I think the problem with text based apps are that they cannot access our location constantly and I as a user has to take an extra step to inform the AI about my location every-time I need something.. As Myra is only limited to San Francisco, it is suggesting only places in that city.. I do not whether its possible for the message recipient to access our location on facebook..To the Myra Developers, But there is a share location feature on Whatsapp and Facebook that you guys should utilize to access our current location to recommend more location based queries..
As this feature is in Beta, I do not expect it to be perfect - but they could really improve on NLP in the application and understand my queries better, as it goes off-course if two different queries with different words but same meaning are asked..It is amazing, how this system is implemented but, if anyone is trying to build similar product they should try SMSsync[1] by Ushahidi - its still sort of beta product but gets the job done for a feature similar to this..
EDIT: I was only talking about how to implement the gateway part of the application quickly and not the whole Myra product, apologies for the mistake..
@machbio - thank you for the feedback! Definitely, not only can you share locations in whatsapp/FB, you can also do so in text messages. We have plans to integrate that soon, especially as the system launches on more cities.
Regarding the natural language - yes, the language models are trained on a dataset that doesn't yet account for all possible ways of expressing intent. As more users such as you interact with the system, it will get better at handling them.
Thank you for the reply.. I understand that for texts you could utilize SMS gateway, is it possible for you to reveal how you programmatically access WhatsApp and Facebook Messages..
We had an SMSSync integration when I worked at FrontlineSMS[1]. It's a gateway, period. Any smarts have to be built into whatever server it interacts with. It has little in common with Myra.
Incidentally, after checking it out - the product you have linked to is an SMS gateway.
Myra is able to understand intent via natural language processing. This is independent of the medium you interact with it from - for instance, it could use Slack, Telegram, Gtalk or even email and voice.
As this feature is in Beta, I do not expect it to be perfect - but they could really improve on NLP in the application and understand my queries better, as it goes off-course if two different queries with different words but same meaning are asked..It is amazing, how this system is implemented but, if anyone is trying to build similar product they should try SMSsync[1] by Ushahidi - its still sort of beta product but gets the job done for a feature similar to this..
[1] http://www.ushahidi.com/product/smssync/
EDIT: I was only talking about how to implement the gateway part of the application quickly and not the whole Myra product, apologies for the mistake..