Siri like functionality i.e. ask your computer any question

[Kalle]

I just checked this function out when it was released and mayby you guys have done some work on it since then, but as far as I can remeber it was mainly a help function for VC (?)..

I once tried to set up a pandorabot, and as far as I can remember it was possible to import a lot of different "sets" of dialouges to the bot, so you didn't had to program everything your self, and I think I found some packs with these kind of questions, like general kowlege, some history facts and stuff... Is it an Idea to make a voxbot that users can upload into a shared bot?
Upload it to a forum thread and some moderators imports them? that way everyone could use it, or otherwise use the uploaded files in their own bot?

Yes, but this take a lot of work. If I understand you right a user can ask to pandorabot a question like - how can I use "any command" in VC - and pandorabot give him a starting point to do this.

[jitterjames]

I don't think pandorabot would be very useful for providing help on using VoxCommando since everyone will set their VC up differently, but your idea of a moderated bot, with an area to upload pandora "mods, or topic-packs" sounds fine.  the problem is that I don't think anyone here is really that familiar with pandora bots.

If you are volunteering to moderate and figure out a way to "insert" mods into a bot that would be great.  It is not something that I am interested in spending much time on personally, but it would be great if someone wanted to explore the possibilities and share with others.

I have created a Vox bot but it is quite generic, using mostly the default settings, so you could easily create your own.  If you make some progress with it, we can modify the pandorabot commands to make it possible to talk to the bot your create, as I have done with Kalle's german bot.

[jitterjames]

It is also important to keep in mind that using pandorabots with VC requires you to use open dictation for your payload, so it will not achieve the same level of recognition accuracy that most other VC commands can.  Vox will try to guess what you are saying based on a regular language model (i.e. you could be saying anthing in *english*) and then the text gets uploaded to the pandorabot where it is matched against some possible patterns (basically regular expressions, or even simple "does it contain this word?").

A program like Siri does something similar except that it is probably looking at a few of the best guesses on what you said, rather than just one, and Siri also knows things about your location, contacts etc. which makes it possible to do a bit more and appear "intelligent".

[Christian]

Well I think my post was a bit wrong written last night, It was late and I had some beers, so to try to make some more sense;

- I thought it was some kind of help function on the existing Vox bot, but I was porbably wrong.. Think I am mixing it up with something else I was looking into at that time, and yes I can see the challange of making a bot for help topics.

-When I ment payloads I ment inside the bot (maby payload is the wrong word), something like this:

When brewing beer, and it is time to boil in some hops;
Pandorabot: Start preparing Amarillo hops for boiling (PAUSE 5MIN)
Pandorabot: cook amarillo hops now (PAUSE 10MIN)
Pandorabot: Start preparing cascade hops (PAUSE 5MIN)

VC says: Start preparing Amarillo hops for boiling
VC waits: 5 min
VC: says cook amarillo hops now
and so on..

Not sure how it would work and not sure if it is possible to make som kind of "code" inside the bot that VC could fetch without reading it aloud, but just make an event from..

I don't have that much spare time these days, but I would like to look some more into the Pandorabot field again and see if I can figure out something.
If you want James, I can see if I have those files I was talking about..

[Christian]

I've started to look a bit into aiml again, and so far I have implemented some packs and there are now around 95000 so called categories on this bot.

http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=a2222bd24e342919

I have not had the time to test it that much yet, but I will look into it soon.

[Mark Norville]

Just had a look at this Pandora bot thing. Some responses are stupid such as asking what time it is and they reply do I look like a clock?

Some questions asked would be good, such as when you ask what artist this is.

The script has somewhere the ability to ask for google searches, although I love this program, but there is flash and then there is sad.

I personally do not want to have hours of conversation with a computer, I would sooner join a dating site and find a real friend to talk too.

Yes I want to be flash if I have a bird over and say something like isn't this romantic and the lights dim, and romantic music starts playing.

Certain commands are good but no need for a full on conversation with your computer. Do you like Bill Gates, of course I do he created the software you are running. Well I hate him, well use Linux then you idiot.

[MrWolf]

Dude,

Just don't use it then.  I too would like full on Siri functionality, and we got some of the way there with ask.com.  See earlier in the thread.

But if you don;t like chatting to an insulting computer then the bot isn't for you.  As far as I can tell it was made for a bit of fun.

-P

[Graves]

I have installed this script and when I ask a question it hears me and brings up what I said. When it comes to the answer all I get is TTS saying RESULT.  I have no idea why its not pulling up an answer

[nime5ter]

Are you referring to the Ask.com command group that James shared in April 2012 (i.e., VcGrp_ask_com.xml)?

If so, the problem is that the Ask.com website has changed since then. James's command scrapes the search results page and then uses regular expressions (Results.RegExSingle) to isolate the strings that contain the answers to a query (the command looks for a particular character pattern in the page source).

Unfortunately, now the Ask.com website works much like Google.com and uses a lot of javascript and hidden wizardry, so that solution will no longer work.

[nime5ter]

If you're looking for a conversational Q&A style of thing, you could try James's Pandorabot command posted here: http://voxcommando.com/forum/index.php?topic=431.msg9431#msg9431

Personally, I prefer the Chomsky Pandorabot. The ID for Chomsky is b0dafd24ee35a477. To use the Chomsky bot you'd edit the "PandoraBot.f6d4afd83e34564d" in the original command to make it "PandoraBot.b0dafd24ee35a477".

[Graves]

Ok guys thanx.  I had no clue ask.com changed.  I appreciate the help.

[jitterjames]

You can try this crazy command.  It does not always work, but sometimes it will surprise you. 

You need to enable the RoboBrowser plugin.

Code: [Select]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<command id="179" name="++duck duck query" enabled="true" alwaysOn="False" confirm="False" requiredConfidence="0" loop="False" loopDelay="0" loopMax="0" description="">
  <action>
    <cmdType>RoboB.Select</cmdType>
    <cmdString>duckduck</cmdString>
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <action>
    <cmdType>RoboB.Show</cmdType>
    <cmdString />
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <action>
    <cmdType>RoboB.Navigate</cmdType>
    <cmdString>http://duckduckgo.com/html/?q={1}</cmdString>
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <action>
    <cmdType>VC.Pause</cmdType>
    <cmdString>1000</cmdString>
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <action>
    <cmdType>RoboB.Wait</cmdType>
    <cmdString />
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <action>
    <cmdType>RoboB.ElementByID</cmdType>
    <cmdString>zero_click_abstract</cmdString>
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <if ifBlockDisabled="False" ifNot="False">
    <ifType>LastActionSuccess</ifType>
    <ifParams>&amp;&amp;</ifParams>
    <then>
      <action>
        <cmdType>RoboB.GetText</cmdType>
        <cmdString />
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>Results.RegExReplace</cmdType>
        <cmdString>Computed.by.*?$</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>Results.RegExReplace</cmdType>
        <cmdString>More.at.*?$</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>OSD.ShowText</cmdType>
        <cmdString>Question: {1}{CR}{LastResult}</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>TTS.Speak</cmdType>
        <cmdString>{LastResult}</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>VC.StopMacro</cmdType>
        <cmdString />
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
    </then>
    <else />
  </if>
  <action>
    <cmdType>RoboB.ElementRegex</cmdType>
    <cmdString>div&amp;&amp;^&lt;div class="snippet</cmdString>
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <if ifBlockDisabled="False" ifNot="False">
    <ifType>LastActionSuccess</ifType>
    <ifParams>&amp;&amp;</ifParams>
    <then>
      <action>
        <cmdType>RoboB.GetText</cmdType>
        <cmdString />
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>System.SetClipboardText</cmdType>
        <cmdString>{LastResult}</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>Results.RegExReplace</cmdType>
        <cmdString>[^\.]*?\.\.\.</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>TTS.Speak</cmdType>
        <cmdString>{LastResult}</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
      <action>
        <cmdType>OSD.ShowText</cmdType>
        <cmdString>{LastResult}</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
    </then>
    <else>
      <action>
        <cmdType>TTS.Speak</cmdType>
        <cmdString>I'm not sure.</cmdString>
        <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
      </action>
    </else>
  </if>
  <phrase>duck duck</phrase>
  <payloadDictation>payloadDictation: Regular</payloadDictation>
</command>
It help to know what kind of questions work well:

duckduck Who is the fastest man alive
duckduck What is the circumference of the moon
duckduck What time is it
duckduck What time is it in New York
duckduck How far is New York from Montreal
duckduck What is an anvil
duckduck How old is George Clooney
duckduck Define juxtaposition
duckduck Who is the largest person in the world
duckduck What is the population of India
duckduck How tall is the Space Needle
duckduck Who won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2010
duckduck What is a tree frog
duckduck When was the Jurassic period
duckduck How tall is Michael Jordan
duckduck What is the gross domestic product of Illinois
duckduck What is the current phase of the moon
duckduck How far away is the sun

[Graves]

Thanx James. That works a little better than that weird pandorabot lol

[nime5ter]

Personally, I prefer using the duckduckgo command without the RoboBrowser window popping up, so I deleted the action:

Code: [Select]

<action>
    <cmdType>RoboB.Show</cmdType>
    <cmdString />
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
Though having that window visible is useful for testing ... and for consulting the second search result when DuckDuckGo's first hit is something stupid.

[mrmagica]

Slightly off topic. I liked the ask.com idea for a bit of fun, however obviously it doesn't work now. I thought I'd type some questions in to see how well it would have responded... answer is crap totally useless. "how old is the queen" brought up a load of stuff about who she was. How to boil an egg, a few adverts nothing much else... however I did find a new site...

http://www.kgbanswers.com/

I have no idea about scrapers and API's etc, maybe James can answer. But it seems really good. Here are some slightly open questions with great answers. Just the first three I typed in.

Q: How old is the Queen?
A: Queen Elizabeth II was born as Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor on April 21, 1926 in Mayfair, London. She became Queen at the age of 25, and is currently 86.

Q: how long does it take to cook a boiled egg
A: To get a perfect hard boiled egg, boil them for about 10-15 mins. 6 eggs boil at the same rate as 1.

Q: who is the actor from die hard
A:  Bruce Willis is the main actor of Die Hard. The movie is based on a 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever!


Pretty great answers, all correct what I was looking for. It does return a number of links, don't know if that makes it harder. All these answer were link 1.