Tom,
I've implemented:
	o. speech synthesis (text-to-speech and singing voices)
	o. simple gestures synthesis (2D faces, SouthPark-like toons)
	o. 3D facial animation (the Waters' muscles model)
I haven't released it yet, but if you want anything of this just e-mail me and I will send you a changeset. I think this stuff might be useful for you if you want to implement avatars.

Cheers,
Luciano.-


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Morgan <tmorgan at acm.org>
To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 07:58:02 -0400
Subject: An image is a lonely place

> I've been noticing how lonesome it is inside an image.
> 
> There are lots of strong place based/community elements
> which surround Squeak.  These are currently formed
> by the basic networked apps of email, the discussion Swiki,
> the mail archives, and so on.
> 
> There is now lots of machinery which is available  which
> would allow basic collaborative support right inside
> a running image (and there are some spacey ones imagineable
> using the 3D stuff that feel like 'Snowcrash')
> 
> The kinds of things that I have in mind revolve around
> establishing a sense of 'place', which is shared, 'embodiment'
> of you the user explicitly some how in the interface and
> some amount of 'awareness' of the presence of
> others in the shared place, all done with a light enough
> touch that we don't end up with avatar fashion shows.
> 
> In this picture, an Morphic book wouldn't be found by
> reaching out across the network and loading it; instead, there'd be
> a more or less far away part of your image (maybe
> dressed up as an Alice world) that would let you wander
> around and find the book you wanted.  Perahaps the
> author would hand it to you, if he happened to be around.
> 
> While working, instead of the discussion Swiki, there'd be
> small knots of others, gathered around places of interest
> to them.  You could glance around and see if anyone
> was nearby, possibly interested in what you were up to.
> 
> Over the course of a few years, I have seen naive users
> comfortably navigate incredibly complex  graph structures, when
> they are presented with a place based metaphor.
> 
> I am not sure how universally appealing these interface
> metaphors are, but they seem to be captivating for
> at least some portion of the population.
> 
> I remember one posting about trying to incorporate the ICQ
> protocols into Squeak.
> 
> Are there others padding around this collaborative territory?
> 
>    ...Tom M
> 
> 
>