Web hosts and Dialog Robots:

The Inovani animation engine is used to run web hosts; that is talking heads that speak on web pages.

The  talking heads can be delivered by a Java applet or an Internet Explorer Plugin that is downloaded to the client's PC. 

The animation is generated on a server, either generated on demand real-time or generated off line and stored for repeated use. 

To generate the animations, Inovani deliver an HTTP based service either hosted by Inovani or installed at customer sites. More on this here.

See the FaceMS web-site or a demo page for examples of real-time talking heads.

On this site there is also a demo of a simple dialog robot with talking heads.

(For the demos you need to have Java installed.)