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The Kik Bot Platform

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Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#41

Post by Jtsummers »

fooey wrote: post #32
RGamma wrote: post #23

BTW: KiK (different capitalization, full name: KiK Textilien und Non-Food GmbH) is also a German fashion seller: http://www.kik.de/

I'm conflicted. I think I want kik.de to sue these guys for trademark =\

Poe's law at work.

If you're serious, you don't. They operate in different domains and it doesn't make sense for kid.de to sue kik the chat company.

Trademarks do make sense (most of the time), and the application that the chat company tried to apply it to with the NPM packages was proper. Reviewing the emails (posted by the offended programmer) they even came off as pretty generous. They wanted a name, a name they'd had for a while, for a project they were releasing to the NPM platform. As others said, part of the problem is NPMs naming scheme. It doesn't allow (by convention or implementation) for sensible naming like with libraries in other languages (com.kik.bot.authentication, com.kik.bot.blah).

If you're generally opposed to trademark then I suppose you would want them to sue just to make a mess of things and eventually cause countries to get rid of it. But that's exactly why trademark law covers this issue already. Apple (computers) and Apple (music) were in different domains, consequently no problem. Once Apple (computers) got into music (via iTunes), Apple (music) had a case against them. It's also a bit more nuanced, down to locality as well.

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#43

Post by palakchokshi »

davemel37 wrote: post #37
palakchokshi wrote: post #30

Let's take an example of a general personal assistant chat bot experience and compare it to a brand chat bot experience. Remember in both cases we are typing our conversation not speaking it General/PA chat bot Me: What movies are playing tonight? BOT: HBO has XYZ from 8PM to 10PM, UVW from 10PM to midnight. Starz has ABC from 7:30PM to 10:00PM, DEF from 10PM to 12:30AM Me: No I mean what movies are playing in theate…

fair point, not withstanding what these bots can know/learn about you and your preferences. More importantly though, the general bot would have to connect to all those APIs...however, if each theater has their own bot, than perhaps the general bot can query those bots without integrating with them. So, I guess the question becomes, are bots useful to other bots..if so, than everyone will need their own bot to be foun…

to have a bot be available to other bots is the same as having an API and letting a general purpose bot connect to the API. The only advantage a BOT would then have over the API would be NLP and some personalization data and device sensor data. No matter how I look at it general purpose bots prevail but they require connecting to all those APIs like you mention. Personally I don't think BOTs in chat is the future of chat.

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#45

Post by davemel37 »

palakchokshi wrote: post #43
davemel37 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fair point, not withstanding what these bots can know/learn about you and your preferences. More importantly though, the general bot would have to connect to all those APIs...however, if each theater has their own bot, than perhaps the general bot can query those bots without integrating with them. So, I guess the question becomes, are bots useful to other bots..if so, than everyone will need their own bot to be foun…

to have a bot be available to other bots is the same as having an API and letting a general purpose bot connect to the API. The only advantage a BOT would then have over the API would be NLP and some personalization data and device sensor data. No matter how I look at it general purpose bots prevail but they require connecting to all those APIs like you mention. Personally I don't think BOTs in chat is the future of…

what do you think the future of chat is?

I am not an engineer, so I don't know enough about integrating with APIs, but I would think a bot could use natural language to talk to another bot without integrating or even know about the other bot prior to the user needing it. Essentially, the user is talking to one bot that is finding and passing along the message to the other bot and vice versa.

Bot A > finds bot b > adds bot b as friend > asks bot b for a list of a commands > forwards bot b commands to user or interprets the users natural language in a way that maps to bot b's common commands> returns any results or errors and shares whatever relevant data, acting as middle man between user and bot b.

To me this sound simpler to create than a bot that needs to map to every APIs functions, etc... Even with a middleware tool...It still needs to hook into it. However, if those APIs have conversational interfaces, than users can interact with everything magically.

Maybe my lack of tech knowledge has me imagining a utopia that isn't technically feasible...but to me this sounds like a solution that can replace 30% or more of my web and app interactions completely and simplify another 20%.

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#48

Post by geon »

potatolicious wrote: post #24
devit wrote: post #7

Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty? Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want…

It can be, but with a bunch of caveats that I'm not sure people are fully aware of. There's a fair bit of over-enthusiasm about chat interfaces and IMO not a lot of realization of its limitations. The usefulness of chat interfaces is proportional to how complex the task is and how poorly the user understands the scope and structure of the task. To use a contrived example, if you have no idea what's left in your fridg…

- Computer, restock all my essential groceries.

- Sorry, I didn't quite get that.

- I want you to restock.

- Sorry, I don't know how to "Youtube Rostock". Do you want me to google that?

- Well, it's... Uh...

- I don't know what you mean by "Whale that's a".

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#49

Post by rocky1138 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #38
rocky1138 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chat programs in general, and the people that use them. I've never had a problem with SMS length as my phone splits messages into separate messages automatically. SMS is free as hell in Canada and USA. I didn't realize the situation wasn't the same worldwide. Why is it not?

I believe it's free within most countries. What's not free is across most nation boundaries (particularly non-adjacent nations). It's mostly because you're dealing with the interaction of several different networks. Also, if a company has a lock on its customers, it'll charge them what it wants to charge them. Other problems with SMS: Message order isn't guaranteed. Message delivery isn't guaranteed. You receive no n…

These are pretty valid. I guess none of those things are important enough to me, except message delivery guarantee. The thing is, I've never had it fail. And if it did, I didn't notice, so no harm, no foul.
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