Rich Instant Messaging with Robots

There was a time when bots were all the rage. I remember instant messaging with bots a decade ago through the university research departments that were attempting to simulate human intelligent conversation. They were charming enough, but you could always stump them with curses.

Soon after, the major players started using them to help customer call flow and voice response systems. Annoying little beasts that can’t understand the slightest hint of Jersey accent still pick up with Verizon, Sprint, Comcast, you name it — the list goes on.

But check this out. John Battelle writes a bit about the MakeBot, and instant messaging search utility that links the RSS of these particular sites with a back-end search function allowing access to site updates through your IM client of choice — providing, I assume, it’s AIM compatible. I’ve signed up to get the boingboing.net feed update every two hours and so far it works swimmingly.

But wait, there’s more! To see this really take off, add MovieFone to your AIM buddy list and type a bit. This bot allows you to search the MovieFone database by title, location, theater, whatever, all through your IM client. I find it faster — far faster — than checking the site through the web. All I need to do is type 1 - 4 - Y - 1 to see a list of movies and times at my favorite theater in my neighborhood. It’s the Century Cinemas over at Cedar Hills, the one that serves warm KettleKorn instead of lameass movie popcorn. Of course, the bot remembers the last time I ran a search and so my zip is still cookie’d somehow, which cuts down my keystrokes.

The implications of this sort of connectivity are huge. It has the potential to have the same impact on customer service than online billpay had five years ago: it eliminates a simple problem with an elegant solultion. With billpay, it eliminated the hassle of managing checks and stamps with a few mouse clicks and auto-payment schedules. With MovieFone, it eliminates the interactive voice response program on the phone and the graphical nonsense and ad programs of the sites with a convenient and unobtrusive “buddy.”

Would advertising play? In a heartbeat. As John mentions, Google is probably salivating over this program. For me, the more interesting implications are in teaching remedial programs to university students. For example, we’ve completely automated our grammar tool online with 90+% accuracy. What if students could open their IM client of choice and paste in a paragraph to the GrammarBot, and receive a near-instantaneous response with corrections, suggestions, tips, and tools? More important, what if a student could submit passages to a PlagiarismBot and get a Google search return of the top ten sites with 85% or greater likeness?

Promotion and the Golden Handcuffs of Capitalism

Ah, the heady odeur of success.

Or, whatever.

This year, as my Christmas present from the office, I got promoted. That’s right, it’s the best Christmas present ever, if you’re on the look-out for a bright new pair of golden, fuzzy, warm, vibrating handcuffs.

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Sky

Go here, with great haste. If you’ve always wanted to be Superman, maximize your browser and get real close to the screen.

Fatherhood: The Resurrection: Part II

When Sophie was gestating (I *heart* gerunds), I kept a fairly rigorous blog on the whole becoming a father process. I was a complete nut about it and thought, somehow, others would be as interested in the inner-workings as I was. In hindsight, the whole thing was clearly more for me which is, I think, as it should be.

Things are officially changing again. Kira is now 20 weeks along with our second child, heretofore referred to as “Seed2″ (sic) and today we saw the pictures. (Note new banner text on this page. It is so very 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

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Nano Finale!

With great humility, he climbs to the top of the hill, into the valley, and higher still to the crest of the great peak. He tears his shirt from his back, musculature throbbing, nee pulsing and twitching excitedly. He rears his head back far and, choking just a bit, he wails: “I HAVE DONE IT!”

Yeah, that’s right, after four years of failure I’ve finally beat the damned beast on my shoulder and cranked out 50,000 (more actually) words. And the craziest thing? Not that hard.

Getting started, hard. Words 10,000-18,000, a bitch. Then the story discovered itself and cranked on through to the end. Took a decidedly strange twist about half-way through when I realized that the characters were not so much being written as they were living right through me. It’s a bizarre experience, actually, and one I’m anxious to repeat.

I just returned from our Thank God It’s Over party at our illustrious local coordinator’s place here in Portland. Apparently, we as the Portland crew came in 11th worldwide, an auspicious accomplishment considering our group beat the New York group.

What’s next? More writing. One of my fellow participants told me her New Year’s Resolution last year was to collect at least 12 rejection letters. I thought that was fantastic, rewarding activity instead of just success in a sort of “glass is almost getting to half-empty” way. She failed, actually, collecting only nine rejections and two successes. Damned successes — snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, that.

I’m shelving the book for a few months. I’l probably start editing in February and see where it goes from there. At a minimum, I’ll drop the $500 bucks to self-publish through iUniverse so all my friends can buy it for themselves on bn.com.

Because that is the coolest thing in the world ever, ever, ever.