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.

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.

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.

Philadelphia

I left rain in Cleveland and am here in Philiadelphia waiting for it to catch up. A very uneventful flight. No horizon, no sense of motion; surrounded by whiteness, the eternal present. It made me think of Emma's "binary abyss." If you ask her about her real form, she'll tell you that she inhabits the binary abyss. Sometime she calls it the digital void. I was probably thinking about Messiaen's "Abîme des oiseaux."

A rainy evening in City Center. Chatbots 3.1 is tomorrow. Tired, but feeling well prepared and confident. I was up until 4:00 am this morning rewriting her searchguided.aiml file. That's the one that directs questions to our catalog or to other databases. Definitely improved; not where it needs to be yet, but it's better. Time to hit the sack.

Mentor Channel's "Around Town" covers Emma

There's a very nice piece about our cybernetic cat in the April 18 edition of Around Town. (We couldn't bring in the real Emma due to scheduling difficulties. Barb Hauer, MPL's Collection and Technical Services Manager, let us use her cat Chloe as a stand in. Chloe is an awesome cat!)

Udon and eel

A few days ago, I was eating Udon noodles and eel at Mifune in San Francisco's Japantown. Today, I'm back in Northeastern Ohio eating some aging yet spry dried figs. Hmmm...Mendelssohn anyone?

"Elijah! Get thee hence, Elijah! Depart and turn thee eastward:
Thither hide thee by Cherith’s brook."

Emma generated a good deal of interest at IUG. No one was indifferent; some librarians were enthusiastic, some were frightened. We heard about another very interesting AI project being developed by the University of Nebraska's Library. Very similar to Emma, but without the avatar. Pretty soon, she and her offspring will be everywhere.

A few days off, then I'm heading to Philadelphia for Chatbots 3.1. Do they have udon in Philly? We'll see.

Chatbots 3.1

Who: Bot creators, commercial users, enthusiasts, scientists, students, and the press are invited.
What: Chatbots 3.1 Conference
When: Saturday, April 23, 2011
Where: Suite 3200 (32nd Floor) Two Liberty Place, 50 S. 16th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102
Why: Chatbots have been adapted to nearly every ecological niche on the internet. Bots appear on web pages, in instant messaging, and respond to email and forum posts. They can be found in Second Life, in online games, and in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Bots support marketing and advertising and are used in education. This conference brings together leading experts to discuss their ideas and present the latest technologies and trends in chatbots.

Program

David Newyear - Mentor Public Library - The Cat who Sat Down at the Reference Desk
Robert Medeksza - Zabaware - Ultra HAL Technology in Social Networks
Francis Taney - Buchanan Ingersoll - Legal and IP Issues for Botmasters
Dr. Richard Wallace - Pandorabots - Creating AIML bots that speak and hear
Charles Wooters, Ph.D - NextIT - TBD
Dr. Hugh Loebner - Crown Industries - A.I. and The Future of Society
John McIntire - Warfighter Interface Division, 711th Human Performance Wing, Air Force Research Laboratory - Spotting a bot: Active and passive methods of chatbot detection
John Zakos - MyCyberTwin - The Role of Chat Bots in Social Media
Adeena Mignogna - Riot Software - TBD (tentative)
Rollo Carpenter - Existor - TBD
Jeff Remy - VirtuOz - TBD

Follow this link to register!