Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0 Update, November 2007

I spent a few weeks last month in the Australian bush on Aboriginal land with a group of old friends.

Since I’ve come back to my ecological niche in the green Shire, I’ve been inspired to overhaul the “Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0” (http://www.meta-guide.com/). It is now effectively a “daily green travel newspaper” for virtually every country on Earth. The Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0 combines elements of both the collaborative “Web 2.0” and the semantic web or “Web 3.0”.

Besides maps and photos for every country, it contains relevant news stories based on my improved green travel taxonomy and the latest green travel news for all countries listed in the right hand sidebar.

The Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0 also contains a green-travel mini-guide for each country, consisting of up to ten of the most recent postings to the green-travel group for that country. This represents the collaborative or “Web 2.0” element - but, the green-travel group has been in existence since 1991 which not only predates the graphical web we know today, but also the concept of “Web 2.0” itself.

Further, the Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0 contains an automated selection of green travel links for each country, specially drawn from that country’s national domain. So, if you are operating in a specific country and do not have a web presence under the national top level domain, then to be listed here you should.

The biggest additions lately have been four pages for every country specifically searching respectively Development Agencies, Development Banks, UN Agencies, and international NGOs for green travel topics. In particular, this application represents semantic web or “Web 3.0” technology, in that taxonomic filtering at multiple levels effectively creates semantic relationships, increasing relevancy.

These pages are highly configurable, so any suggestions you might have of what not to include or what to include will be most welcome! Feedback of any kind is encouraged, public or private.

I need your help now to continue this project. I am requesting donations of any amount via paypal.com toward sponsoring my research and development. In return, I will include a link of your choice in recognition of your contribution - and have created a detailed Sponsors page for this purpose at http://www.mendicott.com/meta-guide/sponsors.asp

Marcus Endicott's Second Life Travel Guide

Lately, I've been working on porting my ByronBot (http://www.mendicott.com/byronbay/) over to the currently popular Second Life (http://www.mendicott.com/secondlife/) 3D virtual world.

My ByronBot is built on the Verbots Online (http://www.verbotsonline.com/) platform.

Metaverse Technology (http://www.metaversetech.com/) has built a Second Life Chatbot product based on the Pandorabots (http://www.pandorabots.com/) platform.

Pandorabots is based on Artificial Intelligence Markup Language, rather than the proprietary Verbot KnowledgeBase files.

The Metaverse Technology S-Bot product combines the Second Life Linden Scripting Language with the Pandorabots AIML.

There is an open source AIML-Verbot Converter tool going from AIML to VKB, but not vice versa....

So, I've been using the recommended GaitoBot AIML editor to recreate the ByronBot KnowledgeBase in Pandorabots AIML.

You should be able to find my new Second Life ByronBot near Byron Bay @ 5 O'Clock Somewhere at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Omega/101/21/22 .

Ideally, the Second Life ByronBot will emulate a tourist information officer, of for instance a DMO (Destination Marketing Organization), inside the 3D virtual world... providing information about Byron Bay, Northern New South Wales, Australia.

ByronBot - Byron Bay, Australia

Lately I've been working with chatterbot technology, a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods, using AIML or Artificial Intelligence Markup Language, an XML dialect for creating natural language software agents.

My latest creation is ByronBot (http://www.mendicott.com/byronbay/), which you can ask questions about Byron Bay and the Rainbow Region of northern New South Wales, Australia - where I now live.

Previously, I created the meta-guide geobot (http://www.meta-guide.com/), which knows continents, regions, all countries, all of their capitals, and can provide more such as maps, travel books and cool travel videos - as well as country-specific information about ecotourism and sustainable tourism.

One associate has compared ByronBot with Microsoft's Ms. Dewey (http://www.msdewey.com/), an Adobe Flash-based experimental interface for Windows Live Search.