I Love Ms. Dewey!

Imagine a search engine that combines the -- shall we say -- "Google Paradigm" with the ... Well, it's hard to know what to call it, except the "Clippy Paradigm." You know Clippy, right? He's the animated paperclip Help icon that used to come up on your page when you were tying in Word and say things (in onscreen word balloons) like "Hello -- it looks like you're typing a suicide note ... Can I help you with that?" Okay ... So now imagine that, instead of Clippy, you have a very beautiful, kinetic woman -- an amusing physical actress and improvisatrix -- who someone with a keen sense of timing has videoanimated in Flash, scripted with a little funny stage-business for slack times, and endowed with a little light-duty AI (a few routines in response to predictable search phrases). And then they've stuck it in front of a search engine in a very pretty (though not super-efficient) UI. That's Ms. Dewey. And I love it.

You'd think, after ... yow ... 30 years of programming, including lots of early work in AI, I'd be immune to this kind of thing. But I sat there for half an hour, today, looking at Ms. Dewey bounce around, say funny things, knock on the screen to get my attention, and respond to search phrases.

I'm not sure if this is commercially viable, or if there's some deeper logic to it (e.g., it's learning something from searches). But it's sure amusing! Check her out!

Posted by John Jainschigg at 02:37 PM  Permalink