BLACK DOG PRESS

ROBOT CHILD TO REPLACE HUMAN COMPANIONSHIP

Zeno To Replace Human Child:

Engineer, David Hanson, has successfully built two Zenos, an 18-month-old son Zeno, who wonders around the office and then there's the robotic Zeno. It can't speak or walk yet, but has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captures a range of expressions.

Zeno is 17 inches tall and 6 pounds, and took over five years of work by Hanson and a small group of engineers, designers and programmers at his company, Hanson Robotics. They believe there's an emerging business, and market place, in the design and sale of lifelike robotic companions, or social robots. And they'll be showing off the robot boy to students in grades 3-12 at the Wired NextFest technology conference Thursday in Los Angeles.

Unlike your traditional robot companion that's either clearly artificial or tries to kill you, Hanson says he envisions Zeno as an interactive learning companion, a synthetic pal who can engage in conversation and convey human emotion through a face made of a skin-like, patented material Hanson calls frubber.

"It's a representation of robotics as a character animation medium, one that is intelligent," Hanson beams. "It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you."

Hanson said he was inspired by, and is aiming for, the same sort of realism found in the book "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," by Brian Aldiss. Aldiss' story of troubled robot boy David and his quest for the love of his flesh-and-blood parents was the source material for Steven Spielberg's film "Artificial Intelligence: AI."

He plans to make little Zenos available to consumers within the next three years for $200 to $300.

iPhone Rebellion!

Apple customers demand and get a refund due to anger over Apple's iPhone price cut. Rummy also gets price cut.

iPHONE TO SLASH PRICES AND INTRODUCE NEW PRODUCT

Apple, Inc. announced they will cut the price of the top iPhone by $200 and discontinue the low-end model. They also unveiled a new version of the iPod incorporating  wireless Internet access and other similar iPhone features.

The 8-gigabyte iPhone, previously retailing for $499, will now sell for $399, and the 4 gigabyte model will be phased out. Additionally, the iPods with wi-fi but no cell phone capabilities will start at $299.

"We want to put the iPhone in a lot of stockings this holiday season," said CEO Steve Jobs.

The iPod Touch, which allows users to download songs wirelessly, and, eventually, at all Starbucks in the United States that offer wi-fi Internet, was also unveiled on Wednesday.

The iPod Touch is just less than one-third inch thick and can store photos, music, videos and other digital data. It features the same 3.5-inch, touch-screen display as the iPhone, on which light finger touches allow the user to scroll through menus and resize pictures with two fingers.

An 8-gigabyte version of iPod Touch will cost $299. A 16-gigabyte version will cost $399. They will be shipped worldwide starting later this month.

"It's one of the seven wonders of the world — it's just incredible," Jobs told employees and journalists gathered at a special media event.

A new Starbucks partnership starting in October will have the Starbucks icon light up on the iPod Touch whenever a user nears a Starbucks coffee shop that has wi-fi access. Users can then download the song that's playing overhead or get a list of the 10 most recent songs played.

The Starbucks partnership — which executives at both companies have been working on for two years — begins at 600 stores in New York and Seattle on October 2.

INTERNET MARKETING HELP?

This is a first in Black Dog history, sort of. I am going to write about a product. Now generally we are a news site, and I hope you can take the time to check us out. However, I am always interested in ways to improve marketing on line, and when it helps pay the bills I'm even more interested. So I will briefly discuss a new Sub-Domain builder I have come across, if you wanna check it out without listening to my inferior marketing ramblings you are certainly free to do so.

I would also like to invite anyone with superior, or unique ideas to submit them as comments or even email them to me as possible articles to post, that would be helpful both to me and our readers so thanks in advance.

O.K., so let's begin as if most of you are aware of the old adsense game afloat out there, I'm sure many of you, if not all of you are. Basically you make your own site and sell ad space on it. When somebody clicks the ads you get paid. Simple enough principle, and Google adsense is the preferred poison of most marketers as it is the easiest to apply over many sites among other advantages that I'm sure I don't have to get into.

This basic principle I have just told you is in fact the basic premise of about a million get rich quick schemes you see out there. Many will ask for $49.00 maybe more, maybe less, and they will give you all the secrets to making money. Yet basically what they give you is a few pointers on information you could get for free on Google, or from just surfing around enough. What no one will give you is of course, HOW THE HELL YOU APPLY THIS STUFF INTO MONEY.

Now to actually get the cash takes a little work and know how, not too much, but it is far from the "license to print money" that you would supposedly buy. There are tons of little things involved just like in any business, but one important concept is volume. Volume is what I am talking about now.

As many (again if not all of you) know, just hosting a domain name and putting up ads does not equal traffic and clicks. Its very possible to actually lose money and time even with a cheap hosting company. You need to start with what everyone calls a "niche", basically a focused topic that people will search for, this will be the subject of your site. Then you need lots of content on your site related to that niche to feed juice to the search engines. Thus you are found, thus you get business.

O.K. any serious marketer is probably very bored right now, and I know that I am just horrifically skimming a lot of this, so again I implore you to post additional useful info, I do think its important that people can get this stuff without being totally scammed.

There are several things you can do in terms of creating enough volume to have search engines love you. Some more expensive than others. However, there seems to be a problem out there in terms of how much you can do with one domain name. I don't know if this is a problem with the Internet skilled marketers, but for the lazy and handicapped like me it certainly is.

You don't want to end up paying to create more pages though eventually you will. And you don't want to open up another domain name every time you want to ad volume and traffic. That is why I kinda like the idea of this Sub Domain builder.

It looks like good software, but I won't lie to you and say that I've tried it, my laziness has gotten in the way, and I don't really think I need it just yet. I do plan on trying this or another system much like it shortly however. Basically, as I understand it, this stuff will allow you to create hundreds of additional sub-domains for any of your web-sites, not too bad.

There are a variety of programs like this out there, but from what I've seen they are more expensive or take control out of your hands. In this case, you buy the software, and you build the sub-domains quickly and as many times as you like. There are other offers I know that say, for $97 they will build such pages for me, but I like having stuff, and being able to control what is built how much and the like. I don't know, if you are somehow interested in this and not incredibly bored after this ramble then check it out, let me know what you think. If not, I don't blame you for leaving.

And that was today's (somewhat) marketing update. Again Sub Domain Builder