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Virtual Newscaster
Chad Coffman was the first to submit Ananova, an animated character which can "read" news and breaking stories in real-time. Waste of bandwidth? Or broadband killer app?
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GNUnanova will probably come with appearance themes. The most popular will look like a composite of Queen Amidala and one of the absurdly-endowed women from Heavy Metal comics, and there'll be a wide range of BAB3Z, ranging from Pamela Anderson knockoffs to Jenni-alikes for the downloading.
That'd be cool. Of course, I wouldn't want one of these unless it processed the information really well, but you never know.
Vision of the future with Virtual News Tux:
*Bob logs in*
*Tux window pops up*
A squawky but clear voice reads: "Hey, Bob. You have new mail, but it's mostly spam from that myfamily.com site that you hate and all your relatives love. Plus, your MUX went down again, so you have five e-mails asking why it went down, three from newbies asking how to log on, and one from the sysadmin apologizing for tripping over the power cord. There's a new article on Slashdot about the release of Mozilla M17, which you'd find on Freshmeat too. Your Karma went up a point. Whoops, there it goes, you just got moderated "Offtopic". Your comment on JonKatz's latest article got a reply, but 9.8% of it is swearwords so it's probably a troll. And the 2.4.8 Linux kernel is out. Come on, you know you want to upgrade."
Other "skins" for it could include characters such as HAL. "There's nothing new, Bob. Would you like to play a game of chess? Bob? Bob, I'm so lonely..." *closes window* "My process is going. I can feel it..."
Hmm, maybe not such a good idea.
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Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Talking Heads (the news anchors, not the group :) are the reason I left TV behind. I want to get my own info at my own pace.
:)
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What scares me is that there are a shitload of people out there who just want their info shovel fed to them. They don't want freedom of choice, they want freedom from choice. They love the idea of the "Information Superhighway" where you travel to restricted locations, get force-fed censored information, pay your tolls and can get busted by the cops. They don't like the "Information Serenghetti" concept where they can go where they want, lurk & watch, pick & choose and occasionally get eaten by a lion/busted by a game-warden. It's too much like hard work.
Now, along comes a talking head on the 'net. Just how interactive is she? (minds out of the gutters, folks!
I mean, can you talk to her and tell her to go find information for you based on a set of parameters, having her do the virtual leg work? Can she be running for you 24/7 and provide you with all the information she's found whenever you stop by? Can she call you on the phone and tell you when something big & new happens?
If not, then she's just another piece of eye candy. Style over substance. The obsession of the '90's lives on in the 2000's - why am I not surprised
I didn't raise my Internet to be a glorified TV news caster....
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Normally I hate network news because the anchors annoy me so much. The idea that some $5 million/year blow-dried news anchor can be replaced by a simple machine is just too amusing.
Can't you just picture Peter Jennings (or pick your favorite hair) reading this story and saying to himself, "Nahhh... this'll never catch on! I'm too important to the well-being of America. I do more than read the news: I represent the trust in the 4th branch of government!"
I feel like I should hate this, but... I feel strangely attracted to this concept. I find myself thinking this is oddly cool.
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The best TTS engine I've found is AT&T's Next Generation TTS. The samples are amazing. Much better and so much more realistic than L&H's system. And they have developed a lip-synch system as well. :)
If Ananova can do anything like this than I'm never watching CNN again
Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
To actually get people to use this on a regular basis, I think they're going to need a smoother, more natural sounding text to speech engine than what is currently available. I wonder if the technology is ready for this...
You might want to look into Lernout & Hauspie's new text-to-speech engine, RealSpeak.
First, listen to the pre-recorded samples (in several languages!); then use the Web demo to plug in your own text (I recommend a random article off a news site such as CNN). Ignore the "30-word limit"; it's bogus. For best results, listen to it read an article that you haven't read, and don't read along. I think you'll be amazed by the quality.
The voice is not quite convincing as belonging to an actual human being, but I still think it's a monumental achievement, especially considering the level of expressiveness it achieves with plain-text English (no hard-coded phonemes or stress codes). What's more, it's by far the most comprehensible and pleasant-sounding TTS engine I've ever encountered -- and, being a TTS nut, I've played with a lot of them, as far back as "Speech by Andy Maguire" on the IBM PC internal speaker and even S.A.M. on the Apple ][.
No, I don't work for L&H, but I find their latest TTS engine exciting, and I plan to snap up a copy (as well as the SDK) as soon as it's released in the form of a mainstream commercial product. I can only hope that Ananova sounds as good as RealSpeak.
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Now there's an idea worthy of a huge IPO: a real virtual girlfriend service.
Think about it: you sign up to a site, and get a "relationship" with an idoru; for the sake of example, let's say her name is Traci. For the subscription fee, she (actually, a random natural-language generator running off a knowledge base crosslinked to your relationship account) will send you email, telling you about her virtual life, asking about yours, and remembering enough to give the illusion of continuity. Once a year, she'll have a "birthday" (randomly chosen), at which you can buy her virtual presents (by credit card). Also add to this other relationship surrogate activities/expenditures.
Something like this would probably really sell in Japan (and may in fact exist there). Then again, there they have parks where you can pay for the privilege of raking leaves, for that real close-to-nature experience denied to city-dwelling salarymen.
The article mentions that her delivery of the news items could be modified to suit user preferences.
I can just see the options now:
Sultry Voice: On
Accent: [x]French []British []American
Flirtation Coefficient: Min |----------O-| Max
Startup Phrase: [ Hey there sexy, have I got some HOT news for you ]
Shutdown Phrase: [ Mmmmm, ohhhh, mmmmmmmmm ]
Lipstick Color: Hooker Red