Chat Face-to-Face with Albert Einstein Using Synthetic Interview Technology

You can have an interactive, face-to-face conversation with Albert Einstein as he floats before you in 3D with Carnegie Mellon~s new Synthetic Interview technology. Einstein answers spontaneous questions about his life and research in real time through a combination of technologies developed at the university. They include the Sphinx speech recognition system, Lycos search engine, Informedia digital video information retrieval system and character simulation for intelligent multimedia. The co-developers, computer scientist Scott Stevens and associate professor of drama and arts management Donald Marinelli, say the initial goal of this project was to do an historical figure in depth and let people have fun. But if you collect enough information, this could be someone~s key to immortality. http://www.cmu.edu/etc/tech.html#performance

Companies Mine Historical Data To Improve Decisionmaking

Businesses of all kinds can improve decisionmaking by mining their data with software from Carnegie Mellon~s new Center for Automated Learning and Discovery (CALD). CALD is grounded on more than two decades of research on algorithms and theory that can be applied to datamining in fields including information filtering, marketing, industrial process control, medical outcomes analysis and intelligent agents. "Today, more and more data are being kept on line," says CALD director Tom Mitchell. "Networking advances are making this data easily accessible and the basic research we need to utilize this information is reaching maturity." The CALD Web site is: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cald/

Broaden Your Literary Horizons with Antique Books on the World Wide Web

Add a new dimension to your reading with an antique book on the World Wide Web. Try a biography of Benjamin Franklin with an 1835 explanation of electricity, or a history of New England written in 1847. They~re posted on Carnegie Mellon~s Web site for antique books, where they appear in full-color scans that capture the weathered texture of the paper and the quality of the original illustrations. ~We~re digitizing neat old books that make great reads,~ says project director Robert Thibadeau, a senior research scientist. He and his colleagues have developed a new compression system that reduces the time and bandwidth needed to download the pages. Thibadeau says the books can be enjoyed over a modem connection without any plug-ins. www.ul.cs.cmu.edu/antique