Maybe this is more of a tweet:
CCM Benchmark predicts 400% growth of virtual agent market in 2014
.
Should librarians be scared?
Friday, June 17, 2011
Crawdads, crawfish, crayfish, crawdaddies...
Whatever they're called, I'm not eating them. Emma, Michele McNeal, and I are getting ready to present at ALA 2011 next week, and guess where it is? Yep. New Orleans. Now, I have lived outside of Lake County, Ohio - Chicago (seven years), Michigan (three years), Cape Town, South Africa (two very exciting weeks), but I've never been to New Orleans. Why make the trip? I don't drink, I don't like the hot weather, I don't eat crustaceans of any sort. Well, now I have a reason and will try to leave my preconceptions behind. Emma and I have a very clear goal for this trip; that should help. Also, Frommers says that there is one good Japanese restaurant in town, so maybe it won't be all bad.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Emma's favorite pilot
Besides my wife, that is. Emma and I are both great fans of the Polish author Stanislaw Lem, and especially enjoy the stories featuring Pirx.
Why is this character so appealing?
Allow me to be lazy and borrow a bit from Wikipedia:
"Pirx is a fictional character from works of science fiction by Stanisław Lem: the story collections Tales of Pirx the Pilot and More Tales of Pirx the Pilot, and the novel Fiasco. The story of Pirx is that of a spaceship cadet, pilot, and captain. In a way, Pirx is as an ordinary 'working man' who unlike traditional heroic space pilots has little if anything heroic about him. He sometimes finds himself in extreme situations, which he overcomes mostly through ordinary common sense and average luck."
I came across a film adaptation of one of my favorite Pirx stories, The Inquest in SearchOhio. What's the story about? I'm going to be lazy again and quote from Amazon:
"A major corporation produces human-like robots; however, the public opinion, the media and the trade unions oppose it. A decision is made to conduct an experiment. An experienced pilot is to fly a spaceship to Saturn and launch two artificial satellites from there. The crew will be made up of androids, and the commander must evaluate the work of his unusual team. To accomplish the flight, pilot Pirx is chosen, who is known for his honesty and integrity. His ill wishers from the corporation are afraid that Pirx's opinion might upset the profitable production, so they take measures..."
For a 1970's era Soviet SF film, Pilot Pirx's Inquest isn't bad. The story is certainly strong and the special effects are no worse than, say a typical Doctor Who episode from the same period. You can order a copy from SearchOhio. Of course, nothing beats reading the story, even in translation. It's part of More Tales of Pirx the Pilot. You get get a copy of that from SearchOhio, too.
Why is this character so appealing?
Allow me to be lazy and borrow a bit from Wikipedia:
"Pirx is a fictional character from works of science fiction by Stanisław Lem: the story collections Tales of Pirx the Pilot and More Tales of Pirx the Pilot, and the novel Fiasco. The story of Pirx is that of a spaceship cadet, pilot, and captain. In a way, Pirx is as an ordinary 'working man' who unlike traditional heroic space pilots has little if anything heroic about him. He sometimes finds himself in extreme situations, which he overcomes mostly through ordinary common sense and average luck."
I came across a film adaptation of one of my favorite Pirx stories, The Inquest in SearchOhio. What's the story about? I'm going to be lazy again and quote from Amazon:
"A major corporation produces human-like robots; however, the public opinion, the media and the trade unions oppose it. A decision is made to conduct an experiment. An experienced pilot is to fly a spaceship to Saturn and launch two artificial satellites from there. The crew will be made up of androids, and the commander must evaluate the work of his unusual team. To accomplish the flight, pilot Pirx is chosen, who is known for his honesty and integrity. His ill wishers from the corporation are afraid that Pirx's opinion might upset the profitable production, so they take measures..."
For a 1970's era Soviet SF film, Pilot Pirx's Inquest isn't bad. The story is certainly strong and the special effects are no worse than, say a typical Doctor Who episode from the same period. You can order a copy from SearchOhio. Of course, nothing beats reading the story, even in translation. It's part of More Tales of Pirx the Pilot. You get get a copy of that from SearchOhio, too.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Running around
My apologies to all of you who follow this blog. Emma and I have been running around during the last few weeks and I haven't had much of a chance to blog. Running around where, you ask? Mostly between Akron and Willoughby, with a few days on the West Coast thrown in for good measure. Now we have about 10 days to prepare for ALA in New Orleans. Our presentation is well on its way to completion (thank goodness for Michele McNeal!) but there's still work to do. Here are a few things I've learned in the last 3 weeks:
1. It's not possible to sleep well on a pile of random pillows instead of a mattress.
2. Raccoons pick the strangest places to expire.
3. Good udon noodles can be found at an airport.
4. Driving a minivan with an automatic transmission can be a thrilling, if unsafe, experience for someone used to a small car with a stick.
5. Zorbx will indeed remove almost any odor (not related to #2 above).
Well, our presentation isn't going to write itself. Time to get back to it.
1. It's not possible to sleep well on a pile of random pillows instead of a mattress.
2. Raccoons pick the strangest places to expire.
3. Good udon noodles can be found at an airport.
4. Driving a minivan with an automatic transmission can be a thrilling, if unsafe, experience for someone used to a small car with a stick.
5. Zorbx will indeed remove almost any odor (not related to #2 above).
Well, our presentation isn't going to write itself. Time to get back to it.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Chasing down a proxy error
Ah, the joy of troubleshooting. Just before heading off to San Francisco last month for IUG, I noticed that searches passed to our catalog weren't working in Firefox, Safari, or Chrome. They worked fine in IE, but in the other browsers we got a proxy error. I didn't have any time to chase after this bug until this past week. It's not fixed yet, but we (and when I say "we" I mean MPL's network consultant and Pandorabots) are narrowing down where the problem isn't. Next step is to look at our webpac server logs. A ticket's been opened with Innovative. This really needs to get resolved before ALA in June.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Acronyms yes, Estonian no.
O.K. Emma will learn some of the more common text message acronyms or chat shorthand or whatever the proper term is for these things. It's on the list. Should be fairly easy. I'll dump some pages from netlingo.com into pandorawriter and let it generate the code. Piece of cake. I will not, however, program her to speak Estonian. Stop asking and just forget it. If you want a cartoon cat that answers questions about an Ohio public library in Estonian, I really can't help you. I suggest you make your own bot to answer questions about an Estonian public library, instead. You could make it something other than a cat. Maybe a talking pineapple or a set of allen wrenches. The wrenches could move around and form the answers. Very cute, people would love it! There. A great idea to keep you occupied. Let me know when it's finished. Michele and I have six weeks to prepare for ALA and plenty of work to do. In English.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Report from Philadelphia
Chatbots 3.1 was something. Ten excellent presentations on a wide array of topics. Besides meeting some of the leaders in this field, it was great to hear their thoughts on bot design and function, and to gather ideas for improving our own humble bot. We've already improved the way Emma directs questions to the library catalog and to databases, and that's just the beginning. Plenty more to work on!
I didn't have a chance to look around the city; pretty much flew in, presented, then got ready to leave again. One thing that impressed me was the narrowness of the streets. Everything felt confined. My flight home was cancelled, so I had to spend an extra night at the hotel. Didn't get to sleep until around 2 a.m. because of the noise, even on the 8th floor.
The whole conference was recorded, so stay tuned for links to YouTube.
I didn't have a chance to look around the city; pretty much flew in, presented, then got ready to leave again. One thing that impressed me was the narrowness of the streets. Everything felt confined. My flight home was cancelled, so I had to spend an extra night at the hotel. Didn't get to sleep until around 2 a.m. because of the noise, even on the 8th floor.
The whole conference was recorded, so stay tuned for links to YouTube.
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