Chat bots in Twitter

Namiot D. Twitter as a transport layer platform // Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language and Information Extraction, Social Media and Web Search FRUCT Conference (AINL-ISMW FRUCT), 2015. — Piscataway, NJ, United States: Piscataway, NJ, United States, 2015. — P. 46–51.

Internet messengers and social networks have become an integral part of modern digital life. We have in mind not only the interaction between individual users but also a variety of applications that exist in these applications. Typically, applications for social networks use the universal login system and rely on data from social networks. Also, such applications are likely to get more traction when they are inside of the big social network like Facebook. At the same time, less attention is paid to communication capabilities of social networks. In this paper, we target Twitter as a messaging system at the first hand. We describe the way information systems can use Twitter as a transport layer for own services. Our work introduces a programmable service called 411 for Twitter, which supports user-defined and application-specific commands through tweets

Info-bots in Twitter

Our paper in AINL-FRUCT: Twitter as a transport layer platform

Internet messengers and social networks have become an integral part of modern digital life. We have in mind not only the interaction between individual users but also a variety of applications that exist in these applications. Typically, applications for social networks use the universal login system and rely on data from social networks. Also, such applications are likely to get more traction when they are inside of the big social network like Facebook. At the same time, less attention is paid to communication capabilities of social networks. In this paper, we target Twitter as a messaging system at the first hand. We describe the way information systems can use Twitter as a transport layer for own services. Our work introduces a programmable service called 411 for Twitter, which supports user-defined and application-specific commands through tweets.

Twitter as a transport in information systems

Dmitry Namiot "Twitter as a Transport Layer Platform"

Internet messengers and social networks have become an integral part of modern digital life. We have in mind not only the interaction between individual users but also a variety of applications that exist in these applications. Typically, applications for social networks use the universal login system and rely on data from social networks. Also, such applications are likely to get more traction when they are inside of the big social network like Facebook. At the same time, less attention is paid to communication capabilities of social networks. In this paper, we target Twitter as a messaging system at the first hand. We describe the way information systems can use Twitter as a transport layer for own services. Our work introduces a programmable service called 411 for Twitter, which supports user-defined and application-specific commands through tweets.

Tweet-a-Program

Wolfram Cloud introduces tweet-a-program. You can send code (Wolfram Language) in a tweet and get back results of its execution. In this connection check out our old 411 for Twitter. It lets you execute your own code behind tweets. See here for t411 examples.

Your own bot for Twitter

"...try Twitter 411, a service that lets you create your own custom Twitter bot. The Twitter 411 site contains a directory of public apps that users have already created to handle tasks ranging from checking out the day's weather in London, to getting a quick map to a friend's house, to doing some quick calculations via Twitter. Since all of these apps are available for public use, you can even use a little ingenuity to tie them together to do almost anything through Twitter." - PC World about out 411 for Twitter service.

Startups and LWS

What we've seen about startups on Londow Web Summit:

Nurph - robots for Twitter. Hey - check out 411 for Twitter at the end of the day

Tweek - social video guide. Could it be a mashup for Twitter?

Some words about social discovery from Gauss

Combining SMS and Mobile Apps for Special Offers

Guest post by David Malmborg. David works with Dell and enjoys writing about technology, computers and saving money.

Many companies have tried to communicate with their customers with SMS messaging in the past. It is simple, convenient, and has the potential to reach a huge number of potential consumers. However, if it’s not done just right, it also has the potential to become an annoyance and unwanted interruption.

The biggest mistake that companies make with this form of marketing is to believe that simply having a phone number makes it okay to use for this kind of messaging. If a company sends an unsolicited text message to any phone, though, it can immediately turn that customer against them. Sending offers through SMS messaging should only happen when the customers have opted in and indicated that they are open to this kind of information.

There is one other disconnect between the SMS message and the sale that retailers have to overcome.These texts can reach the potential customer at any time, in any location, and when they receive the information, they may not be in a position to do anything about it. Unfortunately, in today’s fast-paced world, it is far too easy for the simple message to slip their minds – and they won’t act on the offer even when they are in a position to do so.

A Different Solution

Dell is using a combination of SMS messaging and its new mobile app to overcome some of these concerns. By texting the word "OFFER" to 335548, consumers can opt-in and start receiving exclusive offers on various products (currently, Dell is offering $100 off of an XPS 15 or XPS 17 laptop). At the same time, customers will receive a download link for the new Dell Mobile app.

This application is available for both Android phones and iPhones, and it can be downloaded for free straight from the individual app stores, and it provides a lot of features for mobile consumers. Dell.com is one of the largest online retailers, and this app was designed to provide a secure and streamlined shopping experience as well as a number of other tools that can help a customer through the buying
process.

The Dell Mobile app includes a shopping advisor that can provide important information before a customer makes the final decision, a side-by-side comparison engine to look at a few products at the same time, and a simple way to look at many ratings and reviews. It also includes an order tracking tool so customers can see exactly where all their purchase are right in the same app they used to buy it.

The biggest difference, though, comes in the ability for customers to immediately use the special offer they received via SMS messaging right in the Dell Mobile app. There is no longer a disconnect between when a consumer receives an offer and when they can put it to use. Combining SMS and mobile applications can bridge that gap and make it easier for consumers to take advantage of some exclusive offers.

P.S. editorial notes to our readers: yes, we accept guest postings. Feel free to contact

P.P.S. by the way, you can replace (complete) SMS-based services with Twitter. Check out for example our 411 for Twitter service. It is a good technology for creating such kind of services.

Weather info via Twitter

We wrote already about our Twitter mashup – Twitter 411 service. It is a web application lets you easily create your own Twitter bots. Bot here is an application that receives some requests via Twitter and responds with your own data. You define a form for the request as well as the content for the response. Here is an example for such a bot (stock market).

As a response for the bot within t411 service you can provide any CGI script (e.g. jsp, java servlet, php etc.) on your own site. See again here a complete example (JSP) for stock market bot.

And now let us see a yet another example. Now it is a weather bot.
How does it work? The source data provided by the site yr.no This site contains weather forecast around the world. And what is important, you can pickup weather data in XML or RSS format. So it is a quick deal to build some automation processing. We create a new bot for t411 service – code for the request is w

As a reaction for this bot we've set a JSP file that obtains RSS data from yr.no, presents them in mobile ready form and responds back with a link to the requested forecast. Here is a part of that file:

<div class="content">

<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/taglib374.tld" prefix="w" %>

<w:setLocation url="http://www.yr.no/place/United_Kingdom/England/London/" ttl="36000" id="A"/>

<w:forEachDay feedId="A">

<strong><%=itemTitle%></strong><br/>
<img src="<%=itemImage%>" style="border:0;float:left;padding-right:5px" alt=''/>
<%=itemDescription%><br/><br/>
</w:forEachDay>

<br/>&copy; <w:getChannelCopyright feedId="A"/>
<w:getChannelLink feedId="A" id="url"/>
<br/><a href="<%=url%>">Original data</a><br/>

</div>

code uses the Weather taglib from Coldtags suite. Tag setLocation requests rss feed (and caches it for 10 hours. Tag forEachDay outputs data. And finally we prints a copyright information as well as the back link (as it is required by yr.no)

The rest of the deal is standard. Send to user @t411 a reply or direct message for the weather forecast you are interested in.

Here are examples (what the bot recognizes and what you have to send as reply or direct message to @t411):

w london  get forecast for London
w paris   get forecast for Paris
w msk     get forecast for Moscow
w spb     get forecast for Sankt-Petersburg

And the result (you will get a reply or direct message back) is a link to the mobile site with the forecast. Because it is a mobile site you will be able to open it right from your mobile phone.

The direct messages from Twitter could be delivered by SMS to user's mobile. And so – the mobile link will be delivered too. That was the original idea for t411 service – Twitter could be used as an alternative model for programming SMS services. Twitter is a new transport layer here.

Calculator in Twitter

A yet another interesting usage for Twitter 411 mashup: Google's calculator, available via Twitter. Just send to @t411 a reply or direct message in the following format:

gc your_request

For example:

gc 100 rubles in dollars

You can use any Google's built-in calculator function.

Twitter: map on demands

One new service for Twitter - map on demands. Based on our Twitter 411 mashup (see more articles about Twitter 411 here).

It is a bot lets you obtain a map for some address. How does it work:

Send to @t411 a reply or direct message in the following format:

   map some_address

  For example:

   map Palo Alto

you will get the response in Twitter (as a reply or direct message too) with the map for the given address. The map will be delivered in the form of the static picture - so you can see it on any mobile phone for example. We are using here the same idea as in our Mobile Maps mashup - Google static maps.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

And here you can read the technical details - how to create the similar new bot for Twitter.

Twitter talk bot

One interesting feature in Twitter 411 service. This mashup lets users create own programmable Twitter bots. They are so calling messaging bots - so they will respond to direct messages.Service lets you register (reserve) some keywords (words, direct messages started with) and define your own reactions (including your own CGI scripts) for the reserved words in the incoming messages. Here you can see more about building your own information systems on the top of Twitter and how you can easily create your own Twitter bot.

But if you will simply send any reply or DM to Twitter user @t411 and the first word in your message is not reserved for the service you will get answer from the default service - talk robot. Of course, it is not a famous Eliza from J.Veizenbaum, but anyway it can support the conversation, so you can talk. Try to reply to @t411 and talk with the robot.

How to make a bot for Twitter

Twitter bot is an application that automatically responds to users requests. It could be done in Twitter either via @reply postings or via direct messages.

Here we will show how to use Twitter 411 service for your own bots creation. E.g. you can create there your own information system for the business or private purposes.

411 for Twitter uses Twitter as transport layer. A potential user can follow to @t411 and send direct messages to @t411 or simply post a reply. The responses will come back as replies or direct messages too. And users of Twitter 411 service define how to proceed requests. They can reserve some keywords as well as associated rules described how to proceed messages starting with that keyword.

As a method of message processing service users can choose an URL for some CGI script. This script will be responsible for the processing the incoming messages and producing the responses. Twitter 411 service works in this case as a daemon: gets a message, passes it to the appropriate CGI script, reads the response and sends it back. Let us see how does it looks like practically. Service Twitter 411 includes build-in bot lets you request stock quotes. Let us see its internals:

1. We've registered a keyword t (just a letter t). So all the direct messages starting with t (t will be processed by this bot.

2. Our bot expects messages in the following format t stock_symbol for getting the quote. For example:
t ORCL - quote for Oracle
or
t LNKD - quote for Linkedin

3. As a processing engine for this bot we've set an URL for JSP file. It is our CGI script for the processing: http://linkstore.ru/t411/quote.jsp. For this bot our processing will be placed on the same server, but of course you can provide your own URL for any available server.

4. We can instruct Twitter 411 (our daemon) pass the whole incoming message to our CGI script. So in service's GUI we've set actually the following URL :
http://linkstore.ru/t411/quote.jsp?t=text
Service (daemon) will replace the variable text with the original request. For example, for the following incoming message t ORCL the final request to CGI script will looks so: http://linkstore.ru/t411/quote.jsp?t=t%20ORCL.

Now let us see the script itself. In our case it is JSP file expecting requests with the parameter t. And parameter's value will be in the following form t stock_symbol. So, our script (JSP file) will read parameter's value, extract stock symbol (part of the string after the space), request quote and print the result. It is all. For example:

<%@ page contentType="text/plain; charset=utf-8" %>
<%@ taglib uri="taglib27.tld" prefix="get" %>

<%
String t = request.getParameter("t");
if (t==null)
{ out.println("unknown");
return; }

// the pattern is: t <space> stock_symbol

int i = t.indexOf(" ");

if (i<=0) { out.println(t+"?? could not get ticket"); return; } t = t.substring(i+1).trim(); %>

<get:Quote symbol="<%=t.toUpperCase()%>" id="A" />

<%=A.get(0)+": "+A.get(1)+" "+A.get(9)%>


Here our JSP file prints the quote and its chart (we've used custom tags from Coldtags suite)

In other words - all what do you need for your own Twitter bot is just an ordinary CGI script with your own processing. You can program your own script, reuse something existing component etc. And your Twitter bot could be placed on any web server with CGI scripts support.

Messaging server for Twitter

Our mashup for creating information servers on top of Twitter has been updated. Twitter 411 service lets you easily build your own information system that used Twitter as a transport layer. The idea is very transparent. You can define your own keywords as well as data, associated with the selected keywords. Users will ask service via replies or direct messages in Twitter and receive responses as replies and direct messages too. Simply, you can send request with some user defined keywords and get reply with an appropriate response.

It is like old information services with SMS. Send some formatted SMS to service number and get reply. Now you can use Twitter for such kind of services. And @t411 plays a role of "service phone number".

User defined responses could be provided as some texts (of course, the keyword owner will be able to change/update the text any time) or (what is more interesting) as URL's for the external CGI scripts. So you can reserve a keyword and provide your own CGI script for the responses. The engine simply calls this URL in order to get the response. And the text of the original request could be passed as HTTP parameter.

The usage for this service is transparent. Just send reply or direct message to @t411. Of course, for direct messages you should be mutual friend with @t411, where replies could be used without any restrictions.

Some examples or build-in services:

test - just a test for the service
t stock_ticket. E.g.: t LNKD - returns price for the ticket. This service uses an external CGI script for getting quotes.

And by the way, it is automatically a mobile service too.

Technically, mashup uses appropriate components (including Twitter taglib) from Coldtags suite.

About Google Talk Guru

Google has quietly launched Google Talk Guru, an instant message chatbot that can deliver search results and answer queries such as sports scores.

Yet another IM bot? Hey, even our project Twitter 411 is much more advanced. It supports programming models. In other words, you can program your own bots.
And all this for the big Twitter audience. There is even own Talk bot, programmed by this approach

Twitter taglib

Web-control lets you work with Twitter right from JSP code - Twitter taglib.

Our5 own server-side Twitter mashups (e.g. Twitter 411) use this component.

Free SMS

Email to SMS gateways:

http://www.funsms.net/email2sms.htm
http://leedumond.com/blog/sending-sms-text-messages-from-your-application-free/

send SMS to mobile users via email. For free. And probably could be useful for some notification applications like Twitter 411

Twitter bots

We wrote already about our Twitter mashup – Twitter 411 service. It is a web application lets you easily create your own Twitter bots. Bot here is an application that receives some requests via Twitter and responds with your own data. You define a form for the request as well as the content for the response. Here is an example for such a bot (stock market).

As a response for the bot within t411 service you can provide any CGI script (e.g. jsp, java servlet, php etc.) on your own site. See again here a complete example (JSP) for stock market bot.

And now let us see a yet another example. Now it is a weather bot.
How does it work? The source data provided by the site yr.no This site contains weather forecast around the world. And what is important, you can pickup weather data in XML or RSS format. So it is a quick deal to build some automation processing. We create a new bot for t411 service – code for the request is w

As a reaction for this bot we've set a JSP file that obtains RSS data from yr.no, presents them in mobile ready form and responds back with a link to the requested forecast. Here is a part of that file:

<div class="content">

<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/taglib374.tld" prefix="w" %>

<w:setLocation url="http://www.yr.no/place/United_Kingdom/England/London/" ttl="36000" id="A"/>

<w:forEachDay feedId="A">

<strong><%=itemTitle%></strong><br/>
<img src="<%=itemImage%>" style="border:0;float:left;padding-right:5px" alt=''/>
<%=itemDescription%><br/><br/>
</w:forEachDay>

<br/>&copy; <w:getChannelCopyright feedId="A"/>
<w:getChannelLink feedId="A" id="url"/>
<br/><a href="<%=url%>">Original data</a><br/>

</div>

code uses the Weather taglib from Coldtags suite. Tag setLocation requests rss feed (and caches it for 10 hours. Tag forEachDay outputs data. And finally we prints a copyright information as well as the back link (as it is required by yr.no)

The rest of the deal is standard. Follow to user @t411 and send him a direct message for the weather forecast you are interested in.

Here are examples (what the bot recognizes and what you have to send as direct message to @t411):

w london  get forecast for London
w paris   get forecast for Paris
w msk     get forecast for Moscow
w spb     get forecast for Sankt-Petersburg

And the result (you will get a direct message back) is a link to the mobile site with the forecast. Because it is a mobile site you will be able to open it right from your mobile phone.

The direct messages from Twitter could be delivered by SMS to user's mobile. And so – the mobile link will be delivered too. That was the original idea for t411 service – Twitter could be used as an alternative model for SMS services programming. Twitter is a transport here.

Twitter calculator

A yet another interesting usage for Twitter 411 mashup: Google calculator, available via Twitter. Just send to t411 a direct message in the following format:

gc your_request

For example:

gc 100 rubles in dollars

Schedulers in web applications

What if your web application requires some periodical process? It is good when your hosting provides some kind of cron tab scheduler, lets you invoke your own application, but it is not so widely used option. One trick we've used for example in Twitter 411 mashup (periodical polling with Twitter API) simply "borrows" requests from site visitors. You can add to your site a hidden (invisible) iframe where src attribute points to the "scheduler". And your "scheduler" will perform the requests to your periodical tasks (implemented as JSP pages or servlets). This trick described here. But it is applied level timer support.

Another option (system level) is Lifecycle modules. Lifecycle listener modules provide a means of running short or long duration Java-based tasks within the application server environment, such as instantiation of singletons or RMI servers. These modules are automatically initiated at server startup and are notified at various phases of the server life cycle.
The lifecycle module classes are called synchronously from the main server thread and Lifecycle modules can create threads if appropriate.

And the third option is writing custom MBeans. See for example Timer MBean

Twitter: map on demands

One new service for Twitter - map on demands. Based on our Twitter 411 mashup (see more articles about Twitter 411 here).

It is a bot lets you obtain a map for some address. How does it work:

1. Follow to t411
2. Send to t411 a direct message in the following format:

   map some_address

  For example:

   map Palo Alto

you will get the response in Twitter (as a direct message too) with the map for the given address. The map will be delivered in the form of the static picture - so you can see it on any mobile phone for example. We are using here the same idea as in our Mobile Maps mashup - Google static maps.
Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

And here you can read the technical details - how to create the similar new bot for Twitter by your own.