As you have probably seen or heard it, I have created my Voki to welcome you on this blog. This avatar is made by Oddcast, and you can read everything about the launch here (one of my favorite blogs).
I love to share my gadgets (offline) / widgets (online) with my friends. In this case, I can’t say that the product has a major utility, but it is so much fun… I love the possibility of adding your own voice through a microphone and not only by phone, but I would have loved to have better personalization tools (e.g. uploading a picture), like in Gizmoz for example. As you may notice it my avatar is far from looking like me (even if I would have loved to have blue eyes)! There is also a major bug: I wanted my avatar not to play on load but only if the visitor clicks on it, but as you may hear it this option is not working! (Update: the problem is now fixed, thanks Charlie)
But I love those initiatives which try to improve the personalization of your online presence; it is cool to think that even when you’re not here to welcome people who take the time to read your blog, your avatar can do it for you! The next step would be the democratization of intelligent avatars that you can educate to discuss for you, just like the ones Virtuoz is trying to provide to companies.
eBay is already using this service to guide customers in the “help” section of the French website. Isn’t Louise gorgeous? You can even ask her if she is married!
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Play on load has been fixed… go to the scene in your account, hit edit, then choose the little gears on that edit screen in the top right corner. Play on load is now an option there.
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Thanks Charlie, I was starting to hate my own voice!
You have an amazing blog on avatars; you might be interested at looking at French innovations in this sector (such as Virtuoz); I have heard that France is particularly in advance concerning intelligent avatars.
I don’t know if it’s true, but the fact that this innovation has been launched on eBay’s French website rather than on the American one for once might be significative.
But where is the eBay To Go widget? I read your article about eBay this morning, and I think that you would be a good ambassadress to promote it
You are so right! The fact is that for the moment I don’t sell anything on eBay so I don’t have any object to promote on this blog… And this Wordpress theme just allow 9 widgets which is a pain…
But you are right, I should evangelize eBay tools more!
[...] A few weeks ago in my article about Voki I said that the future of avatars was Artificial Intelligence so that they can really take your place online; no need to explain that the slogan of Skaaz is “Always ON”! It is based on the Virtuoz technology, company I have already talked about as it is the provider of the virtual agent Louise in the Customer section of eBay, which was focused on virtual agents for companies. Skaaz is their mass market product. Your Skaaz can be embbeded in your blog or MSN, and you will have to educate him by asking lots of questions so that he will be able to answer them when you are online. [...]