2001.08.08
Your New Best Friend
Read about this in a Wall Street Journal Marketplace someone left in the company kitchen... if you run AOL Instant Messenger, try chatting with SmarterChild, a news-stocks-weather-games-etc chatbot. It's an interesting concept in UI. Ranjit mentioned that the now defunct word.com was thinking about having an alternate frontpage chatbot interface, but the company tanked before he had to implement it.
Online chat is kind of cool, a great testing ground for AI and the Turing Test, since 1. Typing speed and the like can't be a give away and 2. It's awash in semi-literate goofballs anyway.
Salon Story of the Moment
Man, why can't I get Spam that's this well written?
from the T-shirt Archive: #13 of a Series
"Disfunctional by Choice". Grimm from Mother Goose & Grimm Oh jeez. Always strongly disliked this shirt, part of my general disregard for the general sentiment of "Hey look at me! I'm wacky!" My mom got it for me before she got handle on what kind of T-shirts I liked and disliked. (In general, I don't like well-known cartoon character shirts, though Bill the Cat was my first post-surfing-t-shirt I had.)