MiaMia is a free answering service for all your questions. You can either call to it, send a text message or get your answer via email. Their baseline ‘Ask anything’ was screaming for a little test.

First question: “Where can I download the latest version of Ubuntu?”
I thought this was an easy one. Two minutes later the following answer was in my inbox:

You can download the Ubuntu 8.04 beta at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/beta. MIAMIA Thanks you for your question.

Sweet.

Now I tried something a little bit harder: “What is the chance Obama will win the American elections?”

The answer:

In a new Gallup survey, Obama leads McCain by eleven percentage points-52 percent to McCain’s 41 percent-on the question of who Americans believe will win the White House this November. Seventy-six percent of Democrats believe Obama will win while 67 percent of Republicans believe McCain will keep the presidency in their party.

Wow.

First question that popped into my head was: are you human?

The FAQ helped me out with that one: MiaMia® is a hybrid system: part of the Natural Language Processing and data base and information search is handled by machines and software, and part by Humans Transcription Agents and by Human Knowledge Agents. As we grow in size and number of handled questions every day, the “memory” of MiaMia® grows as well, and percentage-wise the number of questions totally handled and answered by machines versus by humans grows as well.

Now I’m also testing the SMS feature and it seems to work fine. Although, I recieved a text message telling me the system was overloaded. 10 minutes later I recieved this answer to the following question: ‘At what time I can take a train from Antwerp Central Station to Mechelen today?’

The answer:

I hope I never have to ask something like ‘What’s the number for 911 in Belgium’, because it will probably be too late ;).

(BTW, the answer to that question is ‘100 or 112′. Smart software, I say!)

MiaMia seems to be a product of Jo Lernout, better known as one half of Lernout and Hauspie Speech Products.

Try it yourself on www.mymiamia.com

Via a tweet from Clopin

It’s back online! We made a little ranch test. This is the result.

The Cowboys love Photosynth! One thing I’d like to add: a way to photosynth your Flickr-images!

Or click Here please.

Oï Lev, embedding youtube vids refuse to work for me.

Sort me out please  : )

UPDATE: Lev says: “problem solved. Come see me for a private lesson!”

TinEye is an image search engine built by Idée currently in beta. Give it an image and it will tell you where the image appears on the web. It can also find related images.

TinEye does for images what Google does for text. Just watch the video.

I think this is a great new way of searching by using the image identification technology. And thanks to the handy Firefox plugin, it’s really easy to use (or play with).

Try it yourself on tineye.com

A coulple months ago I couldn’t believe my eyes when watching a demo of Photosynth on TED.

And now it’s live! You, me… everybody can play with it.

Now you try, visit photosynth.net

BBC opened a brand new YouTube page for Top Gear, their popular, award winning controversial car magazine with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

“The BBC Worldwide YouTube channel has already proven its value to users, having generated millions of views since its launch in March last year. We’re now expanding our portfolio of YouTube channels to reflect the massive online popularity of certain programme brands and to give fans of shows like ‘Top Gear’ a dedicated destination on YouTube.” says Simon Danker, director of digital media van BBC Worldwide.

I say: hooray! YouTube just got a lot more awesome!

If YouTube (or BBC) is able to put advertising on this page, or in these video’s, I’m sure a lot of advertisers will be interested in that! Way to go BBC!

Google chose the Borinage region near Charleroi as its base. Why? There are heavy stimulants in the sector which could make this unemplemployment struck poor region as a perfect soil for new enterpreneurship. It used to be an industrious hub for Europe. The inventions of creative self-made industrials such as Solvay made Belgium into what it is today. We’re are following it step by step now.

Howdy!

Come & see us at the AFAIR Fashion fair this Sunday and Monday.

AFAIR

Antwerp Expo

Jan van Rijswijcklaan

Antwerp

Génération Participation :
De la société de consommation à la société de participation

for all you maketeers, rocketeers and people who might have some questions why webvideo, and community driven content makes your audience tick.

written by:
Thierry Maillet

easy to get via amazon.fr