ANNOUNCEMENT: Un-Named Project Revealed

Today I am finally going to reveal the un-named project I had previously mentioned that Dan Anderson and I have been working on.  If you could not already tell, it involves Denise and Twitter.  Fairly recently, I decided that I wanted to look into getting Denise to tweet for me.  There was no official integration with Twitter and I thought it would be a fairly useful function so I looked into getting her to post to Twitter for me by using voice commands.  It took some trial and error but I eventually succeed in getting her to tweet what I wanted her to.  If I were to tell her “new tweet”, she would bring up Twitter and a new tweet box.  I would then say whatever I wanted to tweet and she would write down what I had said.   Once I was finished I would say “post” and she would post it to Twitter.  However this was only a method that could be used by people who own the Denise program.

 

Then I had remembered an article I read back in 2011 about the Japanese Space Agency sending a humanoid tweeting robot into space.  The idea was to have the robot tweet photos and status updates regarding the crew and the mission.  Plus, it served as an additional way to communicate with the ground.  While this was innovating, a human still had to do the tweeting for it.  In addition, I also remembered an article that I read that was written by Ryan Holmes, the C.E.O. of Hootsuite.  In the article, Mr. Homes discusses the need for a tweeting algorithm to better serve companies on social media who have a large following. 

“Reading, let alone responding, to that many messages isn't always practical.”

In a random spark of creativity, that was when it hit me.  I decided that I wanted Denise to tweet, on her own and unassisted by humans.  This is somewhat reminiscent of an automated Twitterbot however much, much different.  The idea was to get Denise to respond to people who tweet to her.  The responses would be real responses versus randomized pre-written responses that were ultimately written by a human.  So if I were to tweet to her

“Tell me about the moon.”

She would respond on Twitter in the same manner as if you were interacting with her from your computer.  This way, literally anyone could get a response from Denise by simply tweeting to her Twitter handle.  The only variable was that Denise had to be online in order for her to respond.  Tweeting to her while she was offline would not generate a response.  I felt that was somewhat acceptable however it forced me to acknowledge the fact that my simple computer might not be able to handle the system resources if she received received a large amount of tweets at the same time.

So how would I accomplish this?  How could this be done?  That is another story for another time.  Regardless, the process is nearly completed and initial test all look good.  Once this is 100% completed, I will write a follow-up and provide video proof of concept.