About: The Oracle
What is the Oracle?
The Oracle is a computer program which can give answers to just about any question. However, occasionally she does lie :-)
It started out in 2000, when the first version was released in Finnish. The Finnish version answers around 50,000 questions daily, which gave me the idea that this might be worth doing in English, too. The English version was released July 15th, 2006.
Who wrote this?
Aapo Puskala (in Finnish). I'm a Finnish psychologist whose hobbies include various projects, most of which are available at Lintukoto, my personal website (mostly in Finnish). The Oracle is one of these projects. There are four more available in English: Click-the-Pic, Arnold, Friedrich and Banner Generator. There are also two short articles available in English: Spam reply and Cash loan to US government.
How does this work?
The idea is simple, but telling it would sort of ruin the idea.
What should I ask?
Ask about things for which there are no simple, correct answers. The Oracle does not in reality know just about anything, but she gives a lot of answers nevertheless.
A few example questions are listed below. It is really up to you.
- What is the purpose of life?
- Is my life worth living?
- What kind of computer should I buy?
- How do you know all this?
- What do you think of George W. Bush?
- Hello!
- How can you say something like that?
- Does he like me?
- Should I lose weight?
- Is my husband cheating on me?
- What happens tomorrow?
- How should I live my life?
- What size breasts are the best?
- What should I do now?
- Does she know?
Linking to AskOracle / embedding Oracle on another site / creating an IRC bot etc.
It is possible to embed the Oracle on your page or to create an IRC bot who uses Oracle as its answers. The question is send as URL-encoded variable q. For example: http://www.askoracle.net/index.php?q=What+is+the+meaning+of+life%3F will send the question 'What is the meaning of life?' to the Oracle and display the answer. You can use PHP's urlencode function to encode the question into an URL
If you want to embed the Oracle onto your own pages, the process is similar. If you include the variable skiphtml=TRUE with your question, the Oracle will not output any HTML, only the reply. So, to embed Oracle as an IRC/chat bot you need to send the question as in this example http://www.askoracle.net/index.php?q=What+is+the+meaning+of+life%3F&skiphtml=TRUE'. The reply will be plain text which you can include in your application.
See and feel free to utilize a sample PHP script.Downloads
If you write a bot, a JavaScript application or embed the Oracle into your pages in another way, please provide a link to http://www.askoracle.net/ to tell the users where the replies are coming from. If you do this, you're free to write whatever applications utilizing the Oracle. If you'd like to share your work, please contact me at feedback2@askoracle.net.
The following have been graciously submitted by Oracle users.
How can I contact you?
The Oracle is a work in progress and all feedback is greatly appreciated. Please send your comments to feedback2@askoracle.net.