BotCube

The world's first headphones to equip artificial intelligence Did you see the “Her” movie? It is impressive, isn’t it, but not real, science fiction. Hmm, the voice part of the puzzle is already here: Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana, Sire etc. We need the head phones part for voice first UX from the “Her” movie. Welcome to the future! ‘vinci 2.0’ are the world’s first smart headphones to feature a built-in AI (artificial intelligence) assistant that utilizes biosensing hardware and neural network learning algorithms. this means that whenever users listen to music and make voice commands, it collects and analyses data, such as heart rate and location, in order to familiarize and predict their preferences. with this, the in-ear device has 3G cellular, music streaming, voice assistant, health sensors and fitness coaching under its control. https://www.designboom.com/technology/vinci-2-0-headphones-artificial-intelligence-11-25-2017/

Messenger now allows sellers to invoice buyers through PayPal’s new chat extension The feature is ideal for use with Facebook’s numerous Buy and Sell groups as well as Facebook Marketplace, in addition to being an easy way to send PayPal invoices in general. This time, the focus is on shifting small business transactions and those between buyers and sellers into Messenger. That leaves room for a product like PayPal’s to aid with transactions, given Facebook’s lack of interest in building out a payments business itself. https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/21/sellers-can-now-invoice-buyers-through-paypals-new-chat-extension-for-messenger/

Dialogflow is launching API v2 and Enterprise edition Since Google has acquired api.ai (now called Dialogflow) a long time ago, it remained completely free and hasn’t even had any pricing information anywhere on their website. But many of their clients have asked for enterprise support, and today they’re launching Dialogflow Enterprise Edition. Also, they’re releasing API v2 which is the next iteration of their developer API adding new features and capabilities, integration with Google Cloud Speech and many more. Read more about the update in their article below. https://blog.dialogflow.com/post/dialogflow-api-v2-and-enterprise-edition/

Creating voice bots is hard. Creating good voice bots is super hard. There are 16,000 Alexa skills with 0 reviews. They are Zombies. People never get back to them. The way to avoid it is to precisely understand the use case for the voice bot you’re building. To come up with some ideas, I went through top Alexa skills and read all the user reviews. And I learned a ton of stuff. Read my article below to understand what makes avoice botstand out. https://medium.com/storyline-blog/what-i-learned-from-5000-reviews-of-top-5-alexa-skills-82aa54b5fc15

I'm sure you have already seen new Messenger feature - Customer Chat Plugin. Here's a great example of how you can use it with your bot to drive leads to your Messenger channel: https://www.jonloomer.com/2017/11/07/facebook-messenger-customer-chat-plugin/

Chatbot that can trick email scammers Talking to chatbots is usually a waste of time, so why not have them waste someone else’s instead? Better yet: why not have them waste an email scammer’s time. That’s the premise behind Re:scam, an email chatbot operated by New Zealand cybersecurity firm Netsafe. Next time you get a dodgy email in your inbox, says Netsafe, forward it on to [email protected], and a proxy email address will start replying to the scammer for you, doing its very utmost to waste their time. Open the article below to see a few sample dialogues, they’re hilarious. https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/10/16632724/scam-chatbot-ai-email-rescam-netsafe

Time to build apps for Google Home Google Assistant received some major upgrades in recent days to help developers make voice apps that interact with Google’s AI assistant. Upgrades include more expressive voices, ability to send push notifications and many more. Beyond push notifications, voice apps can now deliver daily updates or notifications about certain kinds of content. Also, on Monday, Google announced that Home speakers can now be used as an intercom system. All of these features are already around on Amazon Alexa for a couple of months, so Google is still behind in this race. More info about the updates is in the article below. https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/15/google-gives-developers-more-tools-to-make-better-voice-apps/

Google’s Chatbase is finally launching to public! Most of you have probably heard or already used chatbot analytics service by Google called Chatbase. But I personally spent about a month waiting for my request approval before I get access to it. Now these problems are gone and the platform is open and free for everyone. The idea behind Chatbase’s cloud service is to offer tools to more easily analyze and optimize chatbots. This includes giving bot builders the ability to understand what works to increase customer conversions, improve the bot’s accuracy, and create a better user experience. The system today integrates with any voice or text messaging platform, Google says, including Facebook, Kik, Viber, Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, Alexa, Cortana, Allo, Line, Skype, Twitter, and more. Beyond bot analytics, the tool leverages Google’s machine learning capabilities to figure out what sort of problems could be affecting the bot. https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/16/googles-chatbot-analytics-platform-chatbase-launches-to-public/

Hey folks, most of you already know that we have the biggest knowledge base about bots - awesome-bots. It has just passed 1000 stars and continue growing! ⭐️ It’s been a while since the last huge update there, so if you’ve built something cool during this time - feel free to drop me a message (@maximabramchuk) or just go straight and open a pull request on Github. Thanks! https://github.com/BotCube/awesome-bots

Manychat guys are on fire 🔥 Two days ago I was talking about their new revolutionary Flow Builder thing and here is a new cool stuff from these guys. They’ve released a holy grail for marketers - “The Ultimate Guide To Messenger Marketing and Facebook Chatbots”. This guide was created to answer all of the unanswered questions you have about Messenger Marketing 📘 This is the most comprehensive piece of content on the web about Facebook chatbots… print it out, study it, and share with your friends! In this guide, you’ll learn how to: - Grow Your Business with Messenger Marketing - Get Facebook Messenger Subscribers - Send Messages to Your Subscribers - Automate Your Messenger Marketing With Chatbots - Use ManyChat - Integrate ManyChat with Zapier - Create a Messenger Ad Inside of Facebook - Create Destination Ads - Send a Sponsored Message - Nurture Leads inside of Messenger - Deliver Content - Deploy Retargeting - Drive More Sales - Case Studies…. and more!! 😳 Enjoy 6,000+ words of juicy Facebook chatbot goodness 🍫🍩🍰 https://blog.manychat.com/ultimate-guide-messenger-marketing-and-facebook-chatbots/

Amazon's Alexa and Prime Music service arrive in Canada Amazon will start pre-selling the Echo, Echo Plus and Echo Dot in Canada today for the introductory prices of CAD $100, $170 and $70, respectively. Shipping will start by December 5th, and Alexa will presumably be available at that point. Prime Music is available today with a Prime membership. Amazon has introduced a new English voice for Alexa with a Canadian accent, though even we Canadians aren't exactly sure what that is. However, Alexa doesn't seem to be available yet in French, which is bit surprising considering that it's one of Canada's two official languages. https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/15/amazon-alexa-prime-music-canada/

BBC releases its first Alexa-powered interactive audio drama The BBC has a rich history in radio, after having been founded as a wireless broadcaster back in the 1920s. But now, the corporation is embracing the world of interactive audio stories with the release of The Inspection Chamber, a sci-fi comedy drama that you use your voice to participate in. The experience has been developed by the BBC's R&D department alongside Rosina Sound. The experience can be downloaded from the Alexa Skill Store or the BBC Taster website, at which point you'll be able to play along as a fourth character. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0774XFXLZ/