Cellular phones continue to follow Moore’s law and
technologically grow in power each year. Inventive individuals
continue to fund new ways to harness this power into other
industries such as movie making, music broadcasting, and now real
estate.
According to a
Cincinnati real estate blog, cellular phones are becoming a
useful real estate tool. The smart phone and txt enabled phones can
send short codes found on real estate signs to gain basic
information on the price, square footage, and other basics. Going
forward smart phones will be able to download virtual tours and
potentially schematics on homes yet to be built.
I would look to fashion as the next major venue to pick up the
smart phone as an outlet. The ability to capture style in an image
and then have garments found or custom made could drive fashion
sales. Look to houses such as Zara and H&M to be quick adopters of this model
since their factory is already designed for fast turn around.
Recently Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute created
an artificial intelligence program to run within the platform of
Second Life. The researchers are studying the interactions that
occur with real people through
their avatars. The RPI students created
the program to maneuver the avatar and understand some fairly
straight forward questions, asked in English.
Operators of Second Life don’t seem concerned about
synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston
operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based
company sees a fascinating opportunity for AI to evolve. “I think
the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled
avatars and let them free in ‘Second Life,’” Lester said, ” ... let
them randomly walk the grid.”
With AI characters within a grid of tens of thousands of active
users the social experimentation is nearly limitless. Social
scientists can examine certain behaviors and even provoke them
through the AI interface. Most interesting is if the AI can
recognize and then smoothly translate languages the program could
create cultural bridges and even examine cultural behavior
proclivities.
The Ohio
University has set up a fairly innovative experience inside
Second Life
focused on educating residents about food choices. The experience
asks residents to choose 3 meals and then it tells them about the
amount of calories, fat and the long term impact of their health if
they continue to eat this way. The below video gave a really nice
overview.
