Hiya! So glad to have found you. We have AI avatars coming out of three years of R&D see http://www.myownreporter.com
looking forward to the reception at chatbot.org and your members (just joined this minute, see the MOR blog & @myownreporter.com for twitter)

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tania_Peitzker

Hi Tania, I read about you on Wikipedia, cool..  And, I’m now following you on Twitter, at @PeitzkerTania..  (I couldn’t find anything on Twitter for @myownreporter..) 

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5BSzGM_mko

I’m watching your demo video now; but, can you tell us anything more about what “powered by velmai” means?  This reminds me of some work Tom Joyce (8pla.net) has done with robot reporters, see his demo video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD3Ibuh-iMM ..

I’m Australian-American, born in Melbourne of American parents..  I’m in the States this year, but may come back to Oz next year..  BTW, I’ve just returned from presenting at the Chatbots 3.2 conference in Philadelphia.. 

Cheers, Marcus Endicott http://meta-guide.com

Hi Marcus, the human tweet is @PeitzkerTania but we are training the MOR velmais to tweet autonomously @myownreporter in future.

They are not like Joyce’s robot reporters. They have been trained to process and remember information organically, so velmais are unique in that they are the first AI avatars on the Web with this sort of learning ability.

For the first year we have connected their brains to the RSS feeds of the European Union so their brief is to engage with humans on this subject matter.

Subscribers pay $26 AUD per month in an annual subscription to this customised reporting and research on the EU (it has become quite topical in recent years!)

In Phase Two we add voice and animation modules, Phase Three should see the MOR velmais ’ brains cope with trawling the Web and interacting with 1000s of individual human subscribers and other Virtual Assistants or chat bots - if they have sufficient artificial intelligence…

Would love to hear about the 3.2 conference, will start viewing the videos posted on chatbot.org and look forward to meeting you in Sydney!

PS powered by velmai refers to the British technology behind the search and learning algorithm of our AI avatars. The programmer actually doesn’t name his work a chatbot but I as the marketing side to the business need a commonly understood term to promote the service.

Thus myownreporter.com is a British-Australian Joint Venture between velmai Ltd in the UK and Asia Pac PR Holdings Pty Ltd in Australia.

http://www.myownreporter.com is our vehicle to demonstrate the velmai search engine combined with AI, so as to position ourselves in the market.

> http://emm.newsbrief.eu/overview.html

Not long ago I read about the Europe Media Monitor “intelligent news event extraction system”, by EMM Labs http://emm-labs.jrc.it ..  Is this related to the “velmai” or “velmais” you’re referring to ??

> http://www.youtube.com/user/fruitcakedesign

The only reference I can find for VELMAI LTD (velmai.com) points to Cliff Lee at http://fruitcakedesign.com ..

Hi Marcus

no we are not part of EMM Labs or any government/university programme, we are a purely private JV with 100% private ownership of the IP.

And yes Cliff is co-owner of velmai Ltd and owns fruitcake designs in the UK. The other owner, the programmer, wishes to remain anonymous.

So I am interfacing with the public and press on their behalf, also as co-owner of the launch vehicle for velmai, myownreporter.com (MOR)

For instance, we are selling subscriptions to MOR through my American e-shop http://www.asiapacprholdings.com

Happy Easter btw !!! The US Masters golf course would be a great place to hide eggs wouldn’t it ?? An Egg Hunt as an alternative use of such beautiful grounds

Hi Tania, welcome to the Chatbots.org forums!

MyOwnReporter seems to be an interesting idea.

I’d like to invite you to write a short article (max 500) words where you including the video to be published in our business area. Actually, the words can be the words used in the video.

@Marcus/Tania: European Media does not exists. There is no central media, except for Facebook that is read by the entire, or even 30% of the European population. There a national broadcasters, national magazines, national music, all due to the separate cultures and languages. Although many people do speak English, less than one percent of the non-native European population don’t care to either speak English or their mother language.

Keep this in mind, is MyOwnReporter immediately available in all the European languages?

Hi Erwin, thanks will write an article for this Friday when we go live. We have bootstrapped this company like a classic start up - so we will add the voice, animation and multilingual functions as we grow our revenues. Part of our turnover will be reinvested in MOR in order to add other European languages for instance.
I started the printed prototype EUROPA FORNIGHTLY with Swiss backing in Lucerne in 2004 but recognised that to create a European newspaper, I would need to move away from the Old Economy print media. However online newspapers are still problematic in terms of business models and audience reach, like you say language and concepts of national interest in terms of reporting pose difficulties.
Whilst searching and experimenting with various disruptive technologies, I fiddled with business models for a second online prototype based in Berlin this time, THE EU EXPLORER.
The reasons I settled on Brussels-sourced news and http://www.myownreporter.com as the news platform will be discussed in my article for you. MOR velmais won’t be confined to news about Europe in the long run. They are reporting on the EU for the short term just so they can grow their brains and get acquainted with our first round of subscribers. We only need up to 1000 subscribers for the rest of the year to kick start MOR and then expand functionalities like speech / languages, and other topics and news sources ie. we don’t wish to overload their learning capacity in Year One.