It has been sometime since I've seen a public MSN Messenger bot based on Blobsy, a PHP-based Messenger bot framework I developed a couple of years ago. So I was quite surprised to see the Thailand-based Lady Yang bot when its developer informed me about it recently.

The bot, billed as "Lady Yang - The Gay Cupid that help you find friend or lover" on its site, makes interesting use of the Blobsy framework by adapting it to build a dating chat bot. The main function of the bot seems to be its "matchmaker" mode, which requires users to enter some details about themselves in order to assign an "animal" to match the user's personality. Users can then search for matching users that have the same "animal" as themselves.

This is certainly a departure from the usual applications that I've seen Blobsy put to use! Good luck to the developer.

I had a few minutes to spare before I hit the bed tonight, so I tended to something I've been meaning to do for a while - making a chat room service out of Blobsy.

The chat room I implemented allows for group chats on MSN Messenger without people adding each other to their contact list and also protects the email addresses from being communicated to each other thus allowing fun chats with privacy. The service which I've called "Rannamaari" is now live on [email protected]. Just add the address to your MSN Messenger contact list and open a conversation to it.

The service is rudimentary at the moment but I am open to suggestions if anyone's interested in sustaining this. I personally think this is a great way to meet and chill on the net while preserving your identity from strangers. I plan to give the ability to make separate, private rooms on the bot - pretty much along the lines of how it works in IRC.

Enjoy!

I always get much pleasure when I see my work being used elsewhere. I got a email today from the creator of the recently launched SigStat.com, informing me of its use of the Blobsy bot framework.

To quote the introduction to the service on the site:
"SigStat.com allows you to keep your forum signatures update to date by displaying your present msn status, and msn nickname, which automatically update. This innovative service is free just add your msn address and click get sig right after to get started."

The site currently has the status image available in the following layouts:

In addition to status images, there is a primitive statistics option that can display the MSN Messenger usage in terms of the status messages the user has set over a period of time. What use it can be of I am not sure, since I for one, leave my status as "Online" most times regardless of whether I am at the PC or not...

Congratulations to Adam Davis on the work. I reckon it might be a neat feature to have a large collection of status image layout/formats available, especially for usage on websites and blogs. Good luck!

Blobsy 2 just had another release checked out today. This latest release - Blobsy 2 RC8 - is, as usual, available at the Blobsy website.

I've fixed a few bugs in this latest release that hindered optimal performance and a few more that prevented desired functionality - including one that prevented the bot from starting conversations by itself. I have also updated the included Demo handler and added another handler to demonstrate the conversation starting abilities more clearly. This has been something that users have been whining for quite a while. Good that I got around to doing this finally

Microsoft has recently allowed bots on its network. It is even running a bot development competition called Invasion of the Robots. They are offering cool cash prizes for the best bots. This is probably a move to promote the new Live Messenger series.

Anyway, I intend on updating Blobsy to the functionality introduced/updated in Windows Live Messenger. Blobsy will be updated/rewritten to be compatible with MSN P13, the communications protocol used by Live Messenger. The rewrite will probably see day light as Blobsy 3 sometime next month.

One of the users of Blobsy (a PHP based bot framework for MSN Messenger I authored) has released a control panel for Blobsy. The project called Blobsy Server Window (BSW) was released by Ralphje.

I haven't given the code a go yet but the BSW project page lists the following features:

* Quiet start/stop of bot - with ability to control multiple bots
* Handle different configuration files - with ability to control multiple bots
* Instant (and permanent) change of program variables
* Possibility of using System Environment variables

This would probably make using Blobsy a whole lot more easier!

I just issued a RC 7 version to Blobsy 2. Grab it at the Blobsy site.

The update simply fixes recent bot sign-in problems that apparently sprouted up after Microsoft made some changes to their Passport authentication system. Blobsy 2 releases up until now relied on hard-coded Passport domain to server mappings to handle various user domain groups. The MS update seems to have changed this and suddenly much of the Blobsy bots refused to sign in, after logging authentication failures in the log files.

The update was supplied by Thioz, who fixed the problem after encountering the problem with his live Blobsy bot. Kudos to Thioz for the update and for letting me know! I haven't been using Blobsy for a little while now, so I was not aware there was a problem in the first place... hehe.

Toodles.

Blobsy 2 ( beta, rc6 ) has been made official today. The release brings together a number of minor updates from various cvs commits over time as well as a few major feature additions by a few other developers. The release comes after a long time of inactivity in the project but hopefully marks a rekindling of more intense development work to keep up with the changes coming with Windows Live Messenger rollout.

Change log
- Upgraded to support MSNP10, MSNP11 and MSNP12
- Personal Status Message support
- Added Challenge Response Generation Object (chl.obj.php)
- Fixed SB WLM8 compatibility bugs
- Fixed SB MSG headers bug
- Removed redundant configuration file entries
- Added Unicode encode/eecode functions
- Fixed MSNFTP bugs and added multiple simultaneous File Transfer support
- Modified MSNP2P functions
- Updated UserRelated to utilise $msn functions


Go to Blobsy homepage