Despite the fact that “Semantic Web” has been trending down (at least in Google searches), it seems like more web sites devoted to it are popping up these days. I’ve been messing around with Twine for a fews weeks now and it seems pretty useful, although it definitely can’t accomplish what they claim. [^1] A new one that I stumbled into, via KurzweilAI.net is Powerset. My 30 second review is that I tried searches on two pretty obscure subjects that I’ve been reading about lately, the St. Petersburg factor[^2] and kriegsspiel. Basically, I got the same search results at wikipedia, powerset and google—no immediately discernible differences.

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I took a long sojourn into the history of interactive fiction (IF) with my launching pad being the stunning revelations unearthed by Andy Balo over at waxy in regards to the never-completed Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure sequel. But after reading that, and poking around the archives and playing a few great examples of IF, I started wondering why more hasn’t been done to advance the interface of these games? Why not incoporate more AI? Read more…

Dasher is a novel piece of software that lets you point at what you want to write. Honestly, it’s kind of difficult to describe without seeing the demonstration. It’s very novel and makes novel use of some simple AI. I wonder if Apple would ever integrate this in to the iPhone? And it would seem to be of great use were it to be integrated into eye tracking software.

Just found a program called IMified. It’s really handy due to its widget structure—allowing you to basically pipe web site APIs into ichat—so close to the concept I had in mind when I wrote about the LUI. Well, it’s definitely a good step in the right direction; it’s even got me using aim regularly again. ((For those of you who never got into the AIM thing, you might want to check out Sandy, an online assistant who helps you with tasks through email.))