Halibot was an email agent. You sent structured questions in EMAIL to
different email addresses, and received appropriate answers. Examples
included weather, stock reports, airport conditions, almanac, nearest
ATM or Kinko's, and even chemistry and biblical information. My
question: what happened to Halibot, the company and/or service? If it
exists, where is it? If it does not, what happened and are there any
substitutes?

---

Request for Question Clarification by aht-ga on 16 Feb 2004 14:28 PST

edwardjung-ga:

I have been researching your question throughout the day, and fear
that I do not have any good news to share with you. So, I thought I
would post a clarification request, first, to find out what would be a
satisfactory Answer for you.

I have been able to determine that Halibot, as well as the company
behind it, are no longer around. All indications are that the company
was yet another victim of the lack of investment that was the rule
around late 2001, and most of 2002. In fact, even the venture capital
group that originally funded the company is no longer in existence.

The market for a Halibot-like service has also declined with the
advent of wireless Internet capabilities and text messaging/SMS. As a
result, the major customers of the company behind Halibot, all
essentially backed away from supporting the service around the time
that the company went under (most likely it was a contributing factor
to the company's demise). For example, their key customer (built on
personal relationships, actually), was MSNBC. MSNBC introduced MSNBC
Alerts powered by Passport, alleviating most of the need to use the
e-mail answering agent technology that powered Halibot.

While I can expand on the above information to answer the first two of
your three questions, the second half of your third question is the
one where I need your clarification. What would you regard as a
substitute, if no exact duplicate of Halibot exists? Is there any type
of information you prize the most? Are you willing to pay for the
service?

Please let me know how you wish this part of your question handled,
and I can provide you with a complete Answer.

Thanks,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

---

Clarification of Question by edwardjung-ga on 16 Feb 2004 15:19 PST

Thanks. Just tell me the investor and the customers you found, and
I'll consider it an Answer. I will post a separate question on finding
another Halibot.

edwardjung-ga:

Thank you for the clarification, here is the Answer as requested.

Halibot was a beta test site/service for Roamable Corporation's e-mail
answering agent technology. Through Halibot.com, Roamable was able to
demonstrate the power and utility of their technology.

Roamable Corporation was established in 1999 through venture capital
led by The Accelerator Group, a Los Angeles/New York/London based
investment group. The CEO of TAG, Michael Goff, became the CEO of
Roamable.

More about Roamable:

Digital Coast Daily, Aug 9th 2001
http://digitalcoast.venturereporter.net/issues/dcw08092001.html
 (scroll down to read first article, also see "Roamable at a Glance" sidebar)

InternetWorld: Roamable.(Company Business and Marketing)
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0DXS/15_7/77105753/p1/article.jhtml

--------------------------------------------------------------

The Accelerator Group disappeared from the Internet (and, it appears,
from existence) around the same time in 2002 that Halibot and Roamable
disappeared. Here are the links to the last known versions of the
three websites prior to their disappearance, courtesy of the Internet
Archive:


Halibot.com (August 2, 2002)
http://web.archive.org/web/20020802030748/http://www.halibot.com/

Roamable Corporation (Feb 4, 2002)
http://web.archive.org/web/20020204184710/http://roamable.com/index.html
- the next grabbed version, from Nov 25/02, is simply the Apache
server default page indicating the server had been scrubbed
- see http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.roamable.com for more info

The Accelerator Group (November 30, 2002)
http://web.archive.org/web/20021107061621/www.acceleratorgroup.com/home.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------

Prior to their demise, Roamable secured several key customers,
including MSNBC and MTVi.

http://www.comsoc.org/inc/2001/061101.htm#story3

It is noteworthy that both of these marquee customers are
consumer-focused, whereas most industry analysts of the time saw
Roamable's true value as serving the road warriors in the business
market. As the above article indicates, the technology is best used to
retrieve text-based info as opposed to graphics such as maps. That
said, MSNBC launched their Roamable powered service with great pomp
and circumstance in 2001:

http://stacks.msnbc.com/m/info/press/01/0626.asp

However, if you attempt to access the service today, you will find:

http://www.msnbc.com/tools/newstools/n/msnbcnow.asp?0ql=cop

MSNBC effectively replaced the Roamable technology with their MSN
Alerts-powered IM and e-mail alerts system:

http://net.msnbc.com/tools/alert/sub.aspx

While MTV seems to have effectively removed all mention of their use
of the service, here is a reference from the Google Cache:

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:8SjzdpaUkyYJ:www.eclecticcontent.com/samples/Roamable.htm+mtv+roamable&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

--------------------------------------------------------------

If you are interested in finding out more about where the former
Roamable assets are today, it is possible that the following person
may now. According to his website, Clay Shirky was a former partner in
The Accelerator Group, up to 2001. He maintains an active website
where he posts his view of the world on a regular basis:

http://www.shirky.com/

He may be able to connect you to anyone who is still connected to the
former Roamable Corporation, if you are interested in enquiring about
the current state of their intellectual property.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I hope that this information helps shed some light on this mystery for you!

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

---

Clarification of Answer by aht-ga on 16 Feb 2004 16:13 PST

edwardjung-ga:

In my research (actually, in the Google Cache article I referenced
above), I also came across ActiveBuddy, an IM-based technology similar
to Roamable's technology.

ActiveBuddy is now Conversagent
(http://www.conversagent.com/indexAB.htm ). While their technology
could probably power a solution similar to the Halibot beta/demo site,
unfortunately neither Conversagent nor their customers offer anything
similar. Conversagent's customers are, however, using the technology
to provide interactive responses to common customer queries through
both their websites and e-mail. So, the next time you contact a
company, it may be a computer that answers....

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

Excellent answer. Thank you. Ironically, it turns out I know a few of
the Accelerator Group people!