“People want that two-way conversation…” – Conversational Mobile in a Nutshell

May 3, 2011 By

There’s a terrific post over at Mobile Commerce Daily HERE that extracts quotes and  a video from Herman Nell, VP/CIO of PETCO as well as Katie Grisko from PETCO with regard to mobile engagement and consumers.

Some key quotes:

“Customers want to have a conversation with you and they want you to provide them with the content they’re looking for…”

“People want that two-way conversation and they want to carry on with that conversation when it’s right for them.”

“…companies looking to extend to mobile should think of unique content for the specific channel, as opposed to copying and pasting from their Web site.”

It’s nice to hear others articulating the need for conversational mobile marketing.

Enjoy the read.

 

 

 

Filed Under: AI conversational network, Brands and Mobile, Conversational AI, mCoupons, Mobile, mobile marketing, Virtual Agents, WAP Chat Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Conversational Mobile Apps – Defining Products

April 30, 2011 By

Having been down this path before with developing emerging media technologies, it’s always a terrific moment when the business makes the transition from “defining technology” to “defining applications” to then “defining products.”

contentAI studios have been developing it’s technology for over a year while testing in various applications and seeing market response and adoption — Over the past month, the “product definitions” have become far more clear (at least, the initial product offerings, as there are others which will follow).

- Conversational Mobile Campaigns — Motivated, directed conversational engagement with a purpose:  enter a contest, acquire a contextual mCoupon, engage in an entertaining interactive story. . .i.e. drive the User to take a specific action in an enjoyable exchange.

- Mobile FAQs — This is the economical version of the platform that allows a Brands mobile web site to deliver deep information and graphics without a complex user navigation or dense, unreadable text.

-  Conversational mLearning with emphasis on ESL — Our http://ESLai.com initiative is roaring along; the consumer-facing Beta apps are now accessed in over 100 Countries from both mobile web and Android app stores.  We’re keen to engage in partnership opportunities with ESL curriculum providers, schools and regional mobile content portals.

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What are the future products?

Interactive eBooks with a focus on children’s entertainment and mLearning is high on our list.  And, beyond campaign/marketing apps, we see the platform serving as a complementary story-platform for motion pictures and television — widgetized TV is a space that is fascinating to consider.

Stay tuned.

Filed Under: AI conversation, AI conversational network, Brands and Mobile, Conversational AI, ESL, mLearning, Mobile, mobile marketing, Products, Virtual Agents Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

contentAI will be at Ad:Tech San Francisco – Let’s Connect.

April 7, 2011 By

Interested in connecting in person during Ad:Tech in San Francisco from 11-13 April 2011?

Want to learn more about conversational mobile marketing and entertainment offerings from the team?  We’ll be showing some private Beta demos with new features and discussing how our integration with apps will further expand the platform.

Pop us an email and let’s connect.

Filed Under: AI conversation, Brands and Mobile, Conversational AI, mLearning, Mobile, mobile marketing, Virtual Agents Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Conversational Mobile Marketing – Interesting Bits from the Week

March 25, 2011 By

Fascinating week here.  We wrapped  the http://ESLai.com conversational apps into Android with the http://appsgeyser.com online platform.

We’re anxiously awaiting AppsGeyser to tweak their platform so that the apps can be submitted into the new AMAZON Android App Store (whatever it will be called???).  Word is “about 2 weeks.”  In the meantime, the apps are already on the main Android Market, GetJar and a few others.

The news that BLACKBERRY’S tablet will be compatible with Android apps was a fascinating development in terms of some level of standardization emerging.  We hope more OS’s will allow x-platform app access.  We still highly believe in mobile web and a build-once strategy; but, the AppsGeyser solution allows us to leverage our single build but be found in multiple locations.

Finally, we were impressed with the Vid.ly “universal URL” offering to deliver optimized video across all mobile (and desktop) devices and platforms.  Very cool.  It also has an embed feature which is the first we’ve seen for mobile (though we’ve talked about it endlessly).

Filed Under: AI conversation, AI conversational network, Brands and Mobile, mLearning, Mobile, mobile english, mobile marketing, Virtual Agents Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mobile Web First, But Apps as Backup – Single Build Practice

March 18, 2011 By

We are proponents of pushing mobile web builds and delivery.  Most content and user experiences don’t require Apps — the bells and whistles they offer are often hollow.  Plus, mobile web is increasingly capable of delivering those same bells and whistles, ideally, used well.

That said, a whole lot of people Search for Apps and with the emerging tools and platforms that can wrap a well constructed mobile web site in an App-Shell, there is no reason not to offer the single-build content through App stores as well, in native formats.

We undertook the first “wrapping” of our ESLai.com conversational apps and porting to Android by using the http://AppsGeyser.com platform.  It was a breeze. It’s a push button operation and a download (plus distribution through their App Store); this allowed adding the Apps to the Android Store as well as GetJar; where they get secondary pick-up through their affiliates.  Yes, we’ll do an iOS version too; but, we really like Android here, so it was first on the list.

Here’s where you can pick up the Android version of the two ESL conversational simulations (plus, it’s still on mobile web, where any WAP or HTML browser can access them):

ANDROID MARKET:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dreamstep.wESL_Conversational_Sim_Pizza

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dreamstep.wESL_Conversational_Sim_Picnic

 

APPSGEYSER MARKET (with QR Code for Download):

http://www.appsgeyser.com/getwidget/ESL+Conversational+Sim.Pizza

http://www.appsgeyser.com/getwidget/ESL+Conversational+Sim.Picnic

 

 

Filed Under: Brands and Mobile, Conversational AI, ESL, iPad, Mobile, mobile english, mobile marketing, WAP Chat Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Conversational ESL and Conversational Mobile Marketing – 2 sides, 1 coin

March 15, 2011 By

contentAI studios are pleased to operate the sub-unit, ESLai.com, which is engaged in mobile conversational simulations for ESL students.  Currently, the ESLai.com initiative is in full-swing with it’s initial two applications in circulation as a global consumer-facing products.

Not many web apps will pick up visitors from 30-50 Countries per day in their first week of release.  But, “ESL” content, particularly, due to the high  demand for conversational learning content, attracts Users daily, from the pool of over 1 Billion ESL learners around the World.

The benefits of sharing technology and creative resources between “commercial” (marketing and entertainment) and “mLearning” are enormous.  ESL students by their very nature may not use perfect English – They’re learning! This means that the Natural Language Processing, as well as scripted dialogue skills and techniques must be developed to work with imperfect phrasing.  To some degree, this also helps us with our children’s content, where, again, children are learning the language and may not always input sentences with perfect grammar.

NLP still can’t handle typos very well (unless it’s words over 6 characters long); but, we try to find workarounds for commonly misspelled words.

The work our commercial side has done, in terms of creating more graphically attractive mobile web experiences and improving User Navigation all benefit the mLearning division as well.

We like that kind of cross pollination of ideas and technology.  Everyone wins.

Filed Under: Conversational AI, mLearning, mobile marketing, Virtual Agents, WAP Chat Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Conversational Virtual Agents, Mobile and Visual Avatars…

March 10, 2011 By

Over at Forrester, Diana Clarkson’s blog brought up an interesting topic – What should avatars look like for virtual agents?

http://blogs.forrester.com/diane_clarkson/11-03-09-what_should_a_virtual_agent_look_like

As you can see, or not see, we don’t incorporate visual avatars with our contentAI virtual agents, characters or mLearning applications (See:  ESLai.com)

Why not?  Especially since the Principals of the company come from a deep motion picture and CGI background?

Basically, the technology isn’t good enough right now for real-time, on the fly,  virtual avatars.  Yes, we could pre-render much of them and pull off some fancy tricks to cover text-to-speech realtime adjustments — But, we don’t find this to be satisfying for the end user.  Frequently, the end user doesn’t want to turn up the volume and listen – Nor do they want to watch…when reading allows them to quickly scan/read or look away and return to the content on their own schedule.

As one comment on the Forrester blog mentions, using the dialogue itself to paint the picture for the end user is consistent with our approach.  The end user’s imagination fills in many blanks.  As we review the (anonymous) chat logs and see 10-20 minute sessions, we know the end user is “buying into” the experience without the aid of a cartoonish animation.

Our preference is for incorporating a video, audio or still image within the first step of a chat session to “establish” the experience, then, let the User create their own “vision” from there.  This also personalizes the user experience more than if we provided a simplistic visual.

We did like the follow up COMMENT from Clarkson on the post:

“I think we’ll see a lot of interesting developments in the virtual agent space with mobile in the coming year.”

In our opinion, that’s starting today!  Right here.

 

Filed Under: AI conversation, Conversational AI, Friendly machines, mLearning, Mobile, mobile marketing, Virtual Agents, writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Our ESLai.com Division gets a nice Shout Out

March 9, 2011 By

Greatly appreciated to see the post today on:

http://esl.about.com/b/2011/03/09/practicing-conversations-in-english-on-your-mobile-phone.htm

Introducing our ESLai.com unit’s new mobile web “conversational ESL simulations” for mLearning.  While our commercial applications are the focus of this blog, seeing the high profile mention of our work in mLearning was very nice to see.  There’s alot of creative and technology cross-over that occurs behind the scenes between “commercial” and “mLearning,” both verticals benefit from each others efforts.

Thanks!

 

 

Filed Under: AI conversation, AI conversational network, mLearning, WAP Chat Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

New User Interface on Mobile Web Conversational Marketing Channel

February 22, 2011 By

The new graphical elements and user navigation only available on client projects has now been applied to our online demos.

The graphical enhancement allows more branding and user call-to-action features on the Landing Page.  The user navigation revision streamlines the actual chat experience and accelerates the user experience by over 50% — Also, making it more intuitive, as the User now can read and respond from the same page.

Want to take a look?  The mobile web URLs are below — Send them to your phone and enjoy:

SHOPGIRL: http://m.contentAI.com

CAPNWAG: http://cw.contentAI.com

MYSANTATALK: http://m.mysantatalk.com

And, coming soon!  Two mobile web ESL conversational simulations (from:  http://ESLai.com).

Filed Under: AI conversational network, Brands and Mobile, Conversational AI, mCoupons, mobile marketing, Virtual Agents, WAP Chat Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Bridges to Mobile Converging – QR, 2D, Image Recognition, and more…

February 17, 2011 By

While we’re  mobile content folks, we always think about how Users get to the mobile experience from the real world.

There’s text messaging (keyword/shortcode), there are short URLs, but, there are the barcodes (competing formats), of QR, 2D, Tag, image recognition and proprietary formats such as JagTag that are readerless solutions.  NFC is on the way, big time.

This past week has seen a flurry of shuffling among some key barcode companies or designers who focus on barcodes:

1.  JAGTAG now offers a QR option for reader or readerless engagement:  LINK

2.  SCANLIFE now offer a readerless option (MMS, much like JagTag have offered in the past; and, I believe SPARQcode offered this first, last year):  LINK

3.  WARBASSE DESIGN, who’ve done really innovative designer QR work have partnered with an image recognition platform that also appears to grab Location Data in the process (very cool):  LINK

When you look at a product like GOOGLE’S “GOGGLES,” which has image recognition and QR reading built into a single application, what we see is the blurring of individual technologies (which have been battling for dominance based on their technology), who are now focusing on making it as easy as possible for the End User to bridge from the real-world to a mobile experience.

This is terrific to see, on all fronts.  These three companies, among others, are expanding the size of the “pie,” not just trying to protect their own niche.  Barcodes, Image Recognition and NFC will all be increasingly major factors in creating seamless and intuitive bridges to mobile engagement.

It’s great to see the focus on increasing the quality and quantity of User Engagements.

Filed Under: AI conversation, Brands and Mobile, Conversational AI, mobile marketing, QR TAgs, Virtual Agents, WAP Chat Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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