[Freddy]

So, a new year is already well under way.  I think I finally shook Christmas out of my system.  Now I wonder what we should be doing this year for the site.

Does anyone have any great ideas for what we could be doing this coming year ?

[Data]

I don’t know if it’s a great idea but as the web changes to 2.0 one of the features bundled into that name is web pages that up-date without the need to refresh the page, there is a “Enotify” that can tell the user when a reply has been made to their post or tell them if they have a personal message without the need to refresh, I have started to see this kind of function on various sites these days.

Anyway if you are interested it can be found here:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2198

It doesn’t exactly change the page content, more of a little corner pop over.

[Freddy]

Yeah I'm not sure about that.  When you come to this forum all the recent topics are already shown and you can see if there are any messages for you.  Not saying it's useless, just not seeing a place for it here really.

If it's ajax and it does live updates then I must assume it will be querying the database at regular intervals, which is kinda neat, I couldn't say what kind of drain this would cause, probably not much on our forums.  But I can see it being useful on busy sites where content changes a lot.  Of course busy site and using ajax means more of a drain, so it's most useful but more demanding too.

I'll think on that one.  I'll see what you experience with it on Datahopa first I think 

[Data]

That’s cool Freddy it was just a thought  , and it works how you explained it.

Yeah I’ll be guinea pig on that one.  

Ok how about this one…

Ai in games.

I just finished playing Mass Effect 2, plenty of Ai going on in there.

EDI, the ships Ai is one of a kind, my words don’t do her justice, the video will  

EDIT:
Spoiler alert, if you haven’t played Mass Effect 2 and think you might, don’t watch more than a minute or two.  

[Freddy]

Nice, yeah I think looking into game AI would be very cool.  Good idea 

[Art]

Having not played Mass Effect X.X, I'll take your word on the A.I. thing, but I did enjoy the banter between EDI and Joker.
It would be cool to have a stand alone computer version of that A.I. or perhaps one that controls your home automation system! Could get a bit testy I'd imagine!

[Freddy]

  Grats on the 400 posts Data, did that make you a senior member ?  I forget what I set it to.

[Data]

Yeah, 400+ posts, thanks Freddy, am now a senior member, not to be confused with senior citizen 

EDI isn’t an AI really as such, she just fools you in to thinking that, very well done though. She is pretty well how I imagine an Ai to be, yup I would be more than happy to have the real thing on my PC.

ME2 is a massive game where you are the commander of a ship who roams the galaxy looking for things. One of the races in the galaxy are the Geth, artificial beings who become self-aware and started fighting their creators for freedom.

In the game you control a group of crewmates when fighting, if you don’t control them the games Ai does, you cant exactly hold a conversation with them but the Ai keeps them out of trouble, ducking shots, moving forward and attacking, retreating and so on.

Yeah good game, good game