Voki - Get The Interactive Avatar For Your Website

Hey its me once again coming to you with the finer things Web 2.0 have to offer. Today I've come up with a tool to make your social experience interactive. The site is called Voki.com which lets you create your avatar, aka 'Voki', that interacts with the visitors of your site by delivering your message to them. You can also send the personalized voki to your friends via e-mail.

The site lets you create your voki, which could be an anime figure (like mine), a classic figure resembling real life people, a cartoon, an animal, or simply a random character out of fiction. It even lets you tweak small details such as the color of its hair, its vitality and so on.

Another feature that I particularly liked about the site is that it lets you record the message, you intend to deliver through voki, in number of ways. You can either create your message by uploading your existing audio track stored on your computer, or recording the message in real time through your microphone attached to the computer, use the integrated Text to Speech utility, or even let the voki audio center call you (automated) and get your message recorded through your phone (which would be more convenient to some if they are creating voki for the person who is currently one the road...I guess). Jokes aside - recording via the phone feature is in fact an awesome idea that could have many potential applications especially by other net based companies.

There's more than one way to use voki. Already people have found out innovative usage for it. One RJ, Gary Craig, have used voki in his website to imitate Bill Clinton and deliver message in a hilarious way. There could be millions of use for this type of cool tool. Its your job to figure out.

Well, this is all I have for you right now. Be sure to tune in next time to get more insight on undiscovered tools, tips 'n tricks, and information on other interesting stuff that I come across while exploring the web.

Amazing Motion Detecting CG Animation in Flash

Click on any of these images to open the corresponding flash demo which detects the cursor motion and follows it. Pretty impressive!

The company's homepage features an avatar which is even more interactive than this one. For instance, you can tickle her nose and watch her sneeze, or ring the bell to get her attention. Amazing, isn't it? What's even more amazing is that the entire animation was created by using only a single photograph of the subject. The 2D to 3D rendering is done by the software which enables the avatars to be interactive. There's a tremendous possibility of this technology being utilized by all sorts of industries. Imagine a web based tutor that interacts with its students, or the e-commerce sales assistant that makes the buying experience as close to the real life as possible. What about web based interactive games in which the character interacts to your every set of complex cursor moves - just like Wii-motes detecting your hand motion? Due to all these wonderful possibilities I believe that we'll be seeing more of these in the future.

Source: Motionportrait.com .