Bot News
BotBox

By Brian Proffitt

There is no cardboard, no Styrofoam peanuts, and no bubble wrap to be found, but the collection of bots from BotBox AB is as close to an electronic form of a box as you will find.

BotBox is the product and the company name of this Swedish software firm that has spun off from the agent research at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. The founders of this firm have learned their lessons well, as they have created a snappy little package of business-oriented bots in this public beta release.

There are, for now, just two distinct bots in the overall BotBox container application: one which monitors news sites and one for online stock quote monitoring.

Both of these bots have very simple interfaces: just a plain little window that sits on your desktop. Configuring these bots is an easy process, started by right-clicking the bot window and setting the news sources or stock quotes you wish to see.

Much of the predefined content providers the bots are linked to Swedish business sites, but there are some English site the bot will check. Also, in the news bot, you can enter your own custom URL to monitor any site for changes within any period of time you specify.

Information at the BotBox site hints at being able to receive e-mail alerts from information the BotBox agents gather, but I was unable to locate this functionality. I suspect it was not active in this 0.9.1 beta version.

Other signs of future expansion are clear in the arrangement of BotBox itself. Along with the bots is a BotBox Control Panel window that contains the bots and has tools to let you download and install other compatible bots within the BotBox frame work.

BotBox runs on the Windows platform, and needs the Java Runtime Environment to run. You can download an installation file that contains the correct version of the JRE if you need it.

I like the way these bots run and are held within the container metaphor, and I am looking forward to seeing what other bots will come along for users to put in their own BotBox.