Truth & Beauty Lab Answer Board

The latest creation from the Truth & Beauty Lab, the Answer Board, was released yesterday 18-March-2012. The Answer Board is a Pandorabot based rotating sign that provides answers to just about any question or topic one can think of. The board responds to local chat and provides its answers from, first, Wikipedia if it finds a matching article then Wolfram Alpha if no Wikipedia article is found then AI chat from pandorabots.com if no Wolfram Alpha answer is found.

The Answer Board is preconfigured and requires no setup other than rezzing, positioning, and resizing if desired. It uses a shared Wolfram Alpha Application ID which gives the board access to Wolfram Alpha but on a shared basis with a limit of 2000 queries per month. Therefore, it is recommended that the owner of an Answer Board register for their own Wolfram Alpha Application ID at http://products.wolframalpha.com/api/

Although ready to use out-of-the-box, the Answer Board can be extensively customized. A detailed Owners Manual is provided and available in PDF, Office, and OpenOffice formats. Non-owner users who touch the Answer Board receive a User Guide which is also available in PDF, Office, and OpenOffice formats.

The Answer Board can provide information on just about any topic due to the wealth of information available via the combined resources of Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha. Based on the recently released Pandorabot V7 technology, the Answer Board can automatically detect the user's language and query that language Wikipedia. Language detection is provided for Nihongo, Russkiy, Nederlands, Português, Polski, Italiano, Español, Français, Deutsch or English. It is the smartest scripted agent in Second Life.

In addition, the Answer Board can be enabled as a Greeter to detect and greet new arrivals, deliver notecards and landmarks, and emit a wide variety of particle displays. There is an extensive command set available to the owner and an easy to use dialog menu. The Answer Board is available for L$395 on the Second Life Marketplace at https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Truth-Beauty-Lab-Answer-Board/3304679

Here's what the Answer Board looks like:

Restless Studio Full Perm Wikimedia Textures

Restless Studio provides several packages of full perm textures gleaned from Wikimedia. These textures have been cropped, scaled, and digitally modified for tiling. All are freely licensed for reuse, redistribution, and resale under one of the Creative Commons licenses. This means that Second Life residents can use them in their builds, modify them (with appropriate re-licensing), copy them, transfer them to others (again, with appropriate licensing), and even resell them.

Why buy these textures when they are freely downloadable at Wikimedia ? Well, you are certainly welcome to search through Wikimedia and download the upload at 10L per texture but the time and money you spend doing this yourself will far exceed the moderate price of the already prepared packages. In addition, most texture packs provided by Restless Studio are modified to allow seamless tiling of textures. This and many other questions are addressed in the Wikimedia Commons Product FAQ.

Here are links to the currently available Restless Studio Wikimedia Commons Texture packs:

• Flowers - 45 full perm textures, 90L
• Nature - 27 full perm textures, 50L
• Space - 17 full perm textures, 50L
• Fungi - 29 full perm textures, 60L
• Nudes - 42 full perm textures, 145L
• Seamless Stone Textures - 10 full perm tiles, 50L
• Seamless Brick Textures - 64 full perm tiles, 250L 
• Seamless Camouflage Textures - 25 full perm tiles, 100L
• Seamless Metal Textures - 10 full perm tiles, 50L
• Seamless Mixed Textures - 70 full perm tiles, 250L
• Seamless Textile Textures - 18 full perm tiles, 75L
• Seamless Wood Textures - 25 full perm tiles, 100L
• Seamless Texture Mega Pack - 222 full perm tiles, 495L

Also available is the THiNC book "The Nudes of Wikimedia" which includes 42 freely redistributable full perm textures of high quality photographs of female nudes plus a THiNC book of these textures.

Pandorabot & Actorbot Add-On

Disclaimer: I am reviewing my own products in this post. They're cool relatively inexpensive products though so I forgive myself :)

The Pandorabot from Restless Studio is not your typical chat bot. Yes, it chats with you in local chat using an artificial intelligence programmed at pandorabots.com in the AIML programming dialect. However, the Pandorabot will also query Wikipedia for appropriate responses, check your spelling, send email, greet new arrivals, and deliver a notecard, landmark, and user guide. All for L$245 and consisting of only a single prim (the perched 3D sculpted parrot Pandorabot is 12 prims). If you don't have a place to rez objects there is a wearable 3D sculpted parrot Pandorabot (11 prims).

For an additional L$150 the Pandorabot can be integrated into an Actorbot to create a realistic 3D animated avatar bot that includes all the Pandorabot features as well as the programmability  of the Actorbot from Sine Wave. The Pandorabot Actorbot Add-On kit consists of a Pandorabot V4, an Actorbot integration script, and a script that can be used to position your Actorbot on a prim and animate it according to what is in that prim. Watch a demonstration Pandorabot Actorbot in this short YouTube video and visit the Restless Studio demonstration Pandorabot Actorbot.

Both the Pandorabot and Actorbot Add-On come with extensive documentation available in PDF online and plain text inworld. Here's a few photos to give you a sense of the Pandorabot look:

Pandorabots are available on the Second Life Marketplace (search for "Pandorabot Missy Restless" or just "Pandorabot"). The Pandorabot Actorbot Add-On is also available on the Second Life Marketplace (search for "Pandorabot Actorbot").

The PDF documentation for the Pandorabot and Actorbot Add-On is available online at http://www.scribd.com/missyrestless . There is also a Pandorabots Blog with lots of How-To's, many more pics, and updated info/links.

The Lighter Side of Wikipedia

So you don't think Wikipedia is awesome ? You may also believe it to be dry and totally devoid of humor. Bzzzt! Check out the synopsis of Baby Got Back for proof of awesomeness.

Still not convinced ? Ok, buckle up for a long bumpy ride through the Lamest Edit Wars of Wikipedia! Here's the intro illustration and caption for this article:

An unidentified clerk (center) tries to bring to an end a great edit war involving dozens of respected editors. At her feet, three bewildered newcomers are seen caught in the middle of the dispute.

The visually oriented (or those averse to reading on and on and on and on) may prefer this graphical representation of the lamest Wikipedia edit wars.

The talk pages at Wikipedia are consistently hilarious. Here people seem to just say whatever pops into their heads, pertinent or not. Take, for instance, the August 19, 2010 entry on the talk page for The Beatles Wikipedia article (unedited, just as it appears):

The things are ever so complicated and i have to say all stories surronded this band, I saw James Paul McCartney a real leader as memeber who kept on the group together,he plays a lot music instruments, was a good student at primary school, he composes easily,i know he depressed after the dissolution, John Winston Lennon was a leader as an author at especially the beginning, i know he liked poetry and did the school of arts,i know he wanted to leave the group after meeting Yoko Ono, George Harisson was a reserved person but i see him very keen, he was the younger, i know he couldn't put more than a song in an album, john tell him how to write a song in a same mood...Paul didn't want to help him one day they were disputing when they recorded Let it Be,he introduced the indu music, one day he said they could run a danger by meeting people like kennedy ...Ringo started in 1962, i know he stayed in bed during two years , he worked at a factory of wood, eight days a week was his elocution, paul john and george helped him a little... he wrote with george uctopus garden.he wanted to be actor. Brian Epstein was their manager and george Martin their arranger productor. I saw a film when they begun in Hambourg, they were really different, i saw Lennon and McCartney always fussing and fighting each other about the drummer, McCArtney was on horse lennon was mixing with feelings, they were with pleasant wommen.... there was Breaks durring Let it be session.... Later yoko forbidden julian for some mock up... I think lennon later was tired for commitments...his solo songs had a very sensed I think McCartney didn't want to be involved as a singer, he is not like that ..but he was right in a certain point of view. He said in Beatles he was free how to write songs.i apreessied flaming pie and drivin rain....he did hearted work in a classiacal album, but it's not the pain to be accidented with a taxi when he say i appressiate your own song.

Need I say more ? Wikipedia - awesome & funny!