Subscribe
Sign in
Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot on Telegram — Find hip places worldwide
41
Replies
After Facebook Messenger and Skype: 🐯 Mica the Hipster Cat is now also available on Telegram. Fascinating to see how fast bots can be ported from one platform to another. 📱🤖
@__tosh you can test the other implementations of Mica here: https://hipstercatbot.com
Kudos! 😺🤖🎈 Love that Mica now works in group chats as well as inline bot in any chat by simply mentioning @hipstercatbot 😻
@allanberger @hipstercatbot oh, great that you like Mica's new feature! <3
How do you curate the places that are shown to users? Here in Vienna I really like the selection of coffee shops.
@msch thank you! I do not curate the list. Mica is a mashup of Foursquare, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. I just search in their API for certain terms such as "hip" or "trendy" ;)
@elizabethhunker please try again! I had some troubles with Telegram's API
@elizabethhunker fun fact: Telegram decided (on Mica's Telegram birthday) to re-add a deprecated field (new_chat_partizipant, renamed on april 9!) and destroyed my API
Thanks, @tosh__ for featuring me on Product Hunt! <3
I'm Barbara, the mother and maker of Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot for Telegram! Ask me any question that comes to your mind about chatbots, AI, UX, development...
Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot helps you discover the best places!
- you can ask her about coffeeshops in Paris or pizza in San Francisco. simply send her your GPS location as attachment or tell her a city name!
- You can also send inline requests to her or add her in group chats
How basic interaction works! Also interesting: On Android one can create a shortcut to the chatbot (bookmark on homescreen)
@electrobabe do you came across users who send unnecessary stuffs despite knowing the functionality of bot or try to use your bot to also ask unnecessary questions?
@ipuneetsingh yes! a lot! :)
Some people start to swear just for fun or send disturbing questions such as “where is Barbara?” ;)
Since Mica also has quite a narrow aim (to find hip venues worldwide), people are usually quickly
satisfied when trying a chat.
@ipuneetsingh With Mica I learned a lot about user experience-design. Most people just try out which combinations or commands a chatbot understands and where its capabilities and limitations lie. For instance, there is still no common standard established for chatbots, although most understand “hi”, “start” and “help”.
the inline mode is super awesome to share hipster venues with your friends! <3 love it
@turbopascale oh thank you! the inline mode is special with Telegram! I'm glad, you enjoy it! <3
@kris_bethea exactly! I named the chatbot after my own cat Mica, after the Czech meaning of "Kitty". Usually also only Slavic people pronounce "Mica" correctly at the beginning :)))
@electrobabe that's awesome!! As a huge cat person (I have 2 rescues rn) with Slavic background, I appreciate what you did here😊.Yea - that was gonna be my next question: how do you pronounce it for your brand? We'd say "mitza", but I'd imagine Americans saying: "Mika" or like the name "Micah"
@kris_bethea yeah, that's kind of a problem that I chose a name for that bot that has a Slavic meaning. but I don't care how people pronounce the name, if only they are happy with Mica! ;)
@kris_bethea I also dedicated this paradox a section in the FAQs ;) https://hipstercatbot.com/faq/
Hey Barbara! Congrats with Telegram users coverage! Just found out Mica's 'Purr thing' — it is cool )) My cat rarely does it. Cheers from ChatBottle ;)
@sabanskiy thank you! hehe, I also love this easter egg: when you send Mica a "purr", she purrs back to you with an audio file
New cat bot! meow! Barbara, what was the biggest challenge for you to make this bot for Telegram? Regarding UX probably?
@natalie_korotaeva Thanks for the question! There are far more different possible components available on Telegram compared to Facebook or Skype such as the inline requests. Implementing them was a bit challenging ;)
Waterpebble