Google Messaging

TheVerge looks at Google messaging.  Agreed is a mess.  Been using Hangouts of late because some clients do.  Worth a look.

Exclusive: Inside Hangouts, Google's big fix for its messaging mess
How Google built its new messaging platform for Gmail, Android, iOS, and Chrome... and what took so long

By Ellis Hamburger and Dieter Bohn  ....  in theVerge

Hangouts and Chats in Google

Quite interesting.  Could a company implement a whole set of standards for interaction, recording, goal management, process detail,  After Action Reviews?

Google’s Hangouts Chat gets chatbot boost with Dialogflow
Dialogflow should make it easier for developers to create natural language bots for Google’s team collaboration platform.
         
By Matthew Finnegan  ... Senior Reporter, Computerworld

Google is looking to make it easier to build chatbots for Hangouts Chat, thanks to an integration with its Dialogflow conversational AI platform.

Google launched Hangouts Chat early last year, a chat-based collaboration tool that replaces the Hangouts app for G Suite customers, of which there are are now more than 5 million, according to Google’s latest stats.

As announced last week, developers can now build chatbots for Hangouts Chat using Dialogflow – Google’s machine learning-based development suite that enables the creation of natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) apps that mimic human interactions. .... " 

Google Does a Slack Alternative

Been using Slack for some time on a project by project basis.  Does I think promote focus.   Email can be very fragmented among the noise.  Are the new Hangouts better?

Google's Slack alternative is available starting today

Despite the name, Hangouts Chat isn't just a retread of what it has already tried.   By Nathan Ingraham, @nateingraham in Engadget

It's been almost a year since Google first mentioned Hangouts Chat -- a totally redesigned messaging service that's more like Slack than the Hangouts most consumers know today. As of now, Hangouts Chat is out of its "early adopter" program and will be available to all G Suite users over the next week, assuming their company enables it, of course.

To be clear, Hangouts Chat is a totally separate and distinct service from Hangouts proper, which still lives in your Google mail inbox. And while we'll forgive you for rolling your eyes at yet another chat service from Google (the number of different apps the company has built is legendary at the point), Hangouts Chat does offer something potentially valuable to companies using G Suite -- assuming they're not on Slack already. .... " 

Google Does Conferencing, Needs Assistant

Below described an announced  business extension of Hangouts. It would seem that a natural next step would combine this with Google Assistant.   A Google Home listening in?  A simple example might have the attentive assistant construct a 'to do' list from the conversation.  Beyond that,  the assistant could do followup research for the call based on a knowledge graph of participants and the goals of the meeting.    Post the results and suggest other participants and future sub tasks.  The big value could be in assistant software rather than just hardware.

Google's video conferencing kit gets an AI camera and display
Chromebox for meetings now comes packaged with upgraded hardware.

by Saqib Shah, @eightiethmnt  in Engadget

Bluemix Supports Hangout Analytics

Nice to see some now sevices in Bluemix Cloud that support real time stream analytics.  This is notably of interest to applications like Retail.   Updates in their blog give some detailed outlines and descriptions of analysis value.  Possibility of use with Beacons, Supply chain decisions, IOT and others.   Ultimately this looks at the dynamics of all sorts of geospatial data.

" ... Hangout is a concept in geospatial analysis where an entity is said to be hanging out or in a hangout if it has been dwelling in the same region for a specified period of time.  Once an entity (for example, a smartphone or a vehicle) has been in a region longer than a specified dwell time, it is considered to be hanging out in that region.  You can use hangout detection in a variety of mobile device and Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, including:

Marketing: Offering real-time promotions to people who remain in a particular area for a significant period of time.

Intelligence: Are two ships passing in the night, or are they hanging out together, possibly indicating some nefarious activity?

Transportation: Has a vehicle in your fleet made its stops at the anticipated locations?  ...  "