Yesterday I reported on Google Tutor that Gmail has rolled out AIM Messenger support on the integrated GTalk / Gmail client. Although that support doesn’t extend as far as the standalone GTalk client which I use every day. Bummer.

I saw a comment on Steve Rubel’s Twitter (which I subscribe to) and then I was reading today on Lifehacker that AIM has a bot called SmarterChild which you can put on your AIM contact list (and now subsequently on your GTalk list) and you can ask it any question and it will answer. My initial reaction to this was that you have search engines like Google for queries like this. But I am a sucker for time-wasting toys and so I was asking it things like “what is the 33rd President of the United States?” and it answered correctly! Although I then asked it if it wanted to go out for a drink and it told me that the human / machine barrier was insurmountable!

But apart from providing you info on past US presidents and giving you the brush-off when you try to flirt with it, SmarterChild also offers a reminder service. So if you want to be reminded to phone someone at 3.00pm, just tell it to ping you at 2.55pm and give you a reminder.

To add it to your AIM list, just add the username smarterchild and say “hi”. It’ll then give you a list of options.

Technorati Tags: AIM, chat, Gmail, IM, Lifehacker, Smarterchild, Twitter

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