The first time you see a Veeper you might think that you're looking at a typical video presentation. Then, depending on whether androids give you the willies, you are either blown away or freaked out by the lifelike virtual person staring back at you.

This new "emotive interface" technology developed by San Francisco Web media developer Pulse might replace much of the typical video content—at least the talking head variety—so prevalent in e-learning today.

First, Veepers have pure novelty value—Veeperization is both impressive and a little eerie. You start with any 2-D image of yourself (or your favorite celebrity, cat or cartoon character), load it into the program, and then drag and drop "data points" onto key movement areas of facial expression, like the corners of the eyes, mouth and eyebrows. The 2-D image is mapped onto a 3-D head and then something magical happens: The static image gets a breath of life. The eyes start to blink and the head shifts and turns slightly as if the newly created clone is patiently waiting for instructions. Before Veeperization, you were just looking at a picture. Now you feel like you are in the presence of a living thing.

The illusion of life is created by filling in areas of the face that are not visible in the original 2-D image, which allows the head to move and reveals different perspectives. Artificial eyelids and sides of the face are colored to match skin tone and virtual teeth appear slightly when the model speaks or smiles. Text-to-speech software creates an electronic voice that is a dead giveaway, but if prerecorded audio is used, the overall effect is so subtle that (unless you are normally missing a few front teeth or have them capped with gold) only you and your mom will be able to tell the difference.

Veepers also are one-tenth the cost-per-minute of professional video and take only 2 percent the file size of streaming video, making streaming video-like material available on 56k connections at broadband-like speeds. Add this economy to the ease of changing the script (just type it in), and Pulse Veepers might be the app that buries streaming video presentations for good.

—E.W.