Develop Reference

Does the Bot Framework support Facebook Messenger's Button Template?

Facebook messenger's APIs support a message type called the "Button Template". This card type allows sending a message with text, then a list of buttons with different actions, as in the image below (from Facebook's documentation):
This template similar to the Generic template, which is what is produced by the Bot Framework's Hero cards, but is distinct in that it does not require a "Header" on the card, which is required by the Generic template.
I'm trying to figure out how to render this template using the Bot Framework -- we've gotten it to work in Facebook messenger by populating the MessageActivity.ChannelData with a custom model we created based on the JSON in Facebook's documentation, but this causes the message to fail to appear in the Bot Framework Emulator. Is there any way to render this template using official Bot Framework methods/classes?

Short answer: No. The Emulator is not designed to test channel-specific functionality in this way.
You are on the right track using the channelData to store your custom message definition. But, as you already discovered, since you are wanting to test a FB-specific feature, the only way is to test on FB Messenger directly.

Real time 3d rendering navigation

I have no idea at all about the 3D Visualization ,and i want to create an application ,the application idea depends totally on the 3D structure .
I'll do my best to clarify my question to avoid considering it vague .
The main goal of my application is the (navigation) part in 3D environment .I want to upload maps of a specific area and the application allow to guide the user to its destination.(real time 3d rendering).
The application should work on kiosk ,smart phones and on web.(multiple platforms).
The following video clarify what i want to do exactly :
3D wayfinder
Now I want to know a start point to begin without reinventing the wheel,if there are some frameworks should i learn about first?
I'm a.net developer(asp.net) and i begin to learn CMS (Joomla),so it 'll be great to find APIs or frameworks near to this area to achieve my goal as soon as possible.

From requirements you specified, I would like to advice to look at Unity3D.
Unity3D will help to develop application which will work on almost all major platforms including kiosk, smart phones and on web.
You can develop using C# language which should be familiar to you.
There are number of projects which aims similar goal as rendering 3D map. There are "Google Maps for Unity" plugin and I can advise to look at Displaying Maps in Unity3D post.
Unity can be integrated to Joomla if necessary

Another option would be to build the front-end of the app using HTML5 and do the 3D using Three.js http://threejs.org/
Your back-end could serve up the map and navigation data to the front-end and you render everything in the browser or in your HTML5 smartphone app. If you need to update information in your visualization or load a new location dynamically, this can be done with a simple AJAX call and your callback would add the new info into your Three.js scene.

Forget about what others suggest you in regards to looking at 3D frameworks. Mapping and navigation is a complexity of it's own - 3D frameworks like unity will give you 3D. But they won't give you GIS. Depending on your requirements, you could check Micello for 2D mapping and Deep Map for mobile 3D mapping (http://www.deep-map.com/en). They also help you with creating the maps - which is something you should consider for beforementioned reasons.

You can use OpenCV library in C# for image processing and get help from HTML5 and AJAX .

Try X3DOM. Its a programming language that can be used in applications, web browsers, and much more. And the language is ALOT like HTML and JavaScript. In fact, you can use JavaScript and HTML to access the 3D space in X3DOM.
The website for this language is: x3dom.org

Silverlight Speech Recognition (In browser)

Since this topic is a bit out dated I would like to re-discuss it here.
After searching the web, I came across the following link:
http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/nesl which runs only out of browser because Silverlight (in browser) can't access certain COM libraries that are related to windows.
I wish (for obvious performance purposes) to perform the speech recognition through Silverlight (on the client machine) and then send the result (text) to the server via a postback to perform the corresponding action.
I already achieved a way to get the voice from the microphone and store it in Silverlight in a byte array. Is there a way to convert the speech byte array to text?
HTML5 Google service is not an acceptable approach since IE is required.
My final goal is to implement a speech recognition in ASP.NET Web Application.
Any suggestion is appreciated.

You can't do it in Silverlight. You'll need to send the audio somewhere. You can call some third-party service (I'm sure there are plenty--and it shouldn't matter that you're using IE) or your own ASP.NET (which can call System.Speech or any other free or commercial system). But before you do that, you should compress the audio. There aren't a lot of options in Silverlight. I recommend NSpeex, or at least convert it to 16kHz PCM (either linear or a-law).
Here's a list of Speech SDKs (many of which have a cloud service component): http://www.toolsjournal.com/mobile-articles/item/918-top-10-sdks-to-voice-enable-mobile-apps-quickly

To make Trusted In-browser Silverlight application:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg192793(v=vs.95).aspx
http://www.pitorque.de/MisterGoodcat/post/Silverlight-5-Tidbits-Trusted-applications.aspx
And for security background:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721083%28v=vs.95%29.aspx
Note that NESL doesn't support DictionaryGrammar. Grammar needs to be pre-defined:
http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/nesl/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=4905

C# Speech Recognition

I am making a Smart House Control System right now, and I have a little problem.
I was thinking on using Cosmos for a base system, and adding the needed namespace libraries to it, but as the usual System.Speech.Recognition namespace depends too much on Windows Speech API, I have to forget about using it.
So my question is, is there any (free if possible) voice recognition and/or speech speech synthesizer library for C#, what has the following:
support for multi-language speaking
extracting text content from speech sample
synthesizing speech with selectable (or user-written) speech pattern (voice)
A general usage, non-windows dependent library would be the best, and of course, if it was free too.

Voxeo offers developer accounts which you could use to develop a speech powered home automation system. I've interfaced it to my own home automation system for a small subset of the commands my home understands and it works great. You'll need to learn some VoiceXML to use it.
SAPI works OK for voice synthesis; I use SAPI in my system for spoken prompts in the house like a weather forecast that comes over the speakers in the morning when you walk into the bathroom. If Cosmos doesn't allow you to include all the DLLs you need maybe you could create a separate service using SAPI and then use WCF (or other) to communicate between them??
For the related problem of understanding natural language in a typed form I've developed a C# NLP Engine which I hope to be able to make available for non-commercial at some point in the future.
Extracting text from speech without specifying any grammar up-front is a very hard problem and is going to be error prone. Even if you could solve that, you'd still have the problem of trying to understand what they said using NLP. Constructing a grammar that guides the recognizer to the kinds of sentences you want to recognize (like VoiceXML does) is likely to achieve much higher accuracy.

Check out this project: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/
It's an open source speech recognition project. It is trainable with any language you want plus since its open source you can modify it to suit your needs or expand it.

Using data from Google Maps in a C# Program for Windows Mobile

I'm making a charity Windows Mobile 6 app in C# to help those affected by Alzheimer's.
The aim is for this app to let the carer set a boundary by tapping in Google maps to set points. The carer would then put the windows mobile device in the patient's hand bag or coat, so that when the patient walks out on their own, thinking that they are "going home", the carer receives an SMS text with their position, heading and speed.
However, I don't know how to...
Switch from app to google maps for mobile
tap to select points
import the coordinates of that point to my C# program
use the coordinates to Calculate the boundary
Send the text with the position information
Switch back to my C# program
HTC's HD2 comes with a compass that uses this "tap to select a point then return to app" functionality, so surely it's possible for us too?
If anyone would be able to give me a hand my out I would be EXTREMELY grateful as this will help all those affected by Alzheimer's and other similar conditions. My Gran, for example, recently started trying to walk back to the property she lived in 20 years ago...
Thanks everyone! This means sooo much! I'll even come and buy you a drink to say thanks!
James

Whatever technical issues you're considering, I think you should realize that this type of usage is, AFAICS, contrary to the terms of service of google maps. See:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html
That is, you may only use the google maps content if its accessible for everybody, not just whomever you hand out your program to:
Your Maps API Implementation must be generally accessible to users without charge.
If you're building it as a web app, it must be accessible through the internet, not intranet:
[your Maps API Implementation must not:] operate only behind a firewall or only on an internal network (except during the development and testing phase).
Some of the terms in header 10 also seem applicable:
[you must not (nor may you permit anyone else to):]
10.8 use the Static Maps API other than in an implementation in a web browser;
10.9 use the Service or Content with any products, systems, or applications for or in connection with:
(a) real time navigation or route guidance, including but not limited to turn-by-turn route guidance that is synchronized to the position of a user's sensor-enabled device;

Why would you want to kludge something together like that? Trying to have your app interface with another application for which you don't have source, whether it's Google Maps fopr Mobile or anything else, is difficult and should only be used as a last resort.
If this app is going to be free and not require users to log in, you can use the Bing Maps Web Service API directly from your application without cost. You could then use built-in GPS through the GPSID APIs as well, and you'd have control over what data goes where, what maps to draw, etc.
This seems like a much easier path to achieve what you're after.
As a side note, I gave a link above for the GPSID sample from Microsoft. I'd recommend looking at it and the native GPSID APIs but the managed wrapper Microsoft provided is, IMO, pure garbage, so you might consider wrapping the lower APIs yourself.

To restate the problem I believe you're trying to solve:
You've a use case when a carer will sent up a "virtual boundary" on a device. If that device leaves the bounded area, you'd like an alert sent via SMS sent to a predefined recipient, saying where that device is.
My suggestion would be to use something like OpenStreetMap maps (as they're free) for when you're setting up the virtual boundary. For their tiles (each 256px square), there is a relatively trivial method for converting between lat/long and pixel co-ordinates.
You might also be able to do what you want by cannibalising one of their existing Windows Mobile applications intended for surveying, such as OSMtracker, which already includes the map controls, downloads and the like, just leaving point 5 and part of point 4 on your list to tackle.