Smarterchild

I just saw this in Wired and had to check it out - Smarterchild is a chatbot that you can IM to get information about movies, news and sports; you can ask questions about world facts, U.S. geography, look up words in the dictionary, have fun with different games, use tools like spell-check, web search an encyclopedia, and I’m sure there is more. It starts off by asking you questions about yourself and it remembers your answers to customize the responses.  I got some movie listings from it this morning, and later, I went back. What cracked me up was the Smarterchild’s attitude. (Can a chatbot have an attitude?)

07:52] *** Auto-response sent to smarterchild: I am currently away from the computer.
[07:52] smarterchild: You may be away, but I don’t think you’re currently away.
[07:52] sarahintampa2002: i’m not
[07:52] smarterchild: Maybe you are.
[07:52] sarahintampa2002: no i’m not
[07:52] smarterchild: OK, whatever you say.
[07:53] sarahintampa2002: see i’m back
[07:53] smarterchild: Welcome back, Sarah. What would you like to do?

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We just got our HDTV cable box yesterday (with DVR, of course!), and it is incredible! This to go along with our new widescreen TV that Joel splurged on about a month ago. I swear, the picture quality of HDTV is better than I see in real life! We watched Discovery High Definition Theater - first a show about Cuba, then this snake hunter guy, who was actually wrestling anacondas in the Amazon river. The dude was crazier than Steve Erwin! We also ended up with access to all the pay channels. We did not order this, so I’m hoping it’s just some free trial they are hooking us up with. I would be scared to see the cable bill if this is a mistake! I guess we will just enjoy it while we can. I must go back and watch more of this now!

I heard about these dresses this morning on the MJ Morning show, and I had to see for myself. I cannot believe they are being marketed towards high school girls! Even the company’s CEO said that he would not let his daughter wear the dress. However, the dress is a top-seller, so my question is: what kind of parent buys this dress for their teenage daughter?

In today’s mail, I got the latest issue of Wired magazine, with the Firefox creator gracing the cover! Oh yes, Firefox is taking over! If you haven’t started using it yet, there’s no time like the present! I just discovered that CTRL + TAB switches me through all my open tabs in Firefox. Jeez! I can’t believe I just realized that!

I’m really enjoying this new program called Media Monkey. It’s a Music Library Organizer and a jukebox player…and it’s FREE! Joel & I have a 63 GB MP3 collection with thousands of files. Most of it came from a serious collector who loaned us his external hard drive for a night so that we could copy his music…he really likes oldies…but Joel loves all music, so he’s happy to have all these songs at his fingertips.  However, the only  part of the collection I’m interested in, for the most part, is the modern alternative and alt rock. With Media Monkey, I can easily categorize the files’ tags by genre, so that when I’m ready to listen, I can just go to the Alternative section and create a playlist from there…unless I’m in the mood for an 80’s flashback, in which case I’d head over to the 80’s section instead! It’s a pretty big undertaking to get all these files classified, but it will be worth it. I’m already in the J’s and it’s only taken me…well, never mind about that….it’s going to be a while before I’m done, but it’s a good rainy-day project for sure.

FROM PCWORLD.COM:

Is this scary? It’s a little too Big Brother for me!

Federal officials, eager to step up controls on people entering the United States, are preparing to issue Americans passports with embedded personal and face-recognition data….The federal Department of Homeland Security spent the past six months testing biometric passport prototypes and wants to roll out the new technology as soon as possible.

The passport’s chip will store more than just your name. It will store biometric facial recognition scan data–the kind of information that could help a computer recognize you by, for instance, the distance between your eyes. It’ll also contain your passport photo in digital form, as well as personal data including your name, birth date and birthplace, gender, and passport number.

(All bold test from article by: Sr. Assoc. Ed., Andrew Brandt )

What a way to make my Friday! I just got this email from Bright House Networks:

Dear Road Runner Customer,

We’re writing to let you know that we’ve made exciting enhancements to your Road Runner High Speed Online service!

We thought 3 Mbps (megabits per second) was fast, but we’ve made it even faster. We have upgraded your service at no additional charge to you! You can now reach download speeds of up to 5 Mbps. Download files over 100 times faster than dial-up and up to three times as fast as standard DSL. Now that’s fast! This dose of lightning lets you surf the web, download music and photos, and receive email attachments faster than ever before.

We hope you enjoy your enhanced Road Runner service, and thank you for making your house a bright house.

Sincerely,
Bright House Networks Customer Service

Get the XP theme called Energy Blue that only comes with Tablet PC & Media Center editions. Very very cool. Sometimes, it’s just the little things that make me happy. Wanna see it? Click on the picture next to this post for a little preview. Plus, you get a peak at my desktop in all its glory.

What does it all mean?

According to LJ:

• What does this mean for LiveJournal? LiveJournal development and support will
  continue, and will probably even accelerate, as we grow the team.  We’ll
  continue to work on speed, reliability, and new features. LiveJournal won’t become paid-user-only or anything crazy like that.  We’re
  not going to raise prices.The most immediate changes will be that we’ll start to get prettier… more
  styles, themes, etc.  Six Apart is really good at that and we’re not.
• Does this mean LiveJournal will finally get TrackBack
  support? LiveJournal will get TrackBack.  Actually we’d been planning it anyway,
  and we’ve even done a partial implementation recently.
•  Are prices changing? Nope.
•  Will LiveJournal become TypePad or TypePad become LiveJournal? Nope.  We have no plans of forceably merging the two sites and communities
  into one, either…. that just doesn’t make sense.

According to Six Apart (Typepad):

• Will the purchase of LiveJournal affect me as a TypePad subscriber? No. TypePad and LiveJournal will remain separate products.
  LiveJournal will be run as a separate division within the SixApart
  product family with its own engineering and development team.
• Will you be integrating any LiveJournal features into Movable Type or TypePad? We will not be directly integrating any LiveJournal features into
  our current platforms but we are dedicated to having LiveJournal’s
  strong community focus and reliable scalability influence both Movable
  Type and TypePad.
• What does this mean for Six Apart and our existing products? It means that Six Apart now offers top quality blogging software
  for every type of blogger on the planet. With LiveJournal, we now have
  a blogging service intended for individuals to interact with family and
  friends, bringing us a new audience that is distinct from the one for
  our current product line.

Note from me: All that was quoted directly from both websites…entirely without permission….

Are you LJ’ers excited yet?

• 8 million American adults say they have created blogs
• Blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users
• 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online
• 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.
• 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is: OH DEAR LORD!

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project