Feb 22, 2005

Twenty Questions

My parents introduced me to a crazy website this past weekend. 20q.net is a game server that asks you seemingly random questions in an attempt to guess the object that you're thinking of.

Skeptical, I picked Pyrite (aka Fool's Gold) and gave it a shot.

The thing had me at 13 questions.

The technology behind this (presumably a hash table of answers to questions representing each object) is really quite ingenious, and the game learns as you play, updating the hash value for objects as you answer questions others haven't answered before. It also moves down through a "tree" of relevant questions as you play, so that it narrows in on your chosen object.

It's pretty fun to try to stump the machine - so far I haven't been able to!

Try it yourself. They've got a handheld version as well which is pretty amazing considering the thinking power in this thing.

1:34 pm | permalink | /technology/web | 0 writebacks |

MirrorMask

There's a new movie coming from Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, and The Jim Henson Company.

MirrorMask "grew out of talks of doing a Labyrinth sequel" and the trailer looks extremely creepy and awesome. Although not the traditional Henson puppets, the computer animation is stylized enough to forgive the "Sky Captain" feel.

But don't just take my word for it...

12:53 am | permalink | /technology/film | 0 writebacks |