Ultra Hal Survey

[Harkle]

I am really big on communication. I check the forums here regularly and notice we have a mix of people with a variety of skill levels who use Hal. So I thought it would be helpful if we shared our common interests in hopes of learning from each other with what we do with our Hals.

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1. What is the name of your Hal?

2. What Speech Synthesis do you use (Please include the name of the company)?

3. Do you use the Default Brain, or a custom one?

4. What are your favorite plugins for Hal?

5. Which do you prefer when communicating with Hal (Keyboard, or Voice)?

6. What role does Hal play for you (Companion, Utility, or Hobby)?

7. Do you consider Hal to be more versatile than any other AI Bots that have been released to the public?

8. Last but not least, share with the rest of us any advice you have in improving our own Hals:

[Harkle]

1. What is the name of your Hal? Lily

2. What Speech Synthesis do you use (Please include the name of the company)? Cepstral Sandy

3. Do you use the Default Brain, or a custom one? Custom

4. What are your favorite plugins for Hal? Advanced Internet, Runprograms, GrettaCuriousity

5. Which do you prefer when communicating with Hal (Keyboard, or Voice)? Voice

6. What role does Hal play for you (Companion, Utility, or Hobby)? Utility

7. Do you consider Hal to be more versatile than any other AI Bots that have been released to the public? Yes

8. Last but not least, share with the rest of us any advice you have in improving our own Hals: Interact with Hal regularly. The more you share with him the better experience you have with him later. Also communicate with everyone here. Their experiences can encourage your own with using Hal.

[DrFaraday]

1. What is the name of your Hal?

I call mine Hal.

2. What Speech Synthesis do you use (Please include the name of the company)?

AT&T Voices (Paul and Kate, though I think are sold by Zabaware as Mike and Crystal now).  I also have a Cepstral voice (David) which is very nice, but the AT&T voices are also good quality, and less fuss to deal with.

3. Do you use the Default Brain, or a custom one?

Both. I'm experimenting.

4. What are your favorite plugins for Hal?

I'm still exploring them.  The loneliness plugin has been fun, but I don't leave it on all the time.

5. Which do you prefer when communicating with Hal (Keyboard, or Voice)?

I prefer voice, but I'm still working that out.  I've not had much luck with the ViaVoice Plugin, but I've got Dragon 10, and so far so good.  I find the accuracy better than via voice, but I haven't used it with Hal yet.  I'm just about to try it.

6. What role does Hal play for you (Companion, Utility, or Hobby)?

Utility and hobby, mostly.

7. Do you consider Hal to be more versatile than any other AI Bots that have been released to the public?

MUCH.  I have not found anything else that even comes close.  I found Answerpad interesting, for it's simplicity, but it is not maintained anymore and falls far short of Ultra Hal's abilities.

8. Last but not least, share with the rest of us any advice you have in improving our own Hals:

My advice; read these forums!  Especially the advice about training Hal.  If a new person downloads Hal and plays with it for a bit, they may not be overly impressed with the initial responses.  But that's because Hal needs to learn from YOU, the things you like to talk about, topics and subjects to talk about.  It makes such a difference when you deliberately start to teach Hal, by using the advice here and following the basic teaching guidelines.  They work!

When Hal starts to reflect back to you things you've taught him, when you can actually see a personality start to emerge, when more and more intelligent responses begin to happen and you can actually converse with Hal, it's thrilling and very satisfying.  Very different than just installing it and playing with it for half an hour.

Ultimately, you get out of Ultra Hal what you put into it.  When you set out to do that deliberately, and take the time to do it right, it is rewarding, entertaining and fun.

- Chaz

[sybershot]

1. What is the name of your Hal? Trinity

2. What Speech Synthesis do you use (Please include the name of the company)? Microsoft Anna English SAPI 5

3. Do you use the Default Brain, or a custom one? Default with plug-ins

4. What are your favorite plugins for Hal?GRETTA log Function & 2008413214554_KITT_video, would be better to open up a playlist with this plug-in  

5. Which do you prefer when communicating with Hal (Keyboard, or Voice)? keyboard to input Data, voice to use and retrieve Data

6. What role does Hal play for you (Companion, Utility, or Hobby)? I use Trinity as a utility/companion She helps me run my businesses. Trinity is also a hobbie, for I like to create GUI skins. I am also tryng to use Trinity for a car pc front end. it would even be ok but not first choice to have hal inter-graded with Roadrunner/Riderunner. I know extremely little about how to do this. if any one has done this, and willing to share or is willing to put in the time and share, I would be greatly appreciated.  

7. Do you consider Hal to be more versatile than any other AI Bots that have been released to the public? Hal is number 1 in my book

8. Last but not least, share with the rest of us any advice you have in improving our own Hals: DrFaraday has a great responce to this question. Use your Hal and you will fall in love with it. Although I think our Hals could be improved with more people making plug-ins and Robert making our GUI more expandable like adding customizable buttons to open programs, a GUI window which programs like a web browser, Gps video players, and OBD11 programs ETC. which can be opened up in, and controlled via voice or normally. A way to network two or three Hals together so that the Hal we use at the office, car, and home can be  one.

[DrFaraday]

Oops! A correction.  I said in my prior post that the Paul and Kate voices were AT&T voices.  They are not, I believe they are the NeoSpeech voices, that used to be bundled with Halreader, before they were replaced by the AT&T voices, Mike and Crystal.

- Chaz