‘Dollhouse’: A virtual Echo can be your desktop doll

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Now you can summon Echo every five minutes while you work! The inventive people at Fox’s ‘Dollhouse’ have created Virtual Echo, a program that allows a figure, in this case Eliza Dushku as Echo, to walk across the screen regardless of what you’re doing and interact.

But that’s only the flashy part -- she can do a lot more.

Our favorite doll saunters across the screen in various roles, including office worker (her business suit looks like one she wore as a hostage negotiator), party girl in a short white dress, and assassin.

She throws messages, shoots the screen and slices it -- a fun, and occasionally distracting, program. At right is a shot of Echo in her red-gowned New Year’s mode, roving across my messy desktop. The most impressive parts, though, you have to click on to enjoy.

At the moment, there are 98 scroll-throughs of episodes, cast and crew interviews and exclusive footage that all link back to the Fox site, plus an ‘Augmented Reality Echo’ feature that allows you to interact by simply printing out symbols or ‘glyphs,’ aiming the printout at a webcam, then watching as a digital hologram of Echo appears on your screen! I wish I had a webcam at work to participate in this high-techy goodness ... umm, maybe not.

To download the Virtual Echo program, click HERE, And to get a video introduction and explanation of what’s going on, you can click HERE.

-- Jevon Phillips