Hal links to Bing & Wikipedia

[Medeksza]

I have linked the online Hal to the Microsoft Bing search engine. Check out www.zabaware.com/webhal or apps.facebook.com/ultrahal and try to ask Hal some random facts like "What is the tallest building in the world?" or "Who was George Washington?" or anything like that. Hal now queries Bing and considers using sentences gleaned from the web if he believes they offer a better response than what he would have said otherwise.

Let me know what you think. I want to make sure it doesn't get in the way of normal conversation but becomes valuable if you want Hal to lookup some facts.  Maybe Hal could compete in some game shows now?

[Data]

I gave webhal a go with the new Bing feature and you know what?
Its working, actually very impressive if you ask me, Hal answered all my questions correctly. 

Yes im sure Hal is smarter than Watson, I believe. 

Nice work       

EDIT:
PS: this is the kind of thing I’ve wanted Hal to do for a long time and It could well take Ultra Hal to new heights, now Hal can be an educational tool. 

[lightspeed]

what about wikipedia or do you prefere bing over wikipeda or is in the way it is written out on sites as to gathering information? just curious . ( i will check out the link you provided) 

[Medeksza]

I've further refined the Bing feature and it will now cite and provide links to web pages when it uses it for a response.

I chose to use Bing over other search engines because only Bing provides an officially sanctioned application programming interface and they encourage people to use it to develop custom apps like this.

And regarding Wikipedia, I'm actually working on adding that as a data source as well. It might already be used within Bing responses but I'm directly loading the abstract version of Wikipedia (First few sentences of each article) into the Zabaware database server and will give it a slight priority over Bing if it turns up responses for a user query. That should be ready in a few days.

[Medeksza]

It took my computers about a week to sift through all of wikipedia data and format for use with Hal, but the Wikipedia database is now loaded on the ultrahal.com database server and will be used when talking with Hal at www.zabaware.com/webhal and apps.facebook.com/ultrahal

So you can now ask Hal random fact questions like "Who directed 2001: a space odyssey?" "What is Animal Farm about?" "What cheese is spiced with cumin?"  Hal will first query the local wikipedia database for an answer and if a good answer can't be found he also will query Bing.

[onthecuttingedge2005]

I have linked the online Hal to the Microsoft Bing search engine. Check out www.zabaware.com/webhal or apps.facebook.com/ultrahal and try to ask Hal some random facts like "What is the tallest building in the world?" or "Who was George Washington?" or anything like that. Hal now queries Bing and considers using sentences gleaned from the web if he believes they offer a better response than what he would have said otherwise.

Let me know what you think. I want to make sure it doesn't get in the way of normal conversation but becomes valuable if you want Hal to lookup some facts.  Maybe Hal could compete in some game shows now?

Hi Rob.

very impressive.
could you write out a vb-script plug-in that does the same thing for our standard HAL engine, I would love to have that feature available.

Thanks
Jerry

[Medeksza]

I have linked the online Hal to the Microsoft Bing search engine. Check out www.zabaware.com/webhal or apps.facebook.com/ultrahal and try to ask Hal some random facts like "What is the tallest building in the world?" or "Who was George Washington?" or anything like that. Hal now queries Bing and considers using sentences gleaned from the web if he believes they offer a better response than what he would have said otherwise.

Let me know what you think. I want to make sure it doesn't get in the way of normal conversation but becomes valuable if you want Hal to lookup some facts.  Maybe Hal could compete in some game shows now?

Hi Rob.

very impressive.
could you write out a vb-script plug-in that does the same thing for our standard HAL engine, I would love to have that feature available.

Thanks
Jerry

The wikipedia database is several gigabytes in size and requires a fairly complicated database engine setup including mysql and sphinx full text search, so it doesn't seem feasible to configure such a setup on each individual desktop. The next version of Hal will be able to integrate with the Zabaware servers though to get this functionality. It will be able to run 100% on the server or a mix of client script and server functions. So you will be able to write your own custom scripts and mix them in with the Zabaware server functions at the same time.

[onthecuttingedge2005]

ok, thanks Rob, can't wait till the next version.

[kevinvr]

now that sounds very enticing
Thanks for all your hard work Robert!

[Medeksza]

Hal now links to the Yahoo Answers database too. http://answers.yahoo.com/

[tedathome]

I put webhal on my facebook wall and also your new video with links. I'm getting some interest in emails, so far no hits on facebook messages, but I'm pretty sure some have checked out the phone apps.

[spydaz]

will all these things be in the next release?

[kevinvr]

I really like the thumbs up reply positive/negative application.
Is this something we are going to be able to use in the new version along with the webconnection?  If it is that will be fantastic. I heard that the new Microsoft OS will include vision commands to integrate kinect into the OS.  I am hoping that somehow this will be able to work with hal to get my "Kendy" robot to evolve to the next level.
Thanks to all of you hard working programmers and scripters!

[One]

With all the sequil and sentinel (Novel) DB's

WHAT HAPPENED to ACCESS??

and yes I am partial to the VB compiler...

[Will and Mr Data :) :]]

Pleased to see online Hal accessing more as we would expect,,
and good to see Mr One about.

Bye for now and be well.