I found out about a fun little website called Cleverbot.com. It is laid out in a very basic looking format. It kind of looks like google’s homepage but with some advertisements stuck in there. What you’re supposed to do is just chat with cleverbot. It is an artificial intelligence program that can talk back to you.  Apparently it won the 2010 Machine Intelligence Competition. All you do is start talking to it by typing in the text box and clicking the “Think About It!” button. Then Cleverbot will think and respond to what you said. You can also click the “Think For Me!” button if you can’t think of anything to say and want Cleverbot to respond to itself. The “Thoughts So Far” button will just display your whole conversation in a new window. It isn’t a perfect application by any means, but sometimes it can say some funny stuff. I’ve actually seen some spelling errors in its responses, which is just odd. I’m not sure what language it was programmed in or if it’s still learning from conversations it has currently, but it’s a nice piece of advanced programming.

Things like Cleverbot are amazing feats of programming and make it seem even more possible that those wild visions of the future may come true. The future where robots are very real and take over many of the jobs we have today. It may happen that some time in the near future you will be getting your fast food order taken by a robot or you may even be chauffeured by a robot driver. It’s kind of scary and kind of cool at the same time. It all of course brings about worries of the Terminator scenario where the machines begin to think for themselves and start a robot revolution to exterminate the human race. It would probably be quite a while until something like that would happen though. I’ll let the future generations worry about that.

DDA does its own custom programming for things like database driven websites and eCommerce sites. Programming is used in all sorts of other ways too though. It can be used in Flash with actionscript programming, in things like CD-ROMs, and to make all those cool little effects on websites happen that make the user experience that much easier and friendly. Let DDA do your website programming for you. Give us a call or visit and see what we can do for you.

I’ve come to find myself reliant on technology in an interesting way. A bit ago when I wanted to register for the Bucks 5k Series (a series of 7 running races), I first went to their website and followed the link to registration there. I filled out the forms and details and went to check out and pay only to see that there was also an $11 fee for signing up online. I canceled out of the registration and went back to the home page where I saw a notice about some sign up days at a local running store. This day happened to be the last day of that, so I figured I’d go there and register to save myself a wad of money. I went to the store and told them my intentions. They gave me a photocopied registration form, which I filled out and handed back to them. I then paid for the races on my credit card without any surcharge and was given a receipt. That was it. It felt weird. I just paid a bunch of money and all I got was a receipt. The receipt didn’t even list what I had paid for on it. It just felt like I had gotten nothing in return and barely had any proof of what I had paid for.

I went home and for the next few days I checked the online registration list. My name never showed up on it. It was highly possible that it was only for online registrants, but it only fed my paranoia that I would be forgotten. I decided to email the coordinator of the race series to ask if I would get an email or show up on that list so that I would know that I am officially in the series. Thankfully he emailed me back saying that he had my form and that I was registered. It’s funny how I seemingly have lost all faith in paper forms. It wasn’t too long ago that everyone would have had to register using a paper form. The technology would have brought me so much more assurance by just listing my name online and emailing me a receipt of registration. It’s the whole information overload of today I believe. It makes me feel like if I don’t get bombarded with information confirming that I was registered, then it must not have happened. That email saying that they got my form was enough to completely calm me. I just needed a digital record to calm my fears.

I know that returns on some products can be a nightmare without a receipt or order number. For that reason we can all thank technology for making it easy to keep email records and look up order histories on company websites and such. They really can confirm everything you do out there and keep the worriers like me calm and confident.

DDA frequently does website programming for instances just like this. Our database programming experience with administration areas and eCommerce websites has honed our skills in such things. Storefronts and product selling with receipts and all the information in the world is stored in case it becomes needed for any reason. Our advanced programming lets store owners customize their site to show what they want and allows customers to purchase what they want. Both parties will get all the information and confirmation they need at the end of the process to both be satisfied with the transaction and ready to move on with the rest of their day. Give us a call or visit and see what we can do for you.

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. It was the day of a lot of ice and yesterday I talked about how I chiseled the ice from my car and how the groundhog predicted an earlier Spring for once. Well a little bit later that day all of that ice decided to wreak havoc on our power lines. We lost power a little bit after 10. We called the electricity supplier and they said it would be back on at 12:30, so the boss treated us to a nice diner breakfast/lunch in the downtime. Then as we were finishing another call was made to see if the power was back on yet and this time the estimate said it wouldn’t be back on until 5:16. Not only is that a weird time to estimate, but it would also ruin the whole work day. So we went back to get our stuff and I left. I made it about 15 minutes away when I got a call to say that the power was back on and I could come back. I was stunned. What kind of estimate was 5:16 when it’s already back on at 12:15? Apparently some people were about to leave still when it popped back on, so the alert went out to the people that had already departed. I made it back and apparently about 10 seconds before I stepped in the building the power went out again. What!? I was stunned. A call to get a time estimate now just said to call back later and we just waited. A little bit before 1, the power came back on again and this time for good. The second half of the work day was salvaged. It was quite a roller coaster day of electric events, but we got through it eventually.

So DDA can be stopped apparently by one thing, the loss of electricity. Luckily the whole country basically runs on electricity, so if we aren’t working then basically nobody else is probably working either. That doesn’t mean the work won’t get done though. It will just be delayed until the power comes back on. Once that electric juice is flowing again, we are back to our Flash animation, video editing, digital photography, custom web design, custom programming, copywriting, search engine marketing (SEM), and everything else we do in the marketing and digital world. So give us a call or visit today and see what we can do for you, but only when the electricity is on of course.