Are Talking Avatars Right For Your Site? Talking avatars are a friendly way to connect with site visitors.

Imagine visitors to your website being greeted by a lifelike animated character that follows their mouse movements with its eyes and even talks to them.

Sound far-fetched? It's not--and it's relatively easy and inexpensive to implement, thanks to Sitepal from Oddcast, an internet-based subscription service. Sitepal allows businesses to create animated, talking avatars and add them to their websites for a variety of professional and personal applications. They can be used, for example, as intelligent online customer service agents, virtual salespeople to promote products, or even virtual auctioneers for eBay listings.

"Right now, at any given moment, there are 10,000 auctions running with Sitepal virtual salespeople selling a specific product on eBay," says Oren Levy, executive vice president of New York City-based Oddcast, the only company currently offering the technology in an easy-to-use format for SMB websites.