electric sheep

You might have met Dino by now — our new talking computer dinosaur.

Dino started life as a simple idea: what if you could visit a friendly dinosaur on the web and actually have a conversation with him? Now he can listen, answer questions, joke around and talk back in his own character.

What if Dino became a real toy?

We were talking about where Dino could go next, and my mum suggested something that immediately sounded brilliant: put Dino inside a children’s toy.

Instead of a toy with a handful of prerecorded phrases, imagine a little green Dino sitting in the room that you could genuinely talk to. Ask him about dinosaurs. Tell him a joke. Ask him a question. Play a game. Dino could answer you just like the Dino we’ve already built online.

The dinosaur you can really talk to

For now it’s a concept, but it’s an interesting one. Dino already exists as a conversational character, so the challenge would be giving that same Dino a physical body — microphone, speaker, simple electronics and a safe connection to his online brain.

We think he’d make a pretty cool little dinosaur. What do you think?

You can meet the real interactive Dino in our other post above — and actually have a conversation with him.