This has all got me thinking.  The default gallery does not seem to have a tagging facility and I cannot seem to find an alternative that does.

So I was wondering about Flickr - I’ve just started using it and they have a non-commercial API :

http://www.flickr.com/services/api/

With something like that it would be possible to do the “Show me my photos of Cambridge” don’t you think ?

Sorry if I am going off topic, just say..

Roger Davie - May 7, 2012:

I tried saying a few things “Open my photos”, “Show me my photos”...I guess I am saying the wrong thing - what should I be saying please ?

I initially coded it so you had to say the following key words, “SHOW me my PHOTOS of when I went to London” just to get it going. I since amended it to recognise a few extra phrases meaning the same thing. You were just a bit too quick for me

Yes works a treat Steve thanks again

I set up a bot with CallMom at Pandorabots and am playing around with it today.

I found Flickr needs an API key to process some requests, so I am not sure about that now.  I thought about building a service on my webspace as a sort of mediator to first process the API call and then make some mobile friendly output…still thinking about that.

In the meantime I got this to work :

I put the word ‘please’ in there so it doesn’t fire off the patterns you already have and I didn’t want to go tinkering yet.

So you can say “Please display a cat” and you get a lot of cat pictures.  Although I am not fond of Flickrs mobile version of their site, I think it could be a lot better.  Try for example dabs.com - that’s a good example of a decent mobile targeted website.

I noticed in the CallMom docs there is mention of processing XML responses from a URL.  Are there any examples at all please ?

Another option available is Photobucket and I found they have a much nicer mobile version of their site.  Try this for example :

Much nicer I think.  These days when you ask for a picture of a house you get Hugh Laurie…

Roger Davie - May 8, 2012:

Yes works a treat Steve thanks again

I noticed in the CallMom docs there is mention of processing XML responses from a URL.  Are there any examples at all please ?

Hi Roger, the <urlget> tag was our first idea for accessing web services.  The problem was, we had to write a different parser depending on the data source: WolframAlpha, Wikipedia, Trueknowedge etc. all use different XML formats for the results.  Then one of our partners came up with the BotEcho service which effectively hides all the details of this XML parsing from the app.  All of the parsing is implemented in the BotEcho server.  So we stopped developing the <urlget> tag. 

You can still play around with <urlget> and see if it works for you.  As an alternative, you can try <botecho>THE QUESTION YOU WANT TO ASK</botecho>.

I’ll give it a go then, I was just wondering how far I can go in that direction.  I’m dabbling with making some web services that do the crunching and then deliver it to the phone.  Not really sure if that’s a great way of doing it, but it interests me anyway.  Maybe I will have to get back to my Java and make some kind of helper app.

At the moment, I just decided to have CallMom open up my Flickr app and I go from there.  Searching Google images is probably where it’s going to be the most useful to me, saving me typing things in all the time.

So I got it to launch apps okay, is there a way of passing arguments to those apps ?

I’m unsure how to pass parameters to an app.  Our <launch> tag takes the package name of an app and launches it.  Can you give us an example of an app you’d like to pass parameters to?

You got me Richard, I don’t know, nor do I have an app in mind specifically - I just presumed that it might be possible in the Android OS.  I will get back to you on that at some point, there’s no rush from my point of view

I did a little “constructive Googling”, and came up with this.

Of interest, however, was this page, which looks useful, at least to me.

Thanks Dave. 

We do have a bug/feature request issue tracking system at
http://code.google.com/p/aiml-en-us-pandorabots-callmom/issues/list

We’d appreciate anyone posting feature requests there so we don’t forget them!

Thanks and noted.  I’ll try and flesh my idea out a bit more first and follow up on what Dave discovered.

> http://twitter.com/mendicot/status/230076137366237184

Sweet, just unboxed my new #Nexus7 tablet .. and already talking with @MitsukuChatbot on @Pandorabots CallMom Beta http://bit.ly/Jl22ka  ..

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post so I’ll quickly introduce myself…
I’m a novice botmaster and no expert on code but have been messing around with aiml.  Once I found callmom with the <oob> commands etc. I realised the potential! With a bit (/lot)of tinkering/app dev I reckon automate my home (I obviously have more immediate and simpler goals though!)
I’ve got a phone running froyo 2.2 and dug out an old eeepc (and booted ICS as the os).  As I said I’m just messing around really linking my pandorabot with callmom… I’ve not really done anything complicated but attached my extra bits.  You may recoil in horror at my sloppy code!

PS Sorry if there is a more appropriate forum for me or if I should have introduced myself on the main board but any suggestions/info is very much appreciated.

Thanks!

> http://www.meta-guide.com/home/ai-engine/home-automation

I’ve got a Meta Guide webpage full of resources for “Dialog Systems in Smart Home Automation & Domotics (Domestic Robotics)”, above. 

> http://www.chatbots.org/ai_zone/viewthread/1001/

One of the issues with AIML and Pandorabots is the absence of a good “middleware” for integrating APIs; I’m currently looking into iPaaS, or integration PaaS.

> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/homeos/

You might have a look at the new Microsoft HomeOS, Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, and Kinect for Windows, which has speech capabilities.

> http://ifttt.com/channels

IFTTT is an interesting new service with an increasing number of easy integrations for realworld devices, such as WeMo, as well as with mobile such as Pushover, facilitating the promised Internet of Things.

> http://twitter.com/mendicot/status/228171192052379648

There are other new services similar to IFTTT specifically for mobile, such as Triggers http://whatgoesin.com & on{X} http://onx.ms (from Microsoft Israel, and so may play well with HomeOS).

Wow. thanks! Just what I’ve been looking for, I’d been told about ITTT before but didn’t realise that it’s more than just web applications.  Forgot to attach my extra bits of aiml for you (or do I have to have a certain amount of posts to attach files?)
Anyway, Thanks again Marcus that’s perfect!