Move over, Dan Rather Ananova, a virtual newscaster created by the British Press Association, debuted on the Web last month and ranked among the most popular news sites with 1.6 million visitors. To make Ananova appear human, her creators used advanced speech recognition technology and other tools that give the newscaster not only a face, but also a personality. The stories Ananova reads are coded so she will use an appropriate tone and facial expressions. Other organizations are also creating digital characters, or avatars, believing the technology will succeed because Web surfers prefer to feel as though they are interacting with a human rather than a machine. Motorola next month will launch a "cyber-assistant" named Mya, who will read e-mail messages, stock quotes, and other online information using wireless or traditional phone connections. Meanwhile, MIT's MediaLab is working on a real-estate agent avatar who will read information from a housing database in real time. The University of Southern California's Integrated Systems Center is developing "immersive environments," in which users create avatars of themselves that interact with other users' avatars. Using immersive environments, people could send lifelike representations of themselves into chat rooms or online shopping sites, says the center's director Max Nikias. (Washington Post, May 31, 2000) http://gx-2.net/wwow/ http://www.ananova.com/ http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=MOT&script=410&layout=-6&item_id=104655