Feedbots & Feeding Chatbots

As someone holding a degree in Psychology, and with a background in technology, I'm starting to feel like a psychologist for robots....  

I am presently working on two lines of research aimed to converge on conversational agents, or chatbots, for the mobile market.  I have been working on technology to convert books into knowledgebases (Project VagaBot).  And I have been developing feedbots to feed realtime, prefiltered information into knowledgebases (Twitter, Bots & Twitterbotting). 

Knowledgebases may take different forms, but form part of the conversational agent, or chatbot, "brain".  The off-the-shelf conversational agents I have been working with include Conversive Verbots and various AIML platforms including Pandorabots.  Lately I have also been looking beyond the so-called stimulus-response systems to the new generation semantic systems, such as Stephen Reed’s texai.org, Sherman Monroe’s monrai.com and Ben Goertzel's novamente.net.

Most basically the semantic systems strive to convert natural language into SPARQL queries and SPARQL queries into knowledgebases.  (Note, relational databases may be converted into RDF, and become accessible to SPARQL, with D2RQ.)  Goertzel's OpenCog Project is notable for attempting to lay-out a long-term roadmap or blueprint for the creation of what he calls "Artificial General Intelligence", otherwise known as Strong AI, and at least partially funded by Google, leading to what Ray Kurzweil refers to as a possible technological singularity, or point at which robots will begin to in effect build themselves.

So-called Twitter bots (Twitterbots) are most basically feed bots (feedbots), although there are a wide variety of bots being referred to as Twitterbots, not least the infamous friend adder or follow-bots.  Most basically, feedbots feed web feeds into or out of Twitter, the currently most popular feed exchange, or feed interchange.  I don't really count a simple blog feed ported into Twitter as a true "Twitterbot".  For me, a real Twitterbot must actually "do" something, have some unique functionality.  The hands-down favorite for feed manipulation is Yahoo Pipes.  I've been working for a number of years with Yahoo Pipes, and have become a skillful Pipes developer, creating hundreds of Pipes.  However, Yahoo Pipes alone is not enough to create a "brain" or "artificial intelligence"....  

I have found the Zoho Creator web-based software-as-a-service a convenient way to host my databases "in the cloud".  These databases generally consist of what is sometimes referred to as a "taxonomy", but is more precisely a "faceted-classification".  The faceted-classification as a database forms the basic "intelligence" of intelligent feed bots, or Twitter bots.  Multiple databases may also be used in tandem, a technique I refer to as "dual iteration", to sharpen or increase the intelligence.  And, specific feed bots can be combined to create cumulative meta-bots.

I have previously blogged about developing my proprietary “green travel taxonomy” over many years, which is in fact a complex faceted-classification in the form of a database that currently drives the @greentravel1 Twitterbot. greentravel1 is also available on Blogspot as greentravel1.blogspot.com.  It currently consists of 4 primary “channels”:

• #GTNews consists of Google News searches based on the green travel faceted-classification.
  
• #GTRetweet consists of analysis of the Twitter public timeline based on the same green travel faceted-classification.
  
• #GTVideo currently searches an abbreviated dataset of key terms on Google Video for purposes of scalability.
• #GTFeeds consists of an accumulated set of closely related feeds added manually. 

In short, greentravel1 delivers a continuous feed of all English language green travel news, the entire green travel related Twitter commentary, plus all new green travel videos and related blog feeds.  greentravel1 effectively enables monitoring of the bulk of cyberspace in realtime for the critical issues facing the sustainability of tourism today.  (And, to see this sustainable tourism intelligence presented dynamically on a country by country basis, for all 240 “countries”, simply visit the Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0.)

Special thanks to Prof Dr Marc Cohen of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the RMIT Master of Wellness Program for support of this research.

Twitter, Bots & Twitterbotting

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates, which may be viewed by anyone or restricted to a user group. Such messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including SMS, IM, Email or Web.

Twitter is the prototypical micro-blogging service and allows users to send text-based posts up to 140 characters long, called "tweets", to the Twitter web site. One of the main advantages of using Twitter is that it provides a functional gateway between the web and the mobile phone via SMS text messaging compatibility. Christina Laun recently posted a handy primer, Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide.

There are now a growing number of Twitter applications for travel and tourism:

• The Multimap Twitter bot helps you to access maps, directions and local information by sending messages via twitter.
• The Nelso Twitter bot will help you find bars, restaurants, hotels, shopping, and other businesses in Europe.
• The Twanslate Twitter bot is capable of translating anything you throw at it, and for on the go translation when all you have is your phone.

I’ve now added feeds from Twitter for all 234 countries to my Destination Meta-Guide.com 2.0 semantic mashup, for instance at:

• meta-guide.com/australia/cse22.asp

I’ve also created two Twitterbots already:

• twitter.com/greentravel1 is a simple porting of the green travel group RSS web feed into Twitter.
• twitter.com/SemanticBot is a little more sophisticated and now regularly shows new semantic web videos.

Twitter bots are actually special Twitter users that provide information, either upon request or as it becomes available. There are at least two good web sites about Twitter bots:

• twitterbotting.com is a site to help folks get quick info about creating new Twitterbots.
• retweet.com helps to discover Twitter, one bot at a time.

A web feed is a data format used to provide users with frequently updated content. RSS is a web feed format used to publish frequently updated content, such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts. Yahoo! Pipes is a web application for building applications that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services. A combination of data from more than one source in a single integrated application is called a mashup.

Web feeds or mashups can be sent into Twitter with twitterfeed.com . And, feeds can be sent out of Twitter with loudtwitter.com . Feeds can also be exported from Twitter using sites like tweetscan.com or summize.com . Using the Twitter Facebook application I’ve managed to get Twitter talking to the Facebook status message. I’ve also added the Twitter Badge for Blogger to my blog (at right). And thanks to a new ping.fm beta account, I’ve been able to add my Linkedin status message into this loop.

Now if I can just send Twitter feeds into a chatbot knowledgebase….