Dear Pandorabots Users,

We have finished performing maintenance on our free servers. The maintenance was aimed at resolving server performance issues, and although the initial results appear promising we remain unsure how our changes will scale with actual load. Please report any unusual changes in service, performance issues, or broken links that you notice with messages to info@pandorabots.com.

A Summary of User Visible Changes and Notes

- We have updated the FAQ, About and Support Pages.

- You can now change your password. Click the new Profile tab to change your password on Pandorabots

- We have replaced the mailing lists with a new service: http://forum.pandorabots.com

We need your help! We invite your feedback on the new service (hosted on shapado.com) for providing community support. Access the service by clicking the link: http://forum.pandorabots.com. You will be automatically redirected to the new service (so that we can switch the service later if necessary).

So, how can you help? Put questions into the service - as many as possible. Send feedback to info@pandorabots.com on any aspect of the service, positive or negative.

Thanks for your continuing participation.

The Pandorabots Support Team

Pandorabots scheduled maintenance

Dear Pandorabots Users,

On July 16, 2010 at 7pm (PST) we will be performing maintenance on our free servers. While we hope to perform this maintenance in 8 hours or so, we may need up to 24 hours to complete the maintenance.

The maintenance is intended to address several of the unresolved server performance issues.

We will be transferring the mailing lists to a new service at this time as well. The details will be posted afterward.

In an earlier letter we described discovering inexplicable software problems leading to some deleted files. We believe we identified the causes of these problems, and we are currently modifying our backup software, and expect to finish these modification when we restart the free server after performing the maintenance. For complete safety, we strongly urge each of you back up your pandorabot files to your own machines by following these instructions:

Under the AIML tab, look at the AIML files. Some of the files may be library files and some may be custom "local" AIML files that you created. You do not need to back up library files. You only need to save a copy of the local files that you created. Pay special attention to the file called "update.aiml". This is where Pandorabots places any categories created with the Training Interface. Use the Download link to save a copy of each AIML file to your own computer.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience our pending maintenance procedure may cause you.

The Pandorabots Support Team

Chatbots 3.0 Conference Video Report (plus one)

Robert Lockhart	Ilya Gelfenbeyn	Vladimir Veselov	Richard Wallace
Rollo Carpenter	Robert Medeksza	Erwin van Lun	Adeena Mignogna
Francis X. Taney, Jr.	Mark Chavez	John Zakos	Richard Wallace

Here is an index to the full video report of the Chatbots 3.0 conference, held in Philadelphia on March 27, 2010. You can find links to the presentations here: http://alicebot.blogspot.com/2010/04/chatbots-30-presentations.html

Playlist index: By clicking "Play all videos" you can watch an entire presentation.

1. Robert Lockhart - Integrating Semantics... `
2. Ilya Gelfenbeyn - User Generated Chatbots
3. Vladimir Veselov - Eugene Goostman the Bot
4. Richard Wallace - Pandorabots Overview
5. Rollo Carpenter - Learning, Creating, Phrasing
6. Robert Medeksza - Ultra Hal AI Technology
7. Erwin van Lun - Chatbots as a Business
8. Adeena Mignogna - Before you quit your day job...
9. Francis X. Taney, Jr. - Legal and I.P. Issues for Botmasters
10. Mark Chavez - Chat-able Characters in Cinematics
11. John Zakos - How Chatbots Outperform Humans
12. Plus one more...Richard Wallace ALICE and AIML: Personal, Historical, Philosophical Perspective

AIML Superbot 2.1

The ALICE A.I. Foundation has released an upgrade to the AIML Superbot, our development kit that makes it easy for you to create a chat bot with its own unique and proprietary personality distinct from the ALICE bot.

The AIML Superbot uses the top 10,000 most activated patterns from the ALICE brain to create a blank template for a bot. By filling in the responses one by one, you can build up a unique personality of your own design.

If you do not with to write your own responses, the AIML Superbot also includes the original responses from the free ALICE bot. You can also mix and match and create a bot that blends your responses with ALICE's.

The Superbot 2.1 includes several refinements:

• Improved documentation
• Simplified basic personality profile patterns (AGE, NAME, GENDER...)
• Sample starter bot
• Pattern activation rank and frequency data
• Created using the latest version of ALICE Showcase Edition

Purchase the Superbot development kit today for $999. For more info see http://alicebot.org/superbot.html

Discounts available for youth, seniors, students, disabled, non-profits and hobbyists.

Update on Server Problems

As reported on April 12:

As-yet unexplained errors occurred on the free Pandorabots server (located at www.pandorabots.com) during the first week of April. Only the free server was affected, and our other (paid) pandorabots servers were not affected by the errors. Only some users are affected, and we are unsure how many were affected. Some users have reported bot files missing, and we've verified these files were deleted by some unknown process. With some work, we've also independently identified some users with missing files who have yet to notice they are missing.

We asked those of you with deleted files to send us a report telling us which files were lost and for which bots, and thankfully, so far, we have been able to recover all the reported lost files. We are unsure how many files are still missing, and some of you have simply remained unaware you are missing files.

However, the cause of the server problems still remains unresolved. Until we resolve this problem we can only offer the following work around of backing up your files.

For this reason, we continue to recommend that botmasters always take the precaution of backing up their AIML files. You can back up your files by following these simple directions:

Under the AIML tab, look at the AIML files. Some of the files may be library files and some may be custom "local" AIML files that you created. You do not need to back up library files. You only need to save a copy of the local files that you created. Pay special attention to the file called "update.aiml". This is where Pandorabots places any categories created with the Trian interface. Use the Download link to save a copy of each AIML file to your own computer.

Reporting Lost Files:

We may be able to recover any remaining missing the files from earlier backups, and if we are to do so successfully, we will need those of you with missing files to send us a message including your name, pandorabots user name (which is generally the same as your email address) and name and botid's of any of your bots that you suspect are missing any files. (To find the botid, look at your bot's published link. For example the ALICE bot located at URL http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=f5d922d97e345aa1 has a botid f5d922d97e345aa1). We lack resources for automatically discovering the users with missing files, so we are asking users to determine if they are missing files, and report the associated botids to us.

You may contact us by sending e-mail (ideally) to drwallace@pandorabots.com, or by calling +1-609-379-2552.

We are very sorry for the trouble we've caused you. We will provide an update letter when we identify the cause of the problems.

The Pandorabots Support Team

Dear Pandorabots Users,

The next time you make a friend in the online community Smallworlds, it could turn out to be a Pandorabot.

Smallworlds is a fast-growing online virtual world that runs in a browser instead of requiring you to download a graphics-intensive application. Members of Smallworlds create avatars and use these to have shared experiences like chatting, watching videos, playing games, or listening to music.

Pandorabots is a chat bot hosting service. From any browser, you may create and publish your own bots for web pages, instant messenger services, virtual worlds and many other places. Pandorabots utilizes a patented memory management algorithm that scales in number of bots, amount of bot knowledge, and number of conversational interactions. The bots are based on AIML and spring entirely from the work of the A.L.I.C.E. and AIML free software community.

Pandorabots offers a unique experience for members Smallworlds. One of the first bots deployed there is named Shelley, who works in the Smallwear virtual store. Shelley can provide useful information about products for sale in the store. But also, Smallworlds members enjoy having silly conversations with the robot, just to see what she will say. You’ll often find a crowd around Shelley as groups of people all try talking to her at once.

Virtual currency in Smallworlds is called Gold. Smallworlds offers many different ways for participants to get Gold. One fun aspect of Smallworlds is exploring it to look for new ways to earn Gold. People will engage Shelley in conversations asking if she can give them Gold. Can Shelly give you Gold? Just keep talking to her and maybe you will find out!

http://www.smallworlds.com

http://www.pandorabots.com

Contact:
Evan Lessmore
lessmore@pandorabots.com
+1-609-379-2552

Demos and Origins

• Fake Kirk Interview
• Two Bots Talking: Fake Kirk and A.L.I.C.E. [there are 7 videos of Two Bots Talking demos]
• Origins of ALICE and AIML: From Turing to the Web

Introduction to Pandorabots

• Pandorabots: Create an Account and Create a Bot
• Make Money with Subscription Bots

Bot Content

• No Initial Content Part 1 of 3
• AIML Targeting: Supervised Learning for Bots
• Editing Bot Content with a Spreadsheet Editor
• Creating AIML Content with ReversedAIML

Predicates and Properties

• Talking about AIML Predicates
• Bot Properties

Custom HTML

• Creating a Mobile Application with Custom HTML
• Adding an Animated Talking Avatar with Sitepal

Favorites

• A.L.I.C.E. - Interview with an A.I.
• A.I. Driven Newscast
• Chatbots explained
• Dave the Bot is Dying - Can you help?
• Nurse education in second life at Glasgow Caledonian University

Pandorabots, Inc. is announcing a significant advance in the state of the art of chat bots based on artificial intelligence.

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 SpellBinder^TM 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).

Read the full press release...

Have you ever wanted to create your own totally unique custom bot character, as smart as ALICE, but with a completely different personality? Where do you start? It took us over ten years to build up the contents of the ALICE brain, but now your creative team can do it in about two weeks. We've put together a bot brain with blank templates. You fill in the answers.

The ALICE A. I. Foundation is offering a completely upgraded product, the Superbot 2.0, that helps you create a totally unique custom bot personality for your web site or application. The Superbot 2.0 offers you the following:

1. Top 10K AIML Categories with blank responses: We've created an AIML set with input patterns and blank responses. Use this AIML set if you want to create a totally custom bot from scratch.
2. 20K Safe AIML Reductions: AIML uses "reductions" to divide up and simplify inputs, and to link synonyms together. The "Safe" AIML reductions are designed to work with any bot. The Safe AIML Reductions save you from having to write thousands of AIML catgeories.
3. Top 10K AIML Categories with ALICE responses: The Top 10K most activated AIML categories with the original ALICE bot responses. This set can be modified easily to quickly create a new bot personality.
4. Top 10K AIML Categories split into "Atomic", "Wild" and "Reductions": "Atomic" categories are ones with no wild cards in the patterns, and no reductions in the response. "Wild" categories are ones with one or more wildcards in the pattern, and no reductions in the response. "Reduction" categories are all the ones with AIML reductions. This set helps you divide up the work of creating your custom chat bot.
5. Free Riot Software SAE AIML Spreadsheet Editor: The Simple AIML Editor is a spreadsheet-oriented AIML editor for Windows that provides all the capabilities you need to create your bot with the Superbot AIML files.

"an interesting resource...a decent value for such data."--Andrew Stren, Grand Text Auto

http://Www.AliceBot.Org/superbot.html

[May 31, 2009] We've noticed a small number of botmasters sometimes create bots that take up a lot of resources on our free server. Activity on our server indicates that these bot may be connected to other automated bot scripts and they use up resources at a rapid rate.

Automated bot spamming of our website is not only a violation of our Terms of Service, but also inconsiderate of all the other botmasters who are trying to use the same server for their projects. Pandorabots has thousands of botmasters trying to do legitimate business and hobby projects that make use of the resources we provide on our free server.