Are you a high volume user of MSN Messenger? Do you live on your BlackBerry? Then you might be interested to know that Canada’s First MSN Bot is now live and you can use it to get your Yellow Pages.ca listings, maps, driving directions and more. This post is going to focus on some screen shots of the bot and how you can go about accessing it through your MSN Messenger. Once again, Yellow Pages Group in Canada is proving to be a worldwide leader in partnering with new technologies to access their data.
To start with, load your MSN Messenger and click on the Yellow Pages Tab on the left hand side,
Then select the tab to the right called IM Search, which brings you to the following screen:
Now we is a detailed description of the service, but if you want to start to get information from the bot, just click on the Add Me button,
At this point – it asks you whether you wish to start a conversation with imlocal@msn.com – since this is an automated bot, you can safely start a conversation. At this point, it takes you to the messenger window where you can start your conversation. When you first launch the service it basically sits there until you give it a command. You can type a variety of things, I will choose Dentist.
You will notice that because this is the first time I have used the bot – it also asked me for my postal code. I selected a random postal code and you can see that the bot is now going to get me information on dentists closest to that postal code.
Looking at the screen above, the bot has given me the 8 closest dentists to the postal code that I selected. From here I have the option to type "m" or " more" to see more results or simply type in a number to select a particular dentist and get more information.
I opted to select more information on dentist #8. The bot gives me a couple of more options – it provides me with a link to view more information about the dentist which loads this dentists YellowPages.ca advertising. I also have the choice to type in "dd" for driving directions or if I want to view a map to this location I can accept the invitation to do so.
When I select map, notice that my messenger window expands to provide me with a detailed map on the left hand side of the screen – powered by Windows Live – this is a very cool feature.
Finally I can select "dd" and it will provide driving directions from my address to the this location.
So, if you are a big user of MSN Messenger and Yellow Pages, now you can have the best of both worlds, through your computer or handheld device.