* Oddcast's Vhosts
Imagine walking into a shop and there being no one to help you. No cashiers, no customer service, not even a salesperson. Arguably, this is how Web sites appear and because of the unfamiliarity of the environment, selling is less effective than it could be. Oddcast (see editorial links below) offers a service called VHost to bring a familiar environment to the Web through an animated talking head.
The talking head, which is fully customizable, is pretty sophisticated and its eyes follow the mouse (some of the avatars look pretty strange when you move the mouse immediately to one side or the other – surprise or horror is the resulting expression depending on the avatar) – cursor tracking can be disabled if you prefer. Other “lifelike” traits provided by VHost avatars include facial expressions, head nods, eyebrow movement, and breathing.
One of VHost strengths is that it supports text-to-speech combined with lip-syncing for an almost photorealistic presentation. There’s a wide range of avatars, voices, and backgrounds and much to my pleasure some of the combinations look a lot like something from Max Headroom (in fact, why isn’t there a Max Headroom-like avatar – come on guys!).
According to an Oddcast customer story that discusses a test of their service by McAfee: “50% of visitors to their ASaP Virus Scan product page were greeted by a VHost character who delivered consolidated production information. The results: The close ratio for customers that experienced the VHost character was 10% higher than those who saw no character. The numbers are even more impressive when they were analyzed against past sales data: Average Daily Sales with the VHost increased by over 10%!”
The range of VHost products is large and includes:
* VHost Studio for authoring for character-driven Web content.
* VHost Workshop for consumers to create and communicate through conversational characters.
* VHost Enterprise, which provides enterprise level extensible authoring, content management and tracking for character-driven Web content.
* VHost AIMC (Artificial Intelligence Management Center), an AIML management and authoring tool.
* VHost SitePal, which provides entry level authoring for placing speaking characters on HTML Web pages.
* VHost e-Learning Suite, an enterprise level rapid e-learning development suite.
* VHost FAQ Maker, a character-driven FAQ authoring tool.
* VHost Simulation Maker, an role-play driven content authoring system.
* VHost Quiz Maker, an authoring system for multiple choice quizzes delivered by conversational characters.
* VHost Analyzer, a question and answer interface that provides analysis of users’ input and recommends products and services through custom responses and a call for action.
Oddcast also offer various marketing tools based on its technology and its roster of clients is very impressive. There’s even an API for VHost avatars so they can be driven by scripting languages including PHP, ASP and PERL.
All VHost requires is a Flash-enabled client.
Pricing starts at $10 per month for the Bronze package which allows you to design your own avatars with the upload any audio file and support for 1,000 audio streams (12,000 for annual subscriptions) but doesn’t include the Text-To-Speech feature. For the latter you have to select the Silver package for $20 per month which ups the audio streams to 2,500 (30,000 for annual subscriptions) also allows you to publish your avatars to eBay auctions as virtual salespeople.
The Gold package adds the ability to integrate avatars into Flash, increases audio streams to 10,000 (120,000 for annual subscriptions) and the use of Oddcast’s AI Knowledge Base technology so avatars can respond “intelligently” to questions along with additional avatars and backgrounds.
Check out Oddcast’s client roster and some of the projects VHosts have been used for. I’m impressed.
