You don’t need to download an app or install anything to use it. To get started, text “Hi” to CAAIN (773-786), you’ll get a response from a cheerful bot ready to help you create a shopping list set reminders. Starting a list is easy enough. You need only type something like, “Add milk, bananas, eggs,” Captain will create a shopping list with those items added to it. Typing “Show list” will display the contents of it, removing an item is as simple as saying “Remove item 2” or “Remove eggs.” Beyond that, you can set reminders for things just by writing, “Remind me at 2 to pick up Gabe from school.” (It’s smart enough to know that probably means 2 in the afternoon.) The unique feature here is that you can create a group of people that can interact with the list set reminders. However, the process isn’t all that simple. en you ask Captain to add a person to your group it will respond with a link a code, which you then need to manually send to the other person. They will in turn need to send a text to Captain with that code go through the same sign-up process. Once that’s all done, you’ll both be able to ask captain to set reminders for yourselves or each other, add items to the list. Any changes are communicated to people, you can also chat with them directly inside the Captain conversation by typing the @ symbol before their name. Captain is one of the few bots to work over SMS, so you won’t need to sign up for a specific service like Facebook Messenger to use it (though texting rates will apply where applicable). However, Yahoo does note that Sprint customers will need to unblock shortened links to begin the process. Captain’s hook: Chatbots are designed to make our lives easier by cutting down on the time we need to spend interacting with people, but it feels cold when it comes to our family. There are any number of ways to coordinate our schedules shopping with our children spouses, Captain doesn’t appear to make any of it all that much easier. You still have to remember to use it, so why not just eliminate the middleman text your wife directly? And I’m also a little leery of trusting Yahoo with personal information after several rounds of breaches. Sorry, Captain, but I’ll steer my own ship.
