[Freddy]

Pandorabots is pleased to announce the release of our new CallMom app for Android. CallMom is a mobile, voice-activated personal assistant that can have a conversation, dial a number, send an email or SMS message, learn contacts, provide help with the app, search the web, open a URL in a browser, read data from web services, check battery status, give directions and find a location on the map -- all through natural language, voice commands.

Unlike other virtual assistant apps for Android and iPhone, CallMom includes a learning feature so that it can learn your personal preferences and contacts, and be taught to correct speech recognition errors. CallMom can be connected to a variety of pandorabot personalities, including ALICE, Mitsuku, Zoe, Fake Captain Kirk and others.

The CallMom app utilizes Pandorabots to respond to natural langauge inputs. The knowledge content is written in AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) and the responses are completely customizable. In what represents the first major extension to the AIML language in years, we've created a set of AIML tags called "Out of Band" (OOB) tags to process device actions.

Also unlike other virtual assistant apps, we've made the CallMom knowledge base completely open source. Hosted on a Google Code project, the CallMom AIML is freely available to anyone wishing to create his own custom CallMom personality. We've already attracted a significant body of contributions to this resource from our AIML development community.

CallMom is now available free in the Android Market, with limited learning features. A premium upgrade is underway which will make the learned knowledge persistent.

http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/pics/callmom/index.html

[Freddy]

The above was released very recently and I have had a little peek, seems very good so far.  Mistuku is the default chatbot this App connects to.

I'll wait until I have played some more before making more comments.

[Freddy]

Well I am liking it.  I had to dust off my AIML knowledge a bit, well what little there was...

For anyone new to Pandorabots; it's very easy to set up  your own AIML bot.  I already had a couple from a long time back, but started messing around with a basic ALICE bot I had set up for previous experiments.

As per the instructions mentioned in the links above there is a ZIP file of a lot of new AIML that uses the new features. I am not sure if this is a prerequisite or not - perhaps SquareBear can confirm if you *need* to add all this AIML to take advantage of the new features or that you can set about building your own from scratch.  For now I just uploaded all the new AIML.

Anyway, once you have your bot set up, you will need to go into the CallMom settings section and choose to "Select your own Pandorabot".  Don't forget to choose your server...which will most likely be pandorabots.com unless you have some paid service.  And then your BotID which you can find in your Pandorabot control panel (it will be in your bot's URL too btw).

So not so bad really.

At the moment I am playing with picture searches - so that for example I can say to the App "Please show me a cat", and then it should obviously show me some nice cats.

I'll just drop in a couple of patterns.  I made a new AIML file for my custom stuff.  Both these patterns work, but I prefer the Photobucket one as they have done a better job of designing a mobile version of their site.  And if you hadn't guessed this opens things up in your Android browser.

Note this is only me messing around, there are already some nice picture features built in.  So you need to be careful what trigger words you choose.  For example, Steve has already used a 'DISPLAY *' pattern.  My workaround was to add 'PLEASE' in there so it fires my ones.

Code

<!-- to search Flickr -->
<category>
<pattern>PLEASE DISPLAY A *</pattern>
<template>
<oob><url>http://m.flickr.com/search/?q=<star/></url></oob>
</template>
</category>

Code

<!-- to search Photobucket -->
<category>
<pattern>PLEASE SHOW ME A *</pattern>
<template>
<oob><url>http://m.photobucket.com//images/<star/></url></oob>
</template>
</category>

[Freddy]

Messing around some more with Flickr...

Suppose you have some photos saved at Flickr and you give them some tags to help identify them.

Well you could use your Flickr ID to just search for photos with those tags only in your photostream...

Code

<category>
<pattern>PLEASE DISPLAY MY *</pattern>
<template>
<oob><url>http://www.flickr.com/search/?w={MyFlickrId}&amp;q=<star/></url></oob>
</template>
</category>

So I just dropped the word MY in there, so it knows only to look in my photos.

You will need to find your ID of course and replace {MyFlickrId} and the curly brackets with it.

So now I have a photo of my aquarium on Flickr and it is tagged appropriately.  So now when I say "Please display my aquarium", up comes a page with matching images.

This is not totally great because so far I cannot get this to work with the mobile version of their site, so it uses the big version which is not that great but it's getting there.

Off to see what Photobucket can do now...

[Freddy]

Ok now I need SquareBear 

I am trying this :

Code

<category>
<pattern>PLEASE SHOW ME MY *</pattern>
<template>
Here is your <star/>
<oob><url>http://s799.photobucket.com/home/{myusername}/tag/<star/></url></oob>
</template>
</category>

But for some reason it's not adding the star onto the end of the URL 

[Freddy]

Google image search is very nice on mobiles, so I decided to tap into that.

Very simple.  I choose the word google as a trigger because it seems to recognise that well for me, when spoken.

Code

<category>
<pattern>GOOGLE * IMAGES</pattern>
<template><srai>GOOGLE IMAGE <star/></srai></template>
</category>

<category>
<pattern>GOOGLE * PICTURES</pattern>
<template><srai>GOOGLE IMAGE <star/></srai></template>
</category>

<category>
<pattern>GOOGLE * PHOTOS</pattern>
<template><srai>GOOGLE IMAGE <star/></srai></template>
</category>

<category>
<pattern>GOOGLE IMAGE *</pattern>
<template>
Googling <star/> images.
<oob><url>http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=<star/>&amp;tbm=isch</url></oob>
</template>
</category>

So you say "Google fish images" or some variation and you get a very-nicely-designed-for-mobile set of results thank you very much.   

This works really well and is how I would like to get my personal photos to come up.  But if you are just wanting any old pictures out there then this does the trick.  I seem to have the keyboard up in my screen shot, but I said this to the phone...

[squarebear]

Ok now I need SquareBear 

I am trying this :

Code

<category>
<pattern>PLEASE SHOW ME MY *</pattern>
<template>
Here is your <star/>
<oob><url>http://s799.photobucket.com/home/{myusername}/tag/<star/></url></oob>
</template>
</category>

But for some reason it's not adding the star onto the end of the URL 

That syntax is spot on and should work. I am guessing photobucket is redirecting you somehow. If you check in your chatlogs you should see something like:

You: Please show me my frogs.
Bot:  Here is your frogs http://s799.photobucket.com/home/freddy/tag/frogs

See if it has the star on there.

*EDIT* - if you click on the above link, the photobucket site redirects you automatically. Unfortunately, we have no control over external sites.

As per the instructions mentioned in the links above there is a ZIP file of a lot of new AIML that uses the new features. I am not sure if this is a prerequisite or not - perhaps SquareBear can confirm if you *need* to add all this AIML to take advantage of the new features or that you can set about building your own from scratch.  For now I just uploaded all the new AIML.

You can just set the default to your own Pandorabot to chat away with it normally. However, if you add the extra AIML we have wriiten, your phone will be able to call, text people, send emails, tell you the weather, display images and more. The beauty of the CallMom app is that it is totally customisable if you know a bit of AIML.

[Freddy]

Thanks Steve, I didn't think of checking the logs, it looks like Photobucket is doing that for some reason as the star appears in the logs.  Oh well.

And thanks for the clarification on the new AIML 

[drwallace]

As per the instructions mentioned in the links above there is a ZIP file of a lot of new AIML that uses the new features. I am not sure if this is a prerequisite or not - perhaps SquareBear can confirm if you *need* to add all this AIML to take advantage of the new features or that you can set about building your own from scratch.  For now I just uploaded all the new AIML.

The AIML for CallMom is an open source project in a Google Code repository.  The way this works, we maintain a Development Snapshot of the latest CallMom AIML in the repository (see http://code.google.com/p/aiml-en-us-pandorabots-callmom/source/browse/).  Periodically we also clone a Production Release of the CallMom AIML (see http://code.google.com/p/aiml-en-us-pandorabots-callmom/source/clones) and build a .zip file from the Production Release.   If you want the latest and greatest CallMom AIML you should grab the files from the Development Snapshot.  The .zip file only gets modified when we make a new Production Release. 

[Freddy]

Thanks for the tip 

I'm liking the new speech bubbles today

[drwallace]

Thanks.  Getting those bubbles right was a huge task! 

I'm curious what tool you used to get the screenshot.   Some Android devices seem to have a built-in screen capture feature, on others it requires either a rooted phone or a USB connection to a PC with Android Tools on it.

[Freddy]

Thanks.  Getting those bubbles right was a huge task!

Well worth it though, it gives added character

Re screen-shots; Yes I noticed there were a few commercial apps around that would do the job and like you say a lot seemed to need a rooted phone.  But I couldn't believe there wasn't something built in.

I am not sure if it is in all versions of Android or not, I am on 2.3.3.  After a lot of digging around I found this guys solution on some Android forum.

It's very simple, all you do is press the 'home' button (ie the small mechanical button on the front of your device) at the same time as pressing the power button (again meaning the mechanical button on the side of the phone).

It's a bit tricky at first.

Then you can find the screen-shots in the filing system or the gallery.  I use the gallery because I have the Photobucket app, so I just send them to photobucket and then link up to them here using my PC.

[drwallace]

Thanks for the info.  That did not work on my Android 2.2.3 phone.  It is unfortunate that Android does not include a native screen capture feature.

What I use is an Android tool called ddms.  Here is a link that describes the process:
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/10/22/taking-screenshots-on-an-android-based-phone/

[Freddy]

Thanks, that is of interest to me because I can't upgrade my tablet and that's stuck on 2.2

You are right though, it's a strange thing not to have been built in in the first place.

If I find any other options that are more straightforward I will let you know.

[Freddy]

I can't verify these work, but you could give it a go :

http://androidanswer.com/questions/425/how-to-take-a-screenshot-in-android-without-rooting-or-installing-app-any-shortcuts

http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s/237418-screen-capture-without-app.html

I'm wondering if it's brand based more than Android based