Robots Begin To Socialize!!!!
From one of my favorites -- Ray Hammond!
A pan-European team of robotics researchers begins a project this year that could see humanoid robots interact with groups of people in a realistic, anthropomorphic way for the first time.
If successful, the project will give future humanoid bots something that existing robots don't possess - the simple social skills necessary to deal with small groups of people, including the basic intelligence to pick out a group of humans and determine which ones want to interact with it. It could also endow robots with the ability to infer meaning from incoming sense data, which would be a rudimentary step towards truly anthropomorphic robot intelligence.
Virtual gifting -- researching it!
I am intrigued by virtual gifting ever since I went to a Social Media conference that was housed with an online dating conference. Yes, I know an interesting combo! But as I walked through their solution conference, I found some interesting items!
First, let's start at the beginning. Per Wikipedia, a virtual gift is a picture of an item, instead of the item itself. The item may have a digital social capital value, esthetic or functional value. The item may or may not be paired with an offline equivalent.
This HEX necklace was the first virtual gift that I created for an IBM event....it is a HEX necklace!
Second, people love them! 57 % believe virtual gifting is as meaningful as real life gifting. WOW!
Third, it drives money. It is about 10% of Facebook's revenue from the beginning in 2007. (Couldn't find any new factoids!)
Fourth, I want to see what you guys think about virtual gifting. Are you using it? See below what we created for my team mates below.
