Danny ChaiLeo told me about this: on AIM, add SmarterChild to your buddy list, and then send him an IM message “home” (no quotes). It’s pretty interesting. You can get news, stock quotes, weather, movie times, dictionary/encyclopedia entries, answers to easy math calculations, and other random stuff. You can check out the privacy policy at www.smarterchild.com.
Anyway, it looks like it’s hooked up to some form of Eliza also or something like that because you can carry out some conversations with it. Do a Google search on SmarterChild and you’ll find some bbs’s that have transcripts of conversations with it. It’s pretty amusing. And a great idea.