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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| Microsoft Agent | |
|---|---|
 Logo as of 2001 | |
 Microsoft provides examples on its website for the use of Agent. | |
| Original author | Microsoft |
| Release | September 8, 1997[1] |
| Stable release | 2.0
/ October 12, 1998[2] |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Available in | Multiple languages |
| Website | microsoft.com/products/msagent at the Wayback Machine (archived 2003-02-03) |
Microsoft Agent is a virtual assistant user interface developed by Microsoft which employs animated characters, text-to-speech engines, and speech recognition software to enhance interaction with computer users. It could be used to present interactions with an intelligent assistant.
It came pre-installed as part of Windows 2000 and later versions of Microsoft Windows up to Windows Vista. It was not included with Windows 7, and wasn't completely discontinued in Windows 8. Microsoft Agent functionality was exposed as an ActiveX control that can be used by web pages.
The theory behind the software came from work on social interfaces by Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information.[3]
Interactive character technology was first introduced in Microsoft Bob, which used an early version of Microsoft Agent technology internally referred to as "Microsoft Actor". It was the code used in the initial version of the Office Assistant in Microsoft Office 97.[4] Microsoft Agent was subsequently created by Tandy Trower in an attempt to offer technology that was more flexible and available to third-party developers to include in their applications and web pages.[5] The software release also included four interactive characters as well as a utility that enables developers to assemble their own characters and interactions.[6][7]
Microsoft Agent replaced the original Microsoft Actor code in Office 2000, although this use did not include Agent's much-touted speech synthesis or recognition capabilities or any of the four Microsoft Agent sample characters. Instead, the Office team created their own characters, including one named "Clippit" (commonly dubbed "Clippy"). However, Microsoft Bob Actors and Office 97 assistants are incompatible with Office 2000 and later versions, and vice versa.
The initial version of Microsoft Agent was quietly released on MSDN in 1997.[1]
Microsoft Agent characters are stored in files of the .ACS extension or in a single .ACF file for character definitions, and multiple .ACA files (one per animation, formerly .AAF) for better World Wide Web distribution.[8] Microsoft Office 97 and Microsoft Bob Actor characters are stored in files of the .ACT extension. Microsoft Agent character definition files are stored in files of the .ACD file extension, and are generated by the Microsoft Agent Character Editor.
The speech engine itself is driven by the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI), version 4 and above. Microsoft SAPI provides a control panel for easily installing and switching between various available Text to Speech and Speech to Text engines, as well as voice training and scoring systems to improve the quality and accuracy of both engines.[9]
Microsoft provided four agent characters for free, downloaded from the Microsoft Agent website. These were called Peedy, Merlin, Genie, and Robby.[6] Some characters also shipped with Microsoft Office up to Office 2003 as the Office Assistants and with Windows XP as search assistants. New Microsoft Agent characters could also be created using Microsoft's development tools, including the Agent Character Editor.[10] Agents can be embedded in software with Visual Basic for Applications and in web pages with VBScript, and automated tools for the purpose of simplifying this exist.[11] However, web page agents were only compatible with Internet Explorer, since alternative browsers like Opera or Mozilla Firefox do not support ActiveX.
In Windows Vista, Microsoft Agent uses Speech API (SAPI) version 5.3 as its primary text-to-speech provider. (In previous versions of Windows, Agent uses SAPI version 4, which is not supported in Windows Vista and later.) Beginning with Vista, multilingual features of Microsoft Agent under a particular language version of the OS are not supported; that is, Agent will function in other languages only under a localized Windows version of the same language.[9]
Microsoft announced in April 2009 that all Microsoft Agent development and support will be discontinued with the release of Windows 7.[12] Microsoft is no longer offering licenses or distributing the SDK.
However, due to customer feedback, Microsoft provided an installation package of the Microsoft Agent core components for use on Windows 7.[13] The download supported SAPI 5.3 compatible speech engines, and also contained the character “Merlin”, which shipped with Windows Vista.
Microsoft
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Microsoft Agent is a virtual assistant user interface developed by Microsoft which employs animated characters, text-to-speech engines, and speech recognition software to enhance interaction with computer users. It could be used to present interactions with an intelligent assistant. It came pre-installed as part of Windows 2000 and later versions of Microsoft Windows up to Windows Vista. It was not included with Windows 7, and wasn't completely discontinued in Windows 8. Microsoft Agent functionality was exposed as an ActiveX control that can be used by web pages. The theory behind the software came from work on social interfaces by Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information.
In artificial intelligence, an embodied agent, also sometimes referred to as an interface agent, is an intelligent agent that interacts with the environment through a physical body within that environment. Agents that are represented graphically with a body, for example a human or a cartoon animal, are also called embodied agents, although they have only virtual, not physical, embodiment. A branch of artificial intelligence focuses on empowering such agents to interact autonomously with human beings and the environment. Mobile robots are one example of physically embodied agents; Ananova and Microsoft Agent are examples of graphically embodied agents. Embodied conversational agents are embodied agents (usually with a graphical front-end as opposed to a robotic body) that are capable of engaging in conversation with one another and with humans employing the same verbal and nonverbal means that humans do (such as gesture, facial expression, and so forth).
The Speech Application Programming Interface or SAPI is an API developed by Microsoft to allow the use of speech recognition and speech synthesis within Windows applications. To date, a number of versions of the API have been released, which have shipped either as part of a Speech SDK or as part of the Windows OS itself. Applications that use SAPI include Microsoft Office, Microsoft Agent and Microsoft Speech Server. In general, all versions of the API have been designed such that a software developer can write an application to perform speech recognition and synthesis by using a standard set of interfaces, accessible from a variety of programming languages. In addition, it is possible for a 3rd-party company to produce their own Speech Recognition and Text-To-Speech engines or adapt existing engines to work with SAPI. In principle, as long as these engines conform to the defined interfaces they can be used instead of the Microsoft-supplied engines. In general, the Speech API is a freely redistributable component which can be shipped with any Windows application that wishes to use speech technology. Many versions (although not all) of the speech recognition and synthesis engines are also freely redistributable. There have been two main 'families' of the Microsoft Speech API. SAPI versions 1 through 4 are all similar to each other, with extra features in each newer version. SAPI 5, however, was a completely new interface, released in 2000. Since then several sub-versions of this API have been released.
Windows Update is a Microsoft service for the Windows 9x and Windows NT families of the Microsoft Windows operating system, which automates downloading and installing Microsoft Windows software updates over the Internet. The service delivers software updates for Windows, as well as the various Microsoft antivirus products, including Windows Defender and Microsoft Security Essentials. Since its inception, Microsoft has introduced two extensions of the service: Microsoft Update and Windows Update Client Policies (formerly Windows Update for Business). The former expands the core service to include other Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Expression Studio. The latter is available to business editions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 and permits managing updates for enterprises, including delaying updates by category. As the service has evolved over the years, so has its client software. For a decade, the primary client component of the service was the Windows Update web app that could only be run on Internet Explorer. Starting with Windows Vista, the primary client component became Windows Update Agent, an integral component of the operating system. The service provides several kinds of updates. Security updates or critical updates mitigate vulnerabilities and security exploits in Microsoft Windows. Cumulative updates are updates that bundle multiple updates, both new and previously released updates. Cumulative updates were introduced with Windows 10 and only some have been backported to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Windows 11 24H2 also introduced checkpoint cumulative updates and updates with Hotpatch capability in the name, where some of the updates no longer require a reboot. Microsoft routinely releases updates on the second Tuesday of each month (known as the Patch Tuesday B updates) but can provide them whenever a new update is urgently required to prevent a newly discovered or prevalent exploit, so-called out-of-band updates. System administrators can configure Windows Update to install critical updates for Microsoft Windows automatically, so long as the computer has an Internet connection. In Windows 10 and Windows 11, the use of Windows Update is mandatory; however, the software agreement states that users may stop receiving updates on their device by disconnecting their device from the Internet. There also exist optional non-security preview releases (formerly known as "C" or "D" releases), that users can choose to install in the Windows Update UI.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.
