Technology news

Inf.net is a community of virtual talking characters (we call them “infs”). Users can create their own infs, design their appearance and then teach them and post on blogs, social networks and homepages. Infs are like chatbots but individual, customizable and look great

eGain Communications has just released Assistant 5.0, a conversational agent that can help Web site visitors search, solve problems and purchase items via typed exchanges in conversational English.

The company says the new virtual agent learns faster and more efficiently than its predecessors, automatically converting existing knowledge—typically in the form of FAQs—into the “cases” in its knowledge base with a claimed success rate of 90%, nearly double the previous rate. The company explains that a case is a set of questions such as “Do you accept credit cards?” “Which credit cards do you take?”, for which there is a unique answer, such as “We accept VISA, MasterCard and American Express.”

The future of chatbots is just starting to unfold. Numerous applications are developed and one of Chatbots.org objectives is to find and test new chatbots and their capabilities.
For example, I have tested every chatbot compatible to America Online’s Instant Messenger which are displayed at AIM’s online gallery.

Previously the construction of believable characters based on artificial intelligence required hand-crafting thousands of sentences - aimed at creating a high-quality chat bot brain. A few creative people took up the challenge and authored some of the best chat bots around today. Until now, the tedious and expensive process of developing and training a high-quality believable chat bot remained a significant hurdle to widespread chat bot adoption.

The new, patent-pending Pandorabots SpellBinderTM technology reduces chat bot creation time enormously. Pandorabots SpellBinder automatically learns from conversational transcripts. Nothing else on the market today can create high-quality and unique chat bot characters as quickly and efficiently as Pandorabots SpellBinder (Synthetic PErsonality Language Learning for Bot Intelligence from Natural Dialog Example Recordings).

GG Pro, the professional version of the IM client Gadu Gadu,  is a feature packed, multi protocol instant messenger (ICQ, MSN, Skype, Gadu-Gadu and Jabber ready) for enterprises. It offers shared contact list and chat history, SSL encrypted communication and chat statistics. It enables fast and intuitive IM contact between all the employees, allows creating secure (encrypted with SSL) private and business chats and conferences using one of many protocols.

Yahoo Messenger Blog: Have you tried out Yahoo!’s new home page yet? This latest version gives you even more ways to customize the page with your favorite news, sites and services.

For the new Beta page, we worked with the team behind yahoo.com to create a new Yahoo! Messenger module. This new version provides a quick view of which friends are online, plus you can easily IM them right from the page. Here’s a quick look at the features of the new Yahoo! Messenger on yahoo.com:

Chatbot site that encourages you to create a virtual you and create historical and fictional characters and chat with them. Virsona’s vision is to create a platform where people can interact with digital personas called Virsonas that draw upon the memories and life experiences of those with whom they have or want to build relationships. Virsona claims to be a social Chatbot platform.

Inbenta announces the launch of “Semantic Site Search”, a new service (SaaS-based) that provides search to any website within the cloud computing. After four years of development (project codename: voldemort), this search service includes Semantic Search capabilities and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Site owners will be able to easy-integrate Semantic Search engine on their site and their content. Other features include customization, XML ,API, and real-time reporting tools.

This patent for automatically sending an audio or video reply to an iChat call is only useful for computer to computer calling, but also for iPhone to computer calling, or computer to iPhone calling.

The server could additionally be set to store video responses, such that when a person comes back online, they could view one or more clips recorded by their peers. To facilitate this, Apple proposes creating a generic video mailbox which could be accessed from iPhones or a website.

Wave is a new communication platform by Google. It’s a Frothy Collaborative Mix of Chat, Instant Messaging, Twitter and Google Docs in Real-Time:. A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more..

Gizmodo Australia:

idea is to drag email and IM into real-time—so it’s free-wheeling mesh of Twitter, IM, Friendfeed really, any other kind of service presenting semi-real-time stuff in a stream. But in Google Wave, you can share and collaborate on projects, and all of this is mashed together at once, so it might be the ultimate service for people with ADD, or enterprise looking to simulate the feeling of 10 people standing around a desk scattered with a bunch of projects, but you’re all able to work on any of them simultaneously while you’re also whispering to the cute girl across the table about the new sushi place around the corner. You start a wave with any message or photo or whatever, and you bring people into the discussion, and then they can bring other people in as well (unless you block it or start kicking people out) so it’s as public or private as you want it to be.

More screenshots and video after the break.. We can wait for the first chatbots demonstrated on this platform!