Chatbots.org Business News

In a recent release Gartner predicted its top ten disruptive technologies for 2012. Amongst the expected and rather predictable media tablets, app stores and cloud computing, Gartner says that icons, menus and pointers will be replaced by mobile-centric interfaces such as gesture, voice and search. But voice isn’t everything. For it to be a successful method of interaction, voice needs an underlying intelligence.

If Graham Bell had journeyed into the future he would probably be amazed to see how his invention, the telephone, has entirely changed the way people communicate with each other and with their phones. No longer is the phone merely an object that enables you to talk to someone who is not in the same place as you, the phone itself has now become a personal assistant, someone you can give orders to and who will talk back to you. How did all that become possible?

You live in a big city. Each day after work you pick up your kid from a large kindergarten. One day you got the flu. You call your father and ask him to pick up his grandchild. He agrees to do it. But… will the kindergarten release the kid? How could they be sure that this is an “authentic” grandfather?

With the trend of having data stored in the cloud and continuously increasing bandwidths, the idea of a mobile phone being an individual device is no longer necessary. SecurePhone research project, funded partly by the European Commission’s Framework Program 6, aims to change the way people interact and make business. SecurePhone is expected to improve trust and confidence in new technologies by masking high-tech functionalities under the reassuring interface of a smartphone.

Researchers from Polytechnic Institute of New York University have developed multitouch gesture-based applications for logging into smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Instead of text typed passwords, they propose biometric authentication: your hand size, finger placement, and speed of movement can serve as a unique signature for login applications.

Artificial Solutions, the natural language interaction specialist that enables users to have a meaningful, humanlike interaction with technology, today announced Teneo Mobile - a platform independent alternative to Apple’s Siri technology and designed to enable organisations to create their own virtual assistant as a mobile app, regardless of platform, mobile device and even language.
Teneo Mobile allows users to interact with their smartphone or tablet using everyday, natural language - either spoken or typed - and provides intelligent, humanlike responses to queries in a user friendly, conversational style.

Spike is more than a mascot, he’s an expert. Mobile enhancement puts Gonzaga University’s Bulldog on the cutting edge of customer self-service. Gonzaga University and software company Next IT announced the launch of a Virtual Agent capable of responding to questions over the mobile phone via SMS Text, allowing students to get the answers they need anytime, anywhere.

Gonzaga University’s mascot, Spike, is an online Virtual Agent that answers questions about campus life. And now, thanks to an enhancement in his core technology, he will respond to questions about the university via text message as well.

On the Web or via mobile phone, “Ask Spike” allows users to type-in any questions they have about Gonzaga, just as though they were having a chat with an actual person. Text your questions from your mobile phone to 699247 (MYZAGS) to try it. Spike quickly returns the answer they’re looking for, along with additional links to information that may be of use. He’s knowledgeable about a wide variety of topics, easily answering questions about everything from where to find a bite to eat, how to get in-touch with a community service organization, what time different facilities such as the library open, and more.

The Swedish design team TAT (The Astonishing Tribe), has demonstrated a 3D-eyetracking UI that tracks the position of our eyes and changes the display accordingly. This really gives a feeling that objects are behind one another. Earlier the team developed the look and feel of the T-Mobile G1’s user interface which included such innovations as the window shade menu and 9-point visual key-lock.

French software company Visuamobile has come out with a new application Eliza AI, a chatterbot for your iPhone using artificial intelligence software developed by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in 1966. It was amongst the first AI programs’ and now used as a basis by most computer generated speech programs. You can converse with her on your iPhone as if she was your therapist and like all good therapists, she will answer most questions with another question.