Wednesday 30 May 2007

Destroy TV

DTV

An avatars life relayed to the web. An Electric Sheep "sheep labs" project.


***Imported from old blog***

Friday 25 May 2007

Ghost - A new AI project


Yesterday I kicked off a new AI project. For the last few weeks we've been getting a mimic bot up and running in SL. A mimic bot is one that learns purely by hearing what people say to it, and then re-saying those things later and then remembering the response. You end up with a very natural chatbot, but one that hasn't got the faintest idea whatit is talking about. We think there'll be a great market for them in SL as drunks at the end of the bar! e also added some explicit learning, and the aim is to make them a simpler alternative to our Discourse based chatbot.

But walking back from the BCS/RSI event with Rod Brooks (Director CSAIL at MIT) I had a sudden brain-wave as to how this mimic technology could be used to do something that I've been thinking about for ages - and do it incredibly elegantly and in a way that for the moment is only possible in a virtual world.

So yesterday I found the time to cut the code and put it into operation. It's a real struggle not to say a lot about it now, but I want to get a few months data before making it public. I'm not saying it will revolutionise AI (it won't), but it might really open peoples eyes as to the possibilities.


***Imported from old blog***

The Signal

The Signal - Home Page

Been trying to find some new podcasts to listen to and came across The Signal - a podcast dedicated to Firely - the Joss Whedon (Buffy) cancelled Sc-Fi series, that then spawned the Serendipity movie.

Its an incredibly well produced show, covering both real and fan developments in the Firefly universe, an episode of a fan drama series, an article about canon matters, reviews, fan film updates, an article on Hitch-Hikers Guide, music and musch more. No suprise that it won the Peoples Choice in the 2006 Podcast Awards.

Browncoats (Firefly fans) are active in both SL and Multiverse building Firefly worlds. Much as I'm not a particular fan of Firefly (even more wagon-train in space than Star Trek, especially for a supposed 2500 AD setting), you have got to admire the professionalism and energy of these guys and girls. If only we'd had these sort of resources available when Traveller was in its hayday.


***Imported from old blog***

Monday 21 May 2007

Gun Porn

Defense Review - DefRev Exclusive: FN P90 PDW Promotional/Sales Video.

A replacement for the old SMG I assume. What is interesting about this and other weapons on the site is how they increasingly resemble weapons from Traveller, other SF RPGs and SF movies. The FN P90 even goes "byeond bullpup" (ie magasine behind trigger) by placing the magasine along the top of the weapon.


***Imported from old blog***

Monday 14 May 2007

Wandora - Topic Map Extractor

Wandora - WandoraWiki

Quite a nice app to create topic maps from a variety of sources


***Imported from old blog***

Friday 11 May 2007

Independent SL Stats

comScore Finds that %u201CSecond Life%u201D Has a Rapidly Growing and Global Base of Active Residents

Interesting stats from Comscore - who it looks like monitor web activity by tracking what uses do with their PCs, rather than tracking on the site side. Overall shape of the data is very similar to the detailed LL data.


***Imported from old blog***

Thursday 3 May 2007

Sl @ 6 Million

Second Life crossed the 6 million mark yesterday. Mind you with Gartner predicting 80% f active Internet users having a "second life" (note lower case) by 2011 this figure is set to grow and grow!


***Imported from old blog***