The Vienna Freudbot project offers a text-messaging "Dr. Freud" - Beta is online and working:
SHIFZ and Sergey Teterin have developed Freudbot, a kind of chat-bot, which uses telephone text-messages to communicate with his clients.
Freudbot Beta is available for conversation at his russian number 0079 2264 22022, while appointments with the upcoming Alpha Version can be scheduled by sending a msg. to the service number 08282709901132.
The Alpha will be presented to the public this November.

Related posts on SHIFZ-Blog:
Freudbot vs. Freudbot (featuring a dialogue between Vienna Freudbot and a Freudbot developed by the Centre for Psychology at Athabasca University!)
Dr. Freudbot's Office Taking Appointments
Freudbot Beta

Supported by Vienna City Cultural Department.

"Robotender Ernie" by Honeybee Robotics was, to my knowledge, the first bartending robot on earth.
He not only mixed and served various cocktails, he also chatted his customers up after taking spoken orders and did 1980s dance-moves.
Alas, Honeybee's web-page doesn't feature Ernie any more - after all, this was how I found out about him around 2001.
more on SHIFZ-blog videos: short version, long version

ROBOEXOTICA, the annual cocktailrobotics festival (to be held dec. 5th-9th in Museumsquartier Vienna) features the 8th Annual Cocktail Robot Awards (ACRA). Trophies are awarded in five categories, among them mixing and serving cocktails as well as lighting cigarettes and cocktail conversation.
Entries welcome!
Among the winners of 2005 was David Calkins, president of the Robotics Society of America and founder of Robogames.

... related post on SHIFZ-Blog

i'll have to say goodbye soon to my "laptop" which sits on my desk for almost 3 years now.
as the warm season nears the tilts due to overheating are to be expected to be as bad as before winter set in. yes, the lacation of it plays a role in it as the room to the south heats up with the sunlight.
that said i should also mention the only way to run it anyway is to just do webbrowsing, sometimes carefully photoshopping, word is ok, BUT a scan or any other fancy computing is just literally too hot to handle for the standard p4 inside.
this proplem started to occur within the first year and then rapidly got faster within the second. opening and cleaning helped only very temporarily. even with fresh cooling paste.
it sits on a air vent "notebook cooling" device. ha! i have a fan running behind it to blow cool air towards it's hot rear.
what was i thinking when i bought a notebook with a regular p4 in it? i was thinking i was getting a great deal - didn't dream of a machine that would break down, when i want to do some standard task (apart from usual MS failures, that is).
so, i hope ordering an amd machine, won't be my next big mistake ;)
end of note.
p.s.
this witty sentence, slashdot is running on the foot of the page that showed up when i posted this read: "Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined." .. it not only fits in nicely with above note - it also attests me a lot of experience :)

Before SHIFZ was officially founded, the protagonists already maintained a webpage - the artasylum, which has been later morphed to the current shifz page featuring the artasylum as a kind of archive.

Also Chris Veigl and I played in a band at that time, called Binary Drug - we used electronic sounds and methods (like eeg-neurofeedback) along with rock instruments.

Well, apart from brainwashingmachines and cocktailrobots SHIFZ has also installed wormholes, brainraces, helped Eva Tauchen make Screenies and various other stuff including shortvideos and TV-productions (x).

Apropos nothing I'd like to share this recent thread from my blog - featuring kids in cardboard robot outfits:
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.

Good morning Slashdot, I'm a member of SHIFZ ...
This is our homepage: shifz.org
We - SHIFZ - are the syntharturalist art association, based in Vienna, founded 1996. We concern ourselves with Brainwashingmachines, Cocktailrobots and the like.
Talking of cocktailrobots - we founded ROBOEXOTICA, the first international festival for cocktailrobotics in 1999.
Here's some impressions from last year's event:
Fotos by Jacob Appelbaum, my own mobile pics / fotostory
mpeg clip from Puls TV
mobile clip of smoking robot on YouTube

... here's links to fotos from previous ROBOEXOTICAs: 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000 and a fotostory on the "Gondola" - a permanent drink delivery installation.