Activa Multimedia (the interactive-services subsidiary of the Corporació Catalana de Ràdio i Televisió (CCRTV) in Spain) has created SAM, a virtual weatherman that will broadcast to mobiles, TVs and so on in three languages—Catalan, Spanish and English. “Sam’s creators are already thinking about cloning him, in order to apply the concept to other information that can be automated, such as traffic reports.”
There’s no details on what charges there will be for the service, nor if the mobile version is a straight video or not. One of the benefits of having avatars read news and other information is that the program can reside on the handset and the information being sent over the airwaves is therefore a lot more compressed.
(via Picturephoning)