[ossig] Any software : (person's name) -> (cultural information)

[Imran William Smith <iwsmith@mimos.my>]

Hi,

There's some software I'm interested to write in
my personal time, but I wondered if it already existed.

The aim would be to take a name (and possibly an email address)
and try to output some cultural information.  It's a
loosely defined problem, it can only ever produce
'probabalistic' answers.

It would be of use to enhance the interaction between
software and humans, so that the software interacts with
us in a more sympathetic way to our culture, religion,
gender etc.

For example:


"John Smith" -> probably European / Western.
             -> male
             -> formal method of address is "Dear Mr Smith"
             -> informal method of address is "Dear John"

"Nah Soo Hoe" -> probably Chinese
              -> male
              -> formal method of address is "Dear Nah Soo Hoe"
                 (I don't know that for sure!)
              -> informal method of address is "Dear Soo Hoe"


"Imran William Smith"
              -> conflict between European / Western and
                 Islamic / Middle Eastern.
              -> male




Anybody ever seen anything like this?  I'm thinking
it needs to be database driven, with large database of
people's names etc. I'd also have to get 'soft' input
from many different cultures etc.

Ideally it would be something like a PHP library on top
of MySQL (since those are my technical skills).  Or perhaps
pure PHP, for easier deployment (i.e. long hardcoded lists
of names etc).



Imran

--
Imran William Smith
Project Manager, Open Source Development,
MIMOS Berhad, Malaysia

Asian Open Source Centre : http://www.asiaosc.org
MIMOS Open Source        : http://opensource.mimos.my



------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe: send mail to ossig-request@mncc.com.my
with "unsubscribe ossig" in the body of the message