One thing I like about UBot is that it’s constantly evolving into a better product. UBot 4.0 is no exception, and there are a lot of exciting new features in the latest release that just came out a couple of weeks ago.

The big thing that I’ve noticed while playing around with UBot 4.0 is that it has become a lot easier to use. UBot has always been a little bit quirky in the way it does things, but Seth has done a good job in making things more intuitive.

Here are some of my favorite features of UBot 4.0.

UBot code view – Now you can switch between the default drag and drop interface (UBot’s Visual Scripting Language) and the text based version of the commands (Uscript). Why is this cool? Because having a text based view makes it much easier to view (and edit) bigger bots, as well as making it easy to clone different parts of your code.

Easy Element Selection – Selecting items and operating on them used to be a two-step process with previous version of UBot. UBot 4.0 is now a lot smarter, and all you need to do now is drag over specific elements into the scripting area.

Better Debugging – Debugging your bots with UBot used to be a pain. Ubot 4.0 now includes a built-in debugger window that allows you to see your variable values. Plus there is the new Step button in the UI that allows you to step through each part of your code which makes debugging much simpler as well.

Better Performing Bots – UBot is a lot faster than previous versions. It now uses a faster built-in browser (instead of Internet Explorer), supports multi-threading, and you have the option to turn off images, css, javascript and flash in the bot’s browser window to make your bots run much faster.

If you are an existing UBot user, make sure to check out the new UBot 4.0 tutorial videos that Seth and Lily have put together. They do a good job of demonstrating most of the new features that have been added, and more and more videos are being added all the time.

Upgrading to UBot 4.0

One source of confusion for many previous customers (and for me to) is the UBot upgrade policy. Unfortunately, the UBot team, in my opinion has not done good job detailing this.

Currently, when you buy UBot, you get 12 months of free updates. After that, you need to pay $4.99/mo to get future updates.

What annoys me a bit is that while I bought the original version of UBot in 2009, I did pay $325 to upgrade to UBot 3.5 in December 2010. It seems reasonable to me that paying so much for the upgrade should at least reset my 12 month upgrade window.

Alas, this is not the case and I still ended up having to pay the $4.99 fee to use my copy of UBot 4.0. Even though the upgrade isn’t much, it’s still kind of lame if you ask me.

With that said, UBot 4.0 is still a worthwhile upgrade. If you’re interested in creating some automated bots, then check it out.

UBot 3.3 Beta was just announced today on the main UBot Blog. There are a ton of cool improvements and it looks to be an exciting release. Under the hood, Seth has completely reworked the UBot infrastructure which will make it easier for him to make changes to UBot more easily moving forward. Hopefully this should result in less bugs popping up with each release, and UBot becoming more stable in general.

The biggest changes though in UBot 3.3 is the new UI. You will notice that UBot now has a new 3 column interface. On the left, is the Toolbox which contains all the available commands. Now you can just drag the commands from the toolbox into the center column to construct your bots instead of using the context menu system. There is also a handy search field in the toolbox which allows you to find the command you want very easily.

The UBot browser has also been revamped to make coding simpler as well. There’s a new Form commands context menu in the browser which contains common operations for filling fields, clicking buttons, etc. Previously, it took a couple of steps to do these commands, but now they can all be done with a single operation. The UBot browser also supports dragging fields from the browser window into the coding window and it will automatically set everything for your properly. As any UBot developer knows, filling out forms is a very common task and UBot 3.3 really streamlines the process for you.

Currently this release is in private beta. I was lucky enough to get on the beta list, so I am really excited to play around with this new version of UBot. If you are interested in seeing UBot 3.3 in action, make sure to check out these 2 UBot preview videos that Seth put together.

UBot preview video 1
UBot preview video 2

Seth just released a new version of UBot the other day, with some exciting new features. Most notable is the ability to create bot libraries. Basically, this means that UBot scripts can be constructed in a more modular fashion which allows you to reuse scripts between bots. To utilize this in your scripts, you use the sub command to divide your scripts into blocks of code. Subs can take parameters and return values and they are run with the Run sub command. To invoke subs in external Ubot scripts, you call the include function. This lets you choose subs from an external UBot script to call within your current script.

For example, lets say I want to create a social bookmarking bot. Instead of creating a giant script that contains functions for creating a new gmail account, bookmarking, and pinging, I would separate these pieces into their own sub modules. Designed properly, my pinging module can easily be reused in many of my UBot scripts. This has the potential to save me a bunch of time, and make my scripts much cleaner in general.

Hopefully everyone understands how powerful this is, as we now have the capability to create some very sophisticated bots. Perhaps a standard library of higher level modules that Seth or other UBot developers might develop will spring into existence and make creating useful bots that much easier. The possibilities are quite exciting. Anyway, to see how the UBot libraries work in action, check out the new tutorial videos that Seth just created and put up.

If you just heard about UBot and are trying to figure out what it is capable of, your best bet is to watch some of the UBot videos that have been created so far. For those who have just purchased UBot, these videos are a great way to learn how UBot development works, as well as give you some ideas for your next bot. Keep checking back as I’ll keep this post updated with new vids when I find them.

Keyword Tool Tutorial

Barman’s Quantcast Scraper Tutorial with UBot

Barman’s Blog Comment Seed List Scraper

I’ve had several people who read my initial UBot review asking me if there were any UBot coupons available. I know the $250 list price is not cheap, so I talked to the UBot guys and they were nice enough to give me a $50 UBot discount coupon. The following coupon code is only valid for the first 10 uses so if you are on the fence, you need to jump in on this fast. Remember, there’s a 30 day money back guarantee so there is really no risk to try out this amazing tool.

Here’s how how to redeem your UBot coupon:

• Click this link
• Enter in the coupon code: BOTSALE

Hope you enjoy the software, and let us know how you are planning to use it.

I first heard about UBot from a post I saw by Ruck on the C2M blog. And if Ruck says something is good, I definitely have to check it out. UBot sounded really intriguing so I did a little research on it and decided to take the plunge. For $249, it’s not cheap but with the 30 money back guarantee there’s not much risk in trying out. For those who haven’t heard about it yet, UBot is a bot creation tool that enables you to create fully automated web based bots. You can use these bots to automate account creation, link building, webpage scraping, and much more. Really, the only limit to what you can create with this thing is your own imagination.

Purchasing UBot gives you access to the UBot Development Studio which is essentially your bot development environment. It’s actually a relatively simple looking Windows application with a built in browser for testing your scripts as you build them. When building scripts with UBot you construct them using what’s called the Visual Scripting Language (VSL). Unlike a standard programming language, there’s no cryptic programming syntax that you have to master. Instead, you just point and click in the interface and you visually build you script. This makes UBot completely accessible to non programmers, and most people should be able to start building their own bots after watching the video tutorials. That’s not to say that there’s no learning curve, because there definitely is. But as long as you’re open to learning things, you should be able to pick up UBot development pretty easily.

Unlike an automation tool like iMacros, UBot is built specifically for building web bots. That means it comes with a ton of common functions that make automating common tasks much easier. For example, there’s support for proxy flipping, which allows your scripts to change proxy servers on the fly. This is invaluable for the times when you try to automate tasks like Craigslist postings where you need to be able to post from different ip addresses. Another common task for account creation is entering in captchas. UBot makes popping up the captcha from the page really simple for manual input but it also includes support for automatic captchas using Depcapture, a popular captcha outsourcing company. This enables you to build account creation bots with no user intervention whatsoever which is completely cool.

One of the most intriguing aspects of UBot though is ability to compile your own bots and redistribute them however you like. This allows you to save your bot as an .exe file and send them to other people. There’s some great potential here for making money selling bots. You could also create bots to give away as a part of bonus packages or just as an incentive for joining a mailing list. There’s really a ton of potential here.

I’ve only played around with UBot for a couple of days, but I am liking what I’ve seen so far. I read that earlier versions of UBot were quite buggy, but I haven’t experienced any issues like that at all. The beginning tutorials are very good, and I recommend that everyone watch them first before getting started. You will learn the basics and there are even a few example videos out there on creating full-fledged bots. Definitely check them out to see some real life examples of what UBot is capable of. Also, make sure to keep an eye on this blog as I will be going into more detail about my UBot experiences as I start learning how to use it myself.

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