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iPad app listens to conversations, suggests topics
MindMeld from Expect Labs is a conversation tool for the iPad that listens to what you are saying and suggests relevant content. The app requires you to login with your Facebook account and find friends with whom you want to talk. You can add some friends and start a voice conversation using the VoIP features built into the app. When someone says something interesting, you can turn on the listening feature of the app. MindMeld will then parse the conversation and try to pick out relevant keywords from what everyone is saying. When it finds important conversation topics, the app will display matching results from Facebook and the internet. If you mention a restaurant, you will see restaurant reviews, for example. You can easily share this content with other members of the conversation. The app also keeps an ongoing record of what people said so you can look back at an earlier part of the conversation. The app is meant to help you find and share information and is not designed to send you targeted ads. You can watch the demo of the app below and let us know in the comments what you think. Is this technology cutting-edge or just plain creepy? [Via Springwise]
Breakfast Topic: The best NPC conversations in the game
Blizzard has increasingly programmed NPC conversations into the game as a means of adding flavor to the world and personality to the characters with whom you interact, and some of them are just amazing. In the classic game, these conversations started off very simple, with Stormwind children running around driving everyone crazy with arguments over which misbegotten whelp had stolen the other's doll or something like that. In Outland, you could catch performances of stand-up comedy in the World's End Tavern in Shattrath. By Wrath of the Lich King, mortally wounded NPCs insulted each other from separate bunks in Crusader's Pinnacle, and major lore figures argued about interfaction strife at the Argent Tournament. But I think it's tough to argue that Cataclysm hasn't been a million times better. For my money, it's tough to beat the flavor conversations you tend to hear in goblin outposts (yeah, I've been on a goblin kick lately), including the one above, which occurs in the aftermath of the Azshara quest Mystery of the Sarcen Stone. Finding blood elves and goblins together is a recipe for comedy either way -- the two races could not be more different -- but this is what happens when the blood elves' preening sense of history runs headlong into the goblins' morally questionable pragmatism. What's your favorite flavor conversation in the game?
New computer system can read your emotions, will probably be annoying about it (video)
It's bad enough listening to your therapist drone on about the hatred you harbor toward your father. Pretty soon, you may have to put up with a hyper-insightful computer, as well. That's what researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid have begun developing, with a new system capable of reading human emotions. As explained in their study, published in the Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, the computer has been designed to intelligently engage with people, and to adjust its dialogue according to a user's emotional state. To gauge this, researchers looked at a total of 60 acoustic parameters, including the tenor of a user's voice, the speed at which one speaks, and the length of any pauses. They also implemented controls to account for any endogenous reactions (e.g., if a user gets frustrated with the computer's speech), and enabled the adaptable device to modify its speech accordingly, based on predictions of where the conversation may lead. In the end, they found that users responded more positively whenever the computer spoke in "objective terms" (i.e., with more succinct dialogue). The same could probably be said for most bloggers, as well. Teleport past the break for the full PR, along with a demo video (in Spanish).
New program makes it easier to turn your computer into a conversational chatterbox
We've already seen how awkward computers can be when they try to speak like humans, but researchers from North Carolina State and Georgia Tech have now developed a program that could make it easier to show them how it's done. Their approach, outlined in a recently published paper, would allow developers to create natural language generation (NLG) systems twice as fast as currently possible. NLG technology is used in a wide array of applications (including video games and customer service centers), but producing these systems has traditionally required developers to enter massive amounts of data, vocabulary and templates -- rules that computers use to develop coherent sentences. Lead author Karthik Narayan and his team, however, have created a program capable of learning how to use these templates on its own, thereby requiring developers to input only basic information about any given topic of conversation. As it learns how to speak, the software can also make automatic suggestions about which information should be added to its database, based on the conversation at hand. Narayan and his colleagues will present their study at this year's Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference in October, but you can dig through it for yourself, at the link below.
When two chatbots have a conversation, everyone wins (video)
What did one chatbot say to the other chatbot? Quite a lot, actually -- but good luck making any sense out of it. That's what researchers from Cornell's Creative Machines Lab recently discovered, after pitting two bots against one another for a good ol' fashioned talk-off. It's all part of the lab's submission to this year's Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence -- an event that awards $100,000 to the team whose computer programs can conduct the most human-like conversations. Unfortunately for Cornell's squad, their chatbots still have a long way to go before achieving conversational coherence, though they could easily get hired as anchors on most cable news networks. Throughout the course of their frenetic (and often snippy) discussion, one bot raised heady questions about God and existence, while the other boldly claimed to be a unicorn. Basically, they had the exact same conversation we used to have in our dorm rooms every night, at around 4 am. Watch it for yourself after the break. It's nothing short of sublime.
NTT DoCoMo exhibits on-the-fly speech translation, lets both parties just talk (video)
The race to smash linguistic barriers with simultaneous speech-to-speech translation is still wide open, and Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo has just joined Google Translate and DARPA on the track. Whereas Google Translate's Conversation Mode was a turn-based affair when it was demoed back in January, requiring each party to pause awkwardly between exchanges, NTT DoCoMo's approach seems a lot more natural. It isn't based on new technology as such, but brings together a range of existing cloud-based services that recognize your words, translate them and then synthesize new speech in the other language -- hopefully all before your cross-cultural buddy gets bored and hangs up. As you'll see in the video after the break, this speed comes with the sacrifice of accuracy and it will need a lot of work after it's trialled later in the year. But hey, combine NTT DoCoMo's system with a Telenoid robot or kiss transmission device and you can always underline your meaning physically.
SCHEMA robot shows off its conversation management skills in a group setting
SCHEMA is a conversational humanoid robot at Waseda University in Japan with some pretty serious skills. As you'll see in the new video they have posted (which is embedded below), SCHEMA is able to participate in a three person conversation without losing the plot, and is perfectly capable of understanding which speaker is which and what has been said by whom. It's an impressive performance, to say the very least.
Talkcast live tonight at 10pm ET
Our fearless co-lead Dave Caolo will be aboard the USS Talkcast this evening with me, and we'll be talking turkey -- cooking them, chasing them down, plucking them, and how to get the most stuffing in there. Oh wait, wait? Thanksgiving is over? Oh well then I guess we'll just be talking Mac and iPhone news as usual.On the menu: Black Friday and the deals we may or may not have been suckered into, new releases from Boxee (read the interview yet?) and uTorrent for the Mac, and since we've got to get our requisite iPhone talk in there, we'll hit on the Linux install, and the tough subject of App Store pricing. Join us, won't you? Do so on TalkShoe by using the shiny browser-only client; or you can also use the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client that we all know and love. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. You can also listen in on the Talkshoe page or call in on regular phone or VOIP lines: dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *-8. Talk with you then! Recording support for the TUAW Talkcast provided by Ecamm Network's CallRecorder for Skype.
A closer look at Elbot's Turing test conversation
Earlier this week, Elbot made a fairly impressive showing (comparatively speaking, at least) when fooling three judges into thinking it was human; had it fooled one more on the dozen deep panel, it would have successful passed the famed Turing test. Auntie Beeb now has a report on what exactly Elbot said when asked a litany of questions away from the competition, and there's also a video with the related experts dissecting its performance. To be totally honest, its responses weren't too far from being completely passable as ones from a tired, potentially inebriated Earthling (in our humble opinion), but we'll leave the final determination to you. Touch the read link for a one-on-one with ones and zeros.
WoW Insider interviews 38 Studios' Brett Close about Azeroth Advisor
Last week we reported that 38 Studios, a company working on its own MMO property, had picked up the Azeroth Advisor, a custom newsletter directed towards players of World of Warcraft. At the time, we were slightly confused -- why would another gaming company want to purchase a guide written to promote and help players of a competitor's game? To get the answer, we went straight to the top, and sat down to talk with Brett Close, CEO of 38 Studios, about the reasons behind his company's purchase of the Azeroth Advisor and the technology behind it.Last week, Curt Schilling, the company's founder, spoke on The Instance podcast about the buyout (that took place in May of this year), and what Mentor Media's newsletter and technology had to offer 38 Studios, so we asked Close about that, including how they planned to extend the custom newsletters to games that didn't have WoW's Armory and why they want to support players of a competitor's MMO. And we also talked about the fact that the newsletter is going free and why they decided to start giving it away.The conversation with 38 Studios' CEO starts right after the break.
Slydial sends your call straight to voicemail, makes apologizing too easy
Really now, who hasn't had a moment where they celebrated mightily after no one picked up on the fourth / fifth ring? Rather that trusting Lady Luck to lead your phone calls to voicemail, Slydial's giving you a main line in. Said company enables any US post-paid wireless customer on any major carrier to dial someone in a similar situation and drop a message in their voicemail box without having to actually speak to them. Folks interested in taking advantage simply dial (267)-SLY-DIAL from either a landline or mobile telephone, enter in another mobile number and either listen to a short advertisement or pay up in the form of a subscription fee or $0.15 per call. Give it a go and see how it turns out.[Via DownloadSquad]
Reflect table monitors conversations with LEDs, shows who's all talky
There's always that guy (or girl) who dominates meetings, saying the same thing over and over again, or just repeats what others say. We all find it annoying, and we all wish there was some way to make that blabbermouth aware of his (or her) social transgressions. Enter the Reflect table. Reflect monitors conversations and visualizes -- literally -- who has the table using an array of color LEDs. Microphones listen to all the talk and show who is currently talking, who talks the most, and who's being left out. This could be great for business meetings to tone down the "thinking outside the box," but could also be a terrifying ordeal on a first date.[Via MAKE]
Gamers on the Street: Playing with roleplaying
Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.The WoW roleplayer is a strange creature -- in a game universe almost completely designed for the non-roleplayer (there are enough pop culture references to make anyone sensitive to anachronisms apoplectic), they soldier on insider RP servers, taking their time leveling up, and having perhaps much more fun than anyone who races towards the endgame might otherwise have.So for this Gamers on the Street, I decided to head to Moon Guard, an RP server. I had hoped to chat about what players were expecting for season 4, and maybe find out what casual players thought of all the new things coming in Wrath of the Lich King, but when I sent out my query for interviewees, what I found were two roleplayers. people who were taking the game at their own pace and having fun doing it.I also made sure, due to past reader comments, to speak to Alliance this time. After the jump, meet two roleplayers who are playing the game their own way.
Vodafone recommends "more discreet" communication methods in public
Although it should be painfully obvious, we can't deny that chatting about sensitive information in public takes place practically everywhere. To that end, a new study commissioned by Vodafone UK found that over 70-percent of all workers "talk business on their mobile phones in public, with one-in-five talking about business-critical subjects such as sales leads." Worse still, 15-percent admitted to "openly discussing confidential new products or services whilst traveling," while 26-percent admitted that they have actually followed up on a lead in which they received via listening in to another's public call. Not surprisingly, the company recommends that individuals utilize more discreet methods of communicating in public, suggesting texting and emailing in particular. Of course, it's a good bit more difficult to tell a story through those two methods, but it's a lot better than having your most promising client snatched out from under you, yeah?[Via textually, image courtesy of Miloh]
HP launches environmentally friendly rp5700 slim desktop PC
As the green trend looms ever larger over the consumer electronics industry, HP is taking full advantage of the opportunity by unveiling the environmentally friendly rp5700 slim desktop PC. The company toots its own horn by boasting about the Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) Gold award that the machine has garnered, and we'd assume that building it from 95-percent recyclable components and packing it in a box made from at least 25-percent post-consumer recycled cardboard had something to do with it. Additionally, the unit sports an uber-efficient power supply and comes with "an optional solar renewable energy source" to extract juice from the sun. As for hardware, you'll find Intel Core 2 Duo chips up to 2.13GHz, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, SATA hard drives as large as 250GB, optional RAID 1 setups, and your choice of operating system. Of course, the EPEAT Gold-certified machine steps it down to a Celeron 440 CPU with 512MB of RAM, and while this particular configuration will start at $817, other options are available today from $648 right on up.[Via Slashgear]
UCSD's Squirrel puts pollution monitoring on your mobile
Giving an animal a phone to tote around and monitor pollution is one thing, but hooking up a critter to your cellphone sans wires sounds like a much more viable solution to keeping track of filthy surroundings. UC San Diego's Squirrel -- which sounds an awful lot like a project UC Berkeley was working on -- is a Bluetooth-enabled, palm-sized sensor that currently measures carbon monoxide and ozone, but eventually will be able to "sample nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide in the air, as well as temperature, barometric pressure, and humidity." After sampling, the device then utilizes a software application dubbed Acorn to allow the user to "see the current pollution alerts through a screensaver on the cellphone's display." Furthermore, the program can periodically upload the captured data to a public database operated by the "California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), which is funding Squirrel's development." Of course, cleaning up the mess that these monitors will inevitably find is an entirely different matter.[Via MedGadget]
Blow Light: the wind generated LED toy
While the message of living a greener life seems to be pounded into our ears on a regular basis, it's never too early to get your offspring in on the energy-conserving fun. The Blow Light toy from Nigel's Eco Store features a simplistic, kid-friendly design that's sure to require a lot of attention, as the miniature pinwheel doesn't light up and excite without a little effort on your youngster's behalf. The internal blue and green LED lights remain dormant until a gust of wind (or hot air) starts the spinning, subsequently lighting up the device and eliciting smiles all around. Of course, with no batteries required, the price on this uber-green toy tends to be a bit higher than the mass market alternatives, but at least your £9.99 ($20) won't be fueling the proverbial fire.[Via Inhabitat]
Stars, points and conversions
So, you folks over across the Atlantic pond, you have a bit of a step up on us statesiders. You know, except for those exorbitant prices. Anyway, when you purchase wonderful Nintendo products, you may redeem your purchases for "star points", which can then be used to obtain various wallpapers and doodads.Recently, Nintendo revealed that these star points would be redeemable for Virtual Console points, but the conversation rate was not yet specified. However, German mag N-Gamer has apparently uncovered the secret, and come up with a less than satisfying rate: 4 to 1. Since DS games are occasionally offered for around 4500 star points (DS games are typically around 45 Euros), that means approximately 100 star points per Euro. This amount of star points, under a 4:1 rate, would purchase 1125 VC points. If you simply used 45 Euros to purchase VC points directly, however, you could get over four thousand.Yeah, it sucks, but at least it's an option if you've got nothing else to grab. Be sure to grab it soon, too: Nintendo Europe has recently stated that star points have an expiration date of twelve months.
