BotCube – Telegram
BotCube
1.07K subscribers
24 photos
4 videos
1 file
377 links
Bots, messaging apps, conversational interfaces, AI & ML — hot reviews & insights from industry experts. Questions: @andreibandarenka

Awesome Bots: https://github.com/BotCube/awesome-bots
Download Telegram
Amazon has just launched a new version of Echo

Amazon introduced a second-generation version of the Echo today with a dedicated bass tweeter and a modified, shorter design.

The new device looks to be about half the size of the original Echo, is cloth-covered, and goes on sale today for $99.

The company is also selling a three-pack for the first time, offering multi-room audio for the price of $50 per device.

Multi-room audio has been a major request of Echo users nearly since its inception.

The introduction of audio that can stream to multiple devices simultaneously means that Echo now poses a direct competitive threat to Sonos.

It will also offer a low-cost alternative to Apple’s forthcoming HomePod.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/27/amazon-new-echo/
Amazon is on fire today!

5 new devices and a couple of huge partnerships announced.

I’ve just collected all the info available right now to the article below.

Go read it, I’ll add more latest info in real-time.

https://medium.com/@MaximAbramchuk/amazon-new-alexa-powered-products-and-partnership-with-bmw-a6ebecb5a206
Have you seen today’s news? Voice is gonna be huge!

And it’s the perfect timing to unveil something we’re working on.

It’s called Storyline, and it’s a web-based platform that helps non-tech people create Alexa apps without coding.

I truly believe in this community and I’m super excited to give you early access to it.

You can sign up here, we’ll send demo access later this week: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/storyline

Happy botting! ❤️
1500 members!! Thank you so much everyone 🤖🔥
“Getting started with conversational design can be a bit overwhelming”

It really is.

When you’re starting the design you have to have a robust process in mind.

Here's a great guide on that.

Yogesh Moorjani divided the conversational design process into 6 simple steps:
- User intents
- Key user inputs
- Play assistant
- Design flow
- The noscript
- Bring it all together

And covered all them with illustrations and detailed explanation.

Read this, take notes, and bookmark it, it’ll save you time & money in the future.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iHFObs70NjiE3JjCtce2kl5DcUFAC0KwIs2mlpqk3JE/edit#heading=h.2xsrlih9mtgs
Slack has released a new feature in their bot platform called Dialogs.

Dialogs are new interactive modals that can capture multiple pieces of information and send them directly to your app.

You can use them to build a robust form inside Slack, or simply collect a single line of text.

A single dialog can accomplish what used to mean directing someone into a separate browser window, or engaging them in back-and-forth interactions within a Slack channel.

You could build an app that lets people file a help desk ticket, complete a survey, manage approvals, take attendance, assign project management tasks, and much more.

It’s awesome to see that Slack is not trying to rely fully on the NLP interface which is not perfect for most of the tasks 👍

https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/building-more-intricate-workflows-in-slack-with-dialogs-74f122ed887c
Hey guys, it’s time for #botoftheweek.

Our bot today is kinda usual - it has no task or problem to solve.

It’s a multiplayer strategy game on Telegram called Idle Town.

And these guys already have more than 60k users with about 2k of them playing daily.

Read my review below to find out more.

Or you can test the bot here: @IdleTownBot

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-5wPfzEI-qHH6UsZEVF9XAlLc3yvha1Y8pk1XbBGXi0
BotCube is at Alexa Dev Day in San Francisco today. Come say hi if you're there too. Would love to chat!
Slack is partnering with Oracle to offer business bots

Slack Technologies has secured a partnership with Oracle to integrate the tech giant's enterprise software products into the popular workplace messaging app.

The partnership will allow workers to use Slack as the interface for Oracle's sales, human resources and business software.

Workers will be able to ask questions such as "how many vacation days do I have left this year?" and instantaneously receive a response from an Oracle chatbot.

The partnership between the two companies came about after Slack secured the tech giant as a customer.

At Oracle, there are 30,000 workers who actively use Slack for work.

Oracle is currently developing these chatbots, and they will begin to roll out to Slack and Oracle users within the next two quarters.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/03/slack-oracle-partnership-will-offer-new-in-app-business-bots.html
Google has finally released 2 new smart speakers 🔥

1. Google Home Mini
It’s a smaller version of its flagship smart speaker, to compete with Amazon Echo Dot.

The device will retail for $49.

Home Mini will be available in the U.S. as well as United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, and Australia.

2. Google Home Max
It’s a big, premium smart speaker for $399 available in December.

While the Home Mini is gonna compete with the Echo Dot and low-cost smart speakers, the Home Max will compete directly with high-end smart speakers like products from Sonos, recently unveiled Echo Plus, and Apple’s HomePod.

“Max is more than 20 times more powerful than Google Home, so it will fill any room in your house with great sound”.

More info about Home Mini: https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/04/google-unveils-home-mini-smart-speaker-for-49-to-challenge-amazons-echo-dot/
More info about Home Max: https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/04/google-unveils-home-max-for-399-coming-to-the-u-s-in-december/
Apple acquires init.ai

Earlier this week, a small startup called Init.ai announced that it soon would be discontinuing its service.

The team was (according to a notice on the site) “joining a project that touches the lives of countless people across the world.”

They are becoming a part of the group working on Siri.

To be clear, this is not a straight acquisition, but more of an acqui-hire, so Apple didn’t have a comment to offer along the lines of the one it made last week.

Huge news for all the bot space 💪🏻

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/04/apple-acqui-hired-the-team-from-messaging-assistant-init-ai-to-work-on-siri/
How to design a compelling personality for a chatbot?

Personality is a key to a successful bot.

It helps you to provide a better conversational experience, saves you when the bot doesn’t understand something and can differentiate your product from other bots with the similar service.

Here are 6 things to consider when designing a personality:

1. Environment
Consider whether the target environment is a work environment or a consumer environment, and what social attributes are acceptable for a personality in this environment. For example, having a personality that is very humoristic might not be the right choice for a legal assistant bot.
2. Audience
Consider the type of audience who will be the primary users of your bot (hint: everyone is never the right audience type, even for Google). A bot that talks in slang might not be the right fit for a more conservative audience and a bot that uses too many three-letter acronyms might miss the mark for others, IMO.
3. Jobs to be done
The task the user is intending to execute implies different personality characteristics, even for what initially might seem like similar tasks. Buying a guitar might require a totally different bot personality than buying healthcare insurance.
4. Runtime variations
This is slightly more complex, as it might require some logic associated with the bot, but personality might be context-driven. It is OK to be whimsical when sending directions to a party, but less so when sending directions to a work meeting to which the user is already late.
5. Locally relevant social acceptance
Some cultures are different than others. Referring to someone as “dear” might be fine in one place in the world while being culturally unacceptable in another place.
6. Existing branding
Many brands feel very strongly about the personality their brand exposes. Slack, for example, wants to expose an empathetic, friendly, and pleasant personality.
7. Values
At the end of the day, the bot’s personality is an extension of the service you want to expose. Think about the core values of the service, as that can imply a certain type of personality.

P.S. I highly recommend everyone who wants to dive more into this topic to read Designing Bots book from Amir Shevat. It's a 🤖 bible.
Google Assistant got a bunch of new cool features at October 4th event

Google revealed a lot of products at its San Francisco event on October 4th, namely the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2XL, the Home Mini, and the Home Max.

There were also software features announced for Google Assistant and Home products, but there were so many that they're hard to keep track of.

So if you want to dig up that one specific Assistant feature from the event, you can find it new the article below.

Spoiler: Male Voice!

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/07/new-home-assistant-related-features-google-announced-october-4th-event/
Chatbot startup NearGroup raises a 1.6Million seed round

NearGroup, a chatbot allowing users to connect with like-minded people based on proximity, personality and their creative content has raised a $1.6m (£1.2m) seed round.

This Messenger chatbot allows users to read the ‘stories’ of individuals nearby, and reply to people they want to start a conversation with.

By showing someone’s content first, not their face, you are more likely to find something in common and avoid the “body-shopping” culture of Tinder etc.

NearGroup has over 2 Million users, and has processed over 2 Billion messages to date.

The current growth rate is extraordinary with 600K new-users joining every month & 20–25M messages exchanged per day.

The team is targeting 100 Million users by end of December 2018 and planing to also bring nearby businesses onto the platform.

https://chatbotslife.com/neargroup-raises-a-1-6million-seed-round-lead-by-openocean-on-strength-of-2-billion-messages-330947923f97
Api.ai is now Dialogflow!

More than that, they released 2 hot new features:

1. In-line code editor: you can now write fulfillment logic, test, and implement a functional webhook directly in the console.

2. Multi-lingual agent support: building for multiple languages is now easier than ever. You can now add additional languages and locales to your new or existing agent.

Excited to test!

https://blog.dialogflow.com/post/apiai-new-name-dialogflow-new-features/
Amazon Alexa can now recognize different voices

The battle of the smart speakers has become a constant back and forth between Amazon and Google.

Back in April, Google Home gained the ability to recognize individual voices, which allows the device to personalize its response for everyone in your house or apartment.

Today, Amazon announced that Alexa can now do the same thing.

You can set up voice recognition using the Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show.

Users are asked to read aloud 10 phrases, and Alexa will then use that data to create a voice profile.

After that’s done, voice profiles work across other Echo devices and “most” third-party party Alexa-enabled devices.

Guys, I’m really excited about this 🔥

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16460120/amazon-echo-multi-user-voice-new-feature
I think a lot of you guys remember Surebot - bot that allows you to find the most Instagrammed food and drink spots around you.

It has been featured a couple of times here and even been a "Bot of the Week once.

Yesterday Juraj Pal, founder of Surebot, has announced that they’ve decided to shut it down.

Long story short - “our growth wasn’t what we anticipated and not enough people are actively using Sure to validate it. We did not manage to secure further investment and reached the end of our runway.”

Juraj has also shared a couple of learning from this 1.5 year journey in a Medium article below.

It’s sad to hear such announcements but they need to happen to help industry grow and mature.

Good bye, Surebot, we’re excited for what’s next 🚀

https://medium.com/@jurajpal/were-sure-that-we-re-no-longer-sure-58af9d67c42
Hey guys, let’s talk about native chatbots today.

A native chatbot is a chatbot that works in either Website or Mobile App environment where the bot owner has full control over the user experience of the entire customer journey.

Why does anyone want to create a native chatbot if there are Facebook/Viber/Telegram and others?

There are a lot of reasons, to be honest, from the ability to customize User Experience to different privacy issues.

Here is a great article from Jiaqi Pan, CEO of Landbot, about that.

I highly encourage you to read it, helps to understand that chatbot is not tied to Facebook Messenger or Viber and also highlights different use cases of native chatbots from such guys as Duolingo and Intercom.

https://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-rise-of-native-chatbot-development-658342167856
If you’re asking a user to engage in a conversation instead of tapping a button or two, are you really making things any easier?

“Conversational UIs might mirror the way we naturally like to communicate, but they actually required more mental load than traditional GUIs.”

Really good stuff from Intercom.

When they were building their live chat for sales, rather than relying on text alone they incorporated conversational UI along with one of the least fashionable interfaces – a form.

Here’s a summary of insights they learned building this hybrid interface 📖

Fantastic read.

https://blog.intercom.com/why-forms-arent-dead-yet/
Hey BotCube community,

We officially launched Storyline on Product Hunt.

Storyline makes it easy for non-tech people to create, test, and publish complex voice applications in minutes, using templates and visual mind-map interface.

There’s no need to code anything or setup servers.

It’s like a Squarespace for voice apps.

Please go here and check it out: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/storyline-7

If you upvote or comment on our Product Hunt page with feedback, we’ll toss you a golden ticket to Storyline tomorrow 😉

Thank you for all the support!