The latest book by Marvin Minsky, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), addresses the motivations that drive the agents in the society of mind. The central idea is that emotion is not different from thinking.
Emotions, in this theory, are our names for the economics and sociology of our mental societies: the mechanisms, regulative forces, and interactions. A number of chapters of the book have been made available before publication on Marvin Minsky's personal web site.

New on AgentLand: TeeCee DeskMate is an interactive cartoon character who lives on the Windows desktop. TeeCee reacts if you touch him or move him around the screen with the mouse. If you leave him alone, he will amuse himself and entertain you in the process.

This article by Darrick Addison for IBM DeveloperWorks introduces the field of robotics and the issues surrounding robotic systems. It gives a quick overview to get started in robotics including motors, sensors, power, and software. Darrick Addison also discusses some of the available open source software options.

The 23rd meeting of the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) standards group will be held in Pleasanton, California, USA on October 8-12, 2001.
The main purpose of this meeting is to allow researchers and developers in the field of agents to collaborate in the discussion and production of FIPA specifications.

AuctionTamer, the customized Internet browser with a built-in auction item watch list, has been updated. AuctionTamer makes it easy to use and switch between auction sites, and it now knows the exact end time of a Yahoo! auction.  Before it was up to a 30 seconds off. This new version allows you to have multiple instances of AuctionTamer running on the same machine. Many bugs have been also fixed, such as the printing button.