Companions or Commercials?
Dianne Lynch,
ABC News,
Apr 17, 2002
While pundits such as Elliott Masie are beginning to tout the benefits of internet messaging (IM) in education, advertisers - one step ahead of the pundits, as usual - are planning the deployment of intelligent agents that resemble instant messages, are targeted at kids, and that promote brands or products. This article describes a product called ActiveBuddy (http://www.activebuddy.com/), a company that produces LindsayBuddy, an agent built to deliver information about a 15-year old recording artist. I tried it out (open AOL-IM (or Trillian) and send a message addressed to 'LindsayBuddy') and found it simplistic but impresssive: at my request, for example, it let me play a Lindsay Pagano video.
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