Tweetject

A colleague pointed me to an article by Julian Bleecker (http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/files/WhyThingsMatter.pdf) discussing blogjects, inanimate devices that blog and I thought that this could be useful in virtual simulation exercises. The simulation is running 24/7, so it would be useful to have avatars in the simulation communicate to participants not currently inworld about what is happening. So as a trial I have set up the factory simulation to generate tweets on my ShaleBing account whenever the factory fails to meet customer orders. Getting the simulation to generate tweets is very easy, but getting it to generate messages with enough variety to make it almost seem a real person is sending them is a bit trickier. We will see whether this is useful when it is used in class next semester.