At its heart, the Moose is about Humor, and how laughing benefits you and the people around you. The Moose brings you amusing and interesting things, spoken aloud during the day, without effort. You’ll find that the moose makes you smile and feel better. In time, your own brain will learn to think- and be- a more funny person, and you’ll spread that humor to your friends. So it may not be initially apparent, but running the Talking Moose on your PC will dramatically increase your sociability, to build and maintain your friendships. My friends, the Moose is a lovable, life-changing self-improvement app.
As a technology, the Moose was one of the first talking animated characters on a computer. Over the years, many many other talking characters have been tried, including photo-realistic beautiful women. But they just don’t have any “character”, and they generally try too hard to be endearing by parking themselves somewhere on your screen. They twitch and wiggle to seem to be alive, but pretty soon they get on your nerves and block your view of things behind. And they won’t shut-up when they start talking.
They should have learned from the old Talking Moose in 1986, who got things right the first time. The Moose pops into view to speak, then disappears. The Moose will quickly hush if you wiggle the mouse. He’ll move out of the way quicky if he’s blocking your view. THIS is how an “agent” in your computer should behave! You’ll see.
Did I mention, the moose tells jokes, over 1600 at last count. (He speaks aloud, not a silent cartoon caption.) He does way more than tell jokes, but, you were in the mood for a little humor, weren’t you?
Update: May 3, 2011. I need to improve this page, and the description of the Moose. I need better descriptive phrases, to convey more emotional warmth, about how nice it is to have the Moose being part of your days work.
What prompted this is an article ( http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6366/persuasive_games_exploitationware.php?page=4 ) about the word “gamification”, which is a made-up word from “game” and “-ify” or “-ification”. Game is a pleasing pastime, and “-ify” sounds like something “easy”… implying that by doing something easy, you can make something be as pleasing as playing a game. (Actually, that article hates the word gamification, fearing it will backfire and create negativity toward games, because the ‘something’ being gamified is usually just an exploitation.)
And also influencing me, is the this guy Frank Luntz, (http://www.luntzglobal.com/team.php), from whom I’m starting to learn that, the words must generate ‘emotion’. I need some better phrases to describe what I truely believe.. that the Moose’s delivery of periodic amusement and things of interest, is endearing and refreshing and genuinely helpful to me, and has helped me grow and improve. I’ve become funnier in my own life by effortless osmosis of how humor works, and its enabled me to feel more liked by my medical co-workers, and more confident to use humor in most everything I say. Anyway, although I’m smart at certain things, I’m a poor wordsmith, so I’m in need of some clever help.
( ideas from a thesaurus: instead of humor engine, a ‘laugh to feel good’, ‘cheer’, giggle, ‘expressing amusement/happiness’, merriment, mirth, ‘delight’, ‘gladdening’, wit, zany,
Lately (during month of April 2011), I’ve been reading thousands of one-liner jokes on Twitter. Twitter is wonderful for letting people broadcast the funny things they think of. But I’ve realized something… ‘reading’ jokes isn’t as effective as ‘hearing a joke spoken’. Something is different. After hearing an audible spoken joke, you are much closer to the threshold of getting out of your chair, and walking to ‘tell’ the joke to someone else.
About Steven B. Halls, MD: I’m the author of this blog about developing a new Talking Moose, and you can email me at steve at halls.md