Mobile Buddy

Table Of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Requirements
  3. User Guide and download instructions
  4. AIM Bots Reference
  5. Technical Information

Introduction

Mobile Buddy is a small MIDLet application running on J2ME phone/pda. It connects to AIM Bots  (AOL Instant Messenger Bots) using the open TOC protocol  to provide content (yellowpages,stocks etc.,.) on demand . It requires MIDP 2.0. This application is distributed under LGPL licence.

Mobile Buddy acts like a helpful friend who is always with you in your mobile phone  providing  you content on demand. It integrates with the Aol Instant Messaging complex and provides contents from the AOL Instant Messaging Bots  (Yellow Pages, Weather, Sports, News, Games, Dictionary, Wall Street Journal, Natural Language Chatting, Movies, Horoscopes, Wall Street, News, Weather  and more). It also allows users to send instant messages to their friends and receive their replies.

Note:
This application acts like an AIM client on phone using open TOC protocol and talks to the AOL supplied Instant Messaging Bots as an AIM client. It presents the responses as it is.

Requirements


User Guide :

 Install Mobile Buddy either using OTAP (On the Air Provisioning) or downloading the mobilebuddy.jad and mobilebuddy.jar files and installing them on the phone/pda. On my phone, this involved, copying the files into phone and double clicking the jad file  (I have a SMT 5600 phone with windows 2003 OS but supporting J2ME MIDP 2.0).

On activation, a splash screen is displayed.

splash


Then, the user is prompted with a form for details of whom he is and whom to chat with to get info.

agentselection

Enters the aim username/password – The user has to have an AOL Instant Messenger screenname to use this feature. You can get one free by visiting www.aim.com website and signing up for it.

The user than chooses with which agents he want to chat with.

If he wants to choose to talk as custom, he selects custom and enters his  buddy whom he want to chat with. Once he selects ok, he goes to the chatting screen.

He can start chatting now with the agent. Typical interaction can look like below screens.

chat1

 The user types in "cl 94089"  command to yellowpages bot indicating he wants to change the zipcode of search to 94089. Next, he presses the send button (softkey on right).

The Bot displays the message indicating it want to make internet connection out as shown below.

cc

The user clicks the Yes button. The mobilebuddy now signs the user into AIM system using the username/password entered in previous screen and sends the command to the aol yellow pages bot. The bot responds with the below message  indicating it has successfully set the location to sunnyvale,CA, 94089. Note that at any point of time, user can type in help and send the message to bot and bot can provide useful information of how to use it.

cc

The user can continue the interaction by typing a message - like Pizza (if he wants to find pizza places in 94089 zip code) and he presses the Send Button as shown below.

 

The agent replies back to him

 
The user can  now drill down on village host pizza by typing 2 in his phone as shown below and clicking the send button.

c4

The agent displays details of Village host pizza now.

c5

He can ask further questions to the agent or enter into a chatting session. He can go back by pressing back button and select another agent and chat with it if required.

The following agents and their respective help is provided below for reference –

Agent Reference

AOLYellowPages

 typical interaction with aol yellow pages :

User: help

AOLYellowPages: A little confused? Let me try to help you. To start a new search, just enter the search term at any time. Here are some useful Keywords:

 

cl - changes your search location

gl - gets your current search location

feedback - feedback followed by your comments

 

To view these keywords again, type "help" at any time.

 

AOLBuddy

 User: Help

AOLBuddy: Type "c" for commands. Type help followed by a feature name to see that feature's help. Ex: "help sp" for sports help.

User: c

AOLBuddy:  1. Dictionary  2. Hangman  3. Horoscope  4. Movies  5. News  6. Sports  7. Stocks  8. Weather  9. Word Scramble (m)ore

User: m

AOLBuddy:  10. Yellow Pages

 

ZolaOnAOL

 

ZolaOnAOL is a natural language chatter bot. Its help provides the below things

 User: Help

ZolaOnAOL: Help

Main Menu: Access my features from the main menu by typing menu at any time.

Calculator: Type calculator followed by a mathematical expression (e.g. calculator 100 / 25).

Default Location: Type set location to set or change your default location.

Dictionary: Type dictionary followed by the word you want defined.

Hangman: Type hangman.

Help: Type help while using any Zola feature to get feature-specific help.

Horoscope: Type horoscope followed by your astrological sign.

Movie Listings: Type movies followed by your city and state, or zip code.

Search Movie Listings by Title: Type showtimes followed by the name of a currently playing movie.

News: Type news, then type the menu item number of the news category that interests you.

Polls: Type polls, then type a menu item number to vote.

Sports: Type sports, then type the menu item number of the sports league that interests you.

Stock Quote: Type stock followed by stock symbol(s).

Stock List: To save a list of stock symbols, type stock list followed by stock symbol(s).

Add Stock(s) to Stock List: Type stock list add followed by the symbol(s) you'd like added.

Delete Stock(s) from Stock List: Type stock list delete followed by the symbol(s) you'd like deleted.

Replace Stock List: To completely replace an existing Stock List, type stock list update followed by a new set of symbols.

Thesaurus: Type thesaurus followed by a word to get the word's synonyms.

Weather: Type weather followed by your city and state, or zip code.

Word Scramble: Type scramble.

 

ZolaOnAOL: Welcome to Zola Central

  1.  Calculator

  2.  Chat

  3.  Dictionary

  4.  Games

  5.  Horoscope

  6.  Movies

  7.  News

  8.  Polls

  9.  Sports

  10. Stocks

  11. Thesaurus

  12. Weather

  q.  Quit

 

WSJ : Wallstreet journal bot

 User: Help

WSJ:

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE.

As of 18:31 EDT Monday, May 23, 2005

 

Welcome back to The Wall Street Journal Online.

REMEMBER: Use your mouse to drag the top and bottom edges of this window until it is tall and narrow.  This will provide the optimal viewing area.

 

 Main Menu --

 

 1) Manage Alerts -- New!

 2) News Menu

 3) Quotes

 4) About This Service

 5) About The Wall Street Journal Online

 6) Feedback

 7) Tell a Friend

 

Use the above commands or numbers to navigate.  Type main at any time to return to this menu.  Type help for help.

 

MLB  : Major League Baseball bot

 

User: help

MLB: MLB on AIM is a bot that allows you to access MLB data and feeds in real-time. This is version 1.0, launched for the 2004 playoffs. There will be many enhancements release during the 2005 season so check back often. Type more.

User: more

MLB: To navigate MLB v1. just use the menus presented when you type, main and follow the instructions. If you get stuck just type, main to get that menu again. Most sections can be accessed with numbers or by typing the verbose command or team names. Type more to learn about MLB Alerts

User: main

MLB: ::MLB.com MEANS LIVE BASEBALL::

- Please visit MLB.com for up-to-the-minute spring training coverage.

 

-- Main Menu --

 

1 - Alerts & Live Polls

2 - Standings

3 - Headlines

4 - Games

5 - MLB Multimedia

6 - Team Info

7 - Statistics

8 - Schedule

9 - Scores

10 - Tickets

11 - My Team

 

To navigate, type the number from the above menu and press send (enter). Type main at any time to return to the main menu.

 

FFXI : Final fantacy game bot

 

FFXI: Welcome to the home of FINAL FANTASY® XI on IM brought to you by Square Enix U.S.A.  FFXI is the first ever cross-platform, cross-continent massively multiplayer online role-playing game that allows gamers to connect to the same exact world regardless of whether they are playing on a personal computer (PC) or PlayStation®2 and whether they are playing in North America or Japan. Now you and thousands of adventurers around the world can join forces together to play in real-time. Type main to begin. Type privacy to read our privacy policy.

 

User: main

FFXI: FFXI Lobby

1 - Final Fantasy Introduction

2 - Worlds & Cultures

3 - Micro Missions - Test your FF knowledge

4 - Alerts - Have FFXI ping you on IM with info

5 - FFXI Website




Technical Details :

The sourceforge project page for this bot is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mobilebuddy/

The Mobile buddy is developed in Netbeans 4.1 Mobility Edition Rapid Application Development platform. If you checkout the files, you can open the project in netbeans edition. Typical screenshot of the project is shown below for appreciating the power of the environment.

nb

Content and Agent Chatting portion


Code reuse done from the following projects

Code organization

The JAVATOC library can be used independently of the app in anyother j2me midp 2.0 app that requires instant messaging connectivity to AIM.