline to
the bot, I wrote a quick irc->speech bot when I was 'Resting' last year
and putting in something like Sphinx wouldn't be difficult.

Kevin Lenzo has already done it at least once.

http://perl.oreilly.com/news/carnegie_0600.html



[1] What I do find interesting is that some of the denizens of
#london.pm have adapted themselves to the bot rather than the other way
round and often don't seem to notice. There's that's another discussion
point, right there! 


-- 
: as seen on tv