I'll confess that I had never heard of Midwestern Business.com, but I try to keep up with what's hot, and they've got something that's hot--check her out! How'd you like to have her reading and delivering the news to you?
And don't worry, girls, this image of a fetching newscaster could just as easily be a male who likes like, oh I dunno, Brad Pitt. Or, Ben Widdicombe!
An avatar is best described as a cartoon--2-D, 3-D--that can be operated on a computer by a human, or by a computer. Avatars have been around for a while, but most of them, frankly, haven't been good enough quality. And you need some pretty serious computer power to support the face; so this is all a work in progress.
But that work is making progress, that's for sure. Now Kristian Hammond, co-director of Northwestern University’s Intelligent Information Laboratory, has got a good one--as you can see!
TCG is too poor and dumb to invest in anything, but she will pass along this tip: One of these avatar technologies is going to gain traction, and take off.
