After a few requests, I have set up a store on Zazzle with ten Bobcat In A Box related products: mugs, stickers magnets, even playing cards and stationary! They make great birthday gifts… also what better way to reveal a prank than to silently introduce bobcat emblazoned products into their life?
Subscriber Jessica posted on facebook this picture of some ribbon the bot sent her writing, “I get a lot of weird but delightful stuff. I’m sure I can find a use for this spool of pink ribbon. I’ll have to post my cats more often!”
Last weekend I met up with Adam, Neil and Jonathan of Monday Madness in Dublin for a pint. While it was great to see them, the real purpose of my in order to take the wondrous glitter sent by the bot off of their hands. It is toxic stuff. As you can see in this video (around the 14:00 mark) the “nail decorations” that you can see to the left sent Neil into a rage. I had to apologize. We try to filter offensive items like these out, but sometimes they make it through the cracks anyhow.
The backs of Irish drivers licenses look like the image to the right. I would not have believed this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. They have 17 or so little pictures of vehicles ranging from a tractor to five different types of trailers to three or four different types of motorcycles and a horse and buggy if you squint hard enough. Clearly there is more than enough madness to go around in Ireland.
Take a look at their YouTube channel here for the ruining of various video games, madness and occasional unboxings. Follow them on Twitter here for more madness.
A fine fourth unboxing from our somewhat unhinged friends at @MondayMadness. Go here to see their previous three episodes.
Kevin from London writes in… “I have a plethora of assorted tat. Along with a number of interesting things. Here’s my dog, Lady in christmas cheer at the office last year thanks to Bobcat”
Check out our new keyword tagging contest if you have a minute today.
Since the beginning of this project, the bot has had trouble with items that vendors tag with wrong keywords or misleading descriptions. For example, take a look at this “Harry Potter” bracelet on AliExpress. So far the bot has simply crawled the descriptions on a product’s page in order to identify keywords. However this has resulted in a list of keywords that we were never quite happy with.
So we have put together this little contest where you can help us tag some of the items that the bot is buying, score points and possibly win weekly prizes. The data from this page will be an important signal for the bot going forward and give it a tighter keyword list.
On the contest page you see an image of an item that the bot has bought with eight keywords below it. Click on the keyword that you think is the best fit with the product. You get a point if you select the word that most other people have also selected for the product. If you are on the leaderboard at the end of the week you win glorious prizes!
How are the eight keywords picked? Some are keywords that the bot has already associated with the product and some are entirely random. If the random keywords get clicked on the contest starts showing them more often.
As we are just rolling this out, please let me know what you think. (alexander@bobcatinabox.com)
I came across this short video on YouTube of an actual bobcat, named Bobby, generally confused by being put in a box. Would not want to open!
I have added a few new sites to the bot that require return addresses in order to order a package. Most of these are postcards or sites that specialize in gifts.
I wasn’t quite sure what return address to put. So I have created a new positive keyword ‘Bobcat Returns’. If you login to your account and select the keyword ‘Bobcat Returns’, we’ll use your address as a return address on some of the packages.
This will not change at all what the bot orders for you… but you might get some strange return mail!
In honor of Prince, who we lost this week, below are just a few of the purple items bought by the bot recently. ‘Purple’ is actually a fairly popular keyword. So if you want to start seeing everything purple show up at your doorstep, make sure to select it in your profile.
