IDI Press Release - March 30, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

IDI is proud to announce a virtual dialogue with
Political Reporter Jack Germond

 
March 30, 2001 - Jack Germond, recently retired from 50 years of political reporting, shares his fascinating and candid assessment of the major political figures and events of the last half-century in Interactive Drama's newest CD-ROM series, "Conversations with Experts in Cyberspace."  Germond developed his hard-earned reputation as a top political reporter of the "old school," finding the person behind the politician and the story below the surface.  His goal has always been to "get the story" and report it accurately, intelligently, and completely.

The programs in this IDI series embody speech recognition, digital video, and microprocessor technologies combined to give users an opportunity to conduct "face-to-face" interviews with notable people who would otherwise not be accessible to them.  Users feel as if they are actually meeting and talking with the experts as they engage them in a two-way virtual dialogue.

Germond is an absorbing conversational companion, answering questions spoken by the user, such as 'Who is the most important person of your time?','How did you cover Watergate?', 'What story stands out in your mind?', 'What effect has television had on reporting?' and many others.  The dynamic intelligent prompting method in every Virtual Conversations® program displays a continuous stream of relevant, cogent questions for the user to ask.  There is enough information on the CD-ROM to conduct a meaningful, uninterrupted conversation with Germond for nearly an hour.

This program is one in a series being developed with a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense.  The series will be distributed widely for educational purposes.

About IDI 
IDI has been creating voice-activated interactive video simulations since 1984. The company's founders began this research and development at the National Library of Medicine's Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications. Subsequent R&D has been funded by SBIR grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and DARPA.

The educational effectiveness of the method has been validated repeatedly in rigorous scientific experiments funded by these agencies. In 1991, IDI was awarded U.S. Patent No. 5,006,987 to protect this unique method of dialogue with a virtual human subject. Subsequently, IDI developed a dynamic, intelligent prompting system to help users conduct a focused and informative dialogue with Virtual Conversations® characters. In 1997, U.S. Patent No. 5,730,603 was awarded to protect the intelligent prompting method. A third patent is pending.

For More Information Contact:

Marcia A. Zier
Interactive Drama Inc.
7900 Wisconsin Avenue Suite 200, Bethesda, MD 20814
Tel: 301.654.0676
FAX: 301.657.9174
Email: mzier@idrama.com