Hey Google, Talk To Highway 80 Conditions

 

Next time you are driving to Tahoe you don’t need to open the phone, navigate to the browser and check if the road is closed (or not).

You can just ask the Google Assistant: “Hey Google, Talk To Highway 80 Conditions”.

You will get the most updated data about the road like in the example below:

Please ignore the text formatting (which I’ll improve in the near future) as it should be use as voice only while you are driving.

Check it on the Google Assistant or on the web here.

If you are using Telegram check this.

Be safe!

 

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OK Google, Talk To Northstar Pow Day!

Northstar Pow Day – Action on Google

Last week, we had a big storm at Tahoe.

I thought it might be great if with one quick question (while you washing our face in the morning) you can learn if it’s a powder day.
After all, when there is a pow day, you should close the shop and run for the slopes, no?

The result is here: pow-day-northstar.glitch.me and you can find the code at GitHub.

If you are on a mobile device, click here to check it on the assistant, or just say “Hey Google, talk to Northstar pow day”.

Have fun!

An Amazing Apps For The Google Assistant – Chatbot Summit 2018

Here are the slides from my talk today at the Chat Bot Summit.

It was a great experience to talk about the Google Assistant platform and to run two workshops with live coding.

If you could not make it and you wish to test this platform, you can go over the slides (and other tutorials or videos) and check on of the code labs that we have for the Assistant on your own.

There are many good apps that you can check in order to get ideas and inspiration. Here are some apps for the Assistant that I’ve created for the code labs and demos.

Good luck!

Get Users to Your App For The Google Assistant

Did you know that your app for the Google Assistant can reach users on millions of devices? Over 100 million devices (and many more in the future) already have the Google Assistant with them so when users wish to use your app, you are already there. There is no friction. In this post we will focus on the methods you can use in order to reach users.

There are 4 ways for users to get to your app for the Google Assistant through:

1. Explicit triggering
2. Implicit Triggering
3. The Google Assistant Directory
4. The Assistant Directory link

Let’s go a bit deeper into each one.

Voice User Interface Design

We are all experts at human-to-human conversation. But conversing only seems easy because it’s familiar, you’ve been doing it since you were born.  The key to building a good voice interface is to not fall into the trap of simply converting a GUI into a VUI.

In the slides below, I will cover the best practices to design our Action on Google (and any other Voice UI).

You can also see the top tips in the short video below.

Google Assistant – Why? How?

In the past few years, the buzz about conversational experiences and digital assistants has increased. As you can see above, eMarketer is predicting that 87% of B2C marketers in the US will use chatbots and digital assistants  in their marketing efforts by 2021. 

We can see these days that conversational computing and digital assistants represent a new fundamental computing wave that brands can use more.

A big misconception is that the Google Assistant is ‘just’ for Google Home or other smart speakers.

It’s also on mobile (Android and iOS) devices (over 100+ millions devices) and in many other devices.

So your users are there already and you can reach to them without any friction.

The conversations users are having with the Assistant are not just about things that could be answered on Google Search. The Assistant helps with more than getting information – it helps you get things done.

From enjoying music and movies, ordering pizza and making restaurant reservations to controlling your smart devices and calling your best friend, the Google Assistant helps everyone be more productive in their world.

Create An Assistant App Without Any Code

At the moment, there are few options to create apps for the Google Assistant that do not involve any code.

We call them “existing templates” as you can see in the image above.

When you open the action on google console page you will see all the current options: trivia, personality quiz and flash cards games. In this post we will see how easy it will be to create a new flash cards game that will work on the Google Assistant.

Let’s go with helping people learn something new, ok?

First, you need to go to: console.actions.google.com and click on “Add/Import Project”.

The Google Assistant Macro View

The past few years, the buzz about conversational experiences and digital assistants has increased dramatically. According to a recently issued report by eMarketer, 87% of B2C marketers in the US believe that chatbots and digital assistants will play a significant role in marketing before 2021. Conversational computing and digital assistants represent a new fundamental computing wave.

Why?

There are two forces:

• Natural Language Processing – The dramatic improvements in natural language processing, natural language understanding and machine learning, enable us to offer users engaging, natural conversational experiences that are far from the call center menus or the awkward chat bots of the past.
• Conversation-first platforms – We can see today many platforms that support this new capabilities (e.g. smartphones, messaging apps, voice-activated speakers, watches, cars etc’). They have become increasingly mainstream, increasing familiarity with digital assistants and encouraging users to engage with them.

In these slides we will cover the big picture and why companies will wish to build an app for the Google Assistant.