Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Va-Va-Voom, Vivienne

JC Fedorczyk sent me a gem of a story yesterday. Here's an excerpt (from CNN Money):
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Virtual girlfriend Vivienne loves flowers and chocolates just like a real girlfriend, but doesn't cause heartache.

The so-called "girlfriend," developed by software maker Artificial Life Inc. of Hong Kong, is the product of computerized voice synthesis, streaming video and text messages and will be available to third generation, or 3G, cell phone users, according to the New York Times.

For a monthly fee of $6, not including the airtime costs paid to cell phone operators, 3G cell phone users can talk to Vivienne any time, buy her virtual gifts, marry her in a virtual ceremony and even get a virtual mother-in-law, the newspaper said.

Man, if I had a dollar for every time I used the phrase "so-called girlfriend"...

A mother-in-law, too? A freaking mother-in-law? Is this a commercial product or an interrogation tactic?

She can converse on 35,000 topics and can translate six languages, according to the report.

Great. So men are going to pay six dollars a month plus airtime to have a women talk to them about 35,000 subjects? We so already do that.

Now if you made a virtual dude who would listen to a real woman talk about 35,000 subjects, and a real dude could pay to use the virtual dude, now that product would make the World of Warcraft servers look like a lonely night at the public library.

And if your chatty spouse/friend happens to be male instead of female, disrupt the sexual references as needed. Thank you.

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