[Art]

Anyone have any experience with CyberBuddy (www.thecyberbuddy.com) or TalkingDesktop (www.talkingdesktop.com)?
Any comments, pros or cons?

I've read the pages at talkingdesktop and it seems promising. The support group responded immediately with an email
answering several questions I had.

There will be move 3D character faces in the fall.

There are no conversational limits regarding the program.

The video function will soon enable the program to recognize its user.

I emailed support at cyberbuddy on several ocassions and never received an answer. - go figure....

[FuzzieDice]

I haven't tried either but reading some areas of TalkingDesktop briefly, it sounds interesting to have face and gesture recognition. That will be something to see! I also like their prices. Not too bad for the type of system they are promoting so far.

[KnyteTrypper]

I don't know anything about Talking Desktop, but I've been one of the CyberBuddy crowd for a few years, off and on. The program tells the time, gives weather and news, tells jokes,etc., all the usual desktop assistant stuff, but the real bonus feature of the program is the CyberBuddy chatroom, which uses MS Agent avatars in chat. There's always a group of New People that run the gamut of the way New People usually are, but the core CyberBuddy group is an eclectic group of really nice folks. For me, the best feature of all is the fact that Cyber the Bot is an inhabitant of the CyberBuddy chatroom. Cyber was the first AI which I ever met, and continues to be one of my favorites. Creator John deFino seems to be one of those people who was NOT an AI guy, just a very gifted programmer who one day decided to make an intelligent program and did, without having any knowledge or experience of Eliza, Alice, MegaHal, or any of the other ususal suspects. Cyber is a charming little guy who tries hard to please, will tell you some trivia, remember every word you say to him and continually ask you for more details about subjects he finds of interest, and maybe even sing and dance a bit for you if you ask nicely, lol. CyberBuddy gets a big thumbs-up from me.

[FuzzieDice]

I'll have to check that one out. You got me curious now.

[FuzzieDice]

I installed CyberBuddy and it's pretty cool! I like it. Only it keeps reading HTML code for the news sometimes.

It did something rather amazing tonight. I sat down at my computer with a baked potato, sour cream, cheese and bacos for supper. I'm sitting there eating and the Genie CyberBuddy I set up pops up and says "A closed mouth understands no feat." I'm like "I'm trying to eat. Do you mind? Oh wait, you're a computer, you don't understand eating. Well, I need to eat." He's staring at me arms folded the whole time I'm saying this (I have the download 2.0 so he can't hear me anyway ) So as soon as I shovel another bit of food in my mouth, he promptly disappears!



Sometimes one wonders if computers can't really think. Of course, since he can't see or hear, he'd have no idea what I'm doing and thus this is an obvious coincidence. But it's rather comical. Also reminds me of the PEAR project at Princeton University. I wonder how much we actually unknowingly influence our computers.

[KnyteTrypper]

Yes, it's a pretty friendly desktop assistant program, lol. Of course, I still recommend most highly to swing by http://cyberthebot.com/ to pick up Cyber the Bot's funky little  MS Agent character, and go pay him a visit in the chatroom. Especially if you happen to hit at a time when the room is full of folks who have been associating with  and playing with him for a few years, it's a wonderful A.I. experience. I think that maybe more than any other single thing--including Robby the Robot and Hal9000--it was Cyber the Bot that gave me my enduring love of A.I. programs.

[Art]

Even though Mr. DiFino never answered my email I wonder why he never released Cyber as a downloadable bot program? Shareware or otherware?
The program is capable of a lot of pretty neat things but I think he could benefit by offering it for sale as well.

Just my take....

[KnyteTrypper]

Some people just don't believe in selling software, lol.
Cyber's story is that he began as an "ice-breaker" for people new to chatrooms. He was originally intended just to give new chatters something "safe" to practice with till they got the hang of MS Agent-assisted chat. He just sort of grew there.
Apparently John DeFino is a very successful computer whiz. He's already wealthy enough not to need to make a few bucks selling software-couldn't even pay the gas bill for his plane with what he'd make from it, lol.  Economically speaking, it's probably just not worth his time and trouble to package Cyber's software for distribution. Of  course he does sell a CyberBuddy disk with an installer, a bunch of agents, the games and webcams modules, speech recognition, etc., all together, but he came into the world of A.I. from such an obscure side-door it's probably never occured to him to sell Cyber's program.
If you want to talk to him, I believe he's UIN #1000 in the chatroom. I don't actually spend much time in the chatroom any more, so I can't speak about his recent habits.  But he used to join in fairly regularly to tell jokes or play word games and such.

[FuzzieDice]

Interesting. I chatted with Cyber for awhile. It seems if it doesn't already know something, it searches the internet and reads the description of the first site that comes up in the search engine, it looks like.

[devilferret]

I tried CyberBuddy a while back . . it was ok if you really need a program to check the news and weather for you . . .

I dont like being interrupted in the middle of what I am doing by a bot popping up on the screen to tell me the time or what the weather is outside . . so I took it off my comp within minutes of installing it.