
DuckDuckGo chat bot: imddg.gg - phsr
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/03/imddggg-duckduckgo-chat-bot.html
======
holman
Names are important. Putting aside that "DuckDuckGo" itself is still an odd
naming choice, this choice isn't much better, considering the blog post
mistypes it too:

    
    
        > DuckDuckGo chat bot: im@ddg.gg
        > DuckDuckGo now has a chat bot at im@ddd.gg that will respond [...]

~~~
davidhollander
> _"DuckDuckGo" itself is still an odd naming choice_

I think what makes the name weird is that it interjects not zero, not one, but
TWO hard sounds ("ck") in the middle of the name. It requires 5 movements to
speak it out loud (Du-ck-Du-ck-Go), as oppossed to 2 (Goo- Gel). One has to be
careful with adding hard sounds into the middle of product names.

~~~
michaelfairley
It's not the "ck" sound that makes it difficult/slow; it's the "ck" followed
immediately by the "d". Both sounds are stops, and stops are somewhat
difficult to produce consecutively.

Compare with a name like "Conoco", which contains the same sound that you were
complaining about in DuckDuckGo twice as well, but is much easier to say
because both occurrences of it are preceded and followed by vowels.

------
davidhollander
> _DuckDuckGo chat bot: im@ddg.gg_

> _DuckDuckGo now has a chat bot at im@ddd.gg_

Apparently the domain name even confuses the author

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Actually the author routinely makes typos, at least 3 in every post :). Fixed.

Note it is also at im@duckduckgo.com

------
Brainix
Chat bots are a lot of fun. Google App Engine handles incoming instant
messages just like other web requests, so developing a chat bot for App Engine
is quite similar to developing any other webapp.

For more info on App Engine's XMPP integration:

[http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/xmpp/overview.h...](http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/xmpp/overview.html)

And my shameless self-plug:

<http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/>

~~~
dhruvbird
On a side note, if you are looking to develop a bot using a standard HTTP
service hosted anywhere using any language (not just Python and Java) with a
better domain name (@bot.im as compared to @appspot.com), you could try
<http://www.imified.com/>

The good thing about appengine though is that everything is so well integrated
that you don't really have to look to piecing together the parts.

------
kmfrk
That URL reminds me of The King's Speech.

------
hyyypr
Great idea! I looks like XMPP services are getting more and more popular, and
it's a great thing.

I love the bot provided by Producteev to manager your tasks, it's way more
convenient than having to open your browser, login to the website, clicking in
the right place.

I hope to see more services allowing it's user to interact via a bot.

------
losvedir
> _Node.js is ideal for such routing/switching based interactions where it
> takes data from one end, pumps it to the other and does the reverse._

I've been intrigued by node.js since it comes up on HN so much, but this has
really got me interested as this describes exactly a portion of a project I'm
working on right now. In my case, the data would be copious and binary rather
than instant message text -- anyone know if node.js is performant enough to
handle that case?

~~~
dhruvbird
I would be interested in knowing the results of your findings. So, from my
brief understanding of node.js, it's well suited for such stuff. There's
special handling in node for binary data. The answer probably depends on
whether you want to blindly shuffle data (piping) or do something smart like
interpret it, etc...

A small experiment (profiled) which emulates your use-case would surely throw
some light on the question.

------
alanh

      ['i','m','d','g'].each |letter| do
        print letter * fib(i+1) # Fibonacci
      end
      # yields imddggg

------
pdx
I have a request.

Please add another alias, like ddg or duck. You're showing up as "im" in my
buddies list, and frankly, that's not very informative to me.

EDIT: Never mind, I guess I can rename you on my end.

------
tastybites
I swear half of the web is just re-implementing stuff like IRC and finger and
ytalk that have been around for nearly a quarter century.

Wish I had realized this 10 years ago.

~~~
bvi
Well, since you've realized it now, what are you going to do about it? :)

~~~
tastybites
Continue running my company, probably.

