UBot Network

What’s the Big Deal With UBot Studio 5.5?

UBot Studio 5 was a big leap forward in many ways. We added a lot of important features, like a ui editor, some new commands, and importantly, UBot Secure. UBot Secure was an enormous undertaking, and it’s implementation meant making calculated sacrifices – namely in stability and maintainability.

UBot Secure, has helped a few people protect their bots. But after much soul searching, I ultimately decided that the trade off wasn’t worth it. UBotters need stability and new features, and that’s what I want to deliver. Effective as of UBot Studio 5.5, we will no longer be supporting UBot Secure. Bots developed with UBot Secure will continue to work securely, and current versions of UBot will still be able to use UBot Secure. Just be aware that UBot Studio 5.5 you will no longer be able to compile new bots with UBot Secure.

So does that mean that your bots will lack security? Well, no. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as unhackable security – if there was, everyone would use it. Security is about giving hackers as big of a headache as you can. UBot Secure did this pretty well. In it’s absence, I can recommend an alternative developed by one of our very own UBotters. It’s called UBot Locker. Its creator has been part of the UBot community for years, and has expert experience with security. He’s trusted by our community and by our team.

And what does all this mean for UBot Studio? To those of you who have been around a while, imagine the stability of UBot Studio 4 with all the functionality of UBot Studio 5. If you’re newer, just rest assured that this will be the most powerful, most solid, most efficient UBot Studio ever.

This is the most important change, but I still have a few more tricks up my sleeve as well. Stay tuned, and all will be revealed shortly…

Dev Update

UBot Studio 5.5 is moving along as expected, and I’m very excited about the way it’s coming together. With the important structural changes and major bug fixes, we’re making sure that 5.5 will be the most stable, most sustainable, UBot Studio yet.

We’re currently testing the second alpha. Many important issues are already fixed. For instance, those long startup times, especially for users with a lot of plugins, are fixed. The private bot bank is now back in action too. We also fixed all the quirkiness users were seeing when saving tables, and the crashing issues with multithreading. These are just some highlights, of course.

We’re not ready to announce a release date yet, but we should have a better idea soon. Stay tuned!

Shut Up and Take My Money

Hey all! It’s Jess, the new Automation Specialist at UBot Media! I am having a blast getting to learn all about UBot Studio and our amazing customers. So I thought I would share a little about me…

I am a workaholic.

From a young age it was instilled in me that working hard, long hours was the only way to succeed and get ahead in life. However, I soon realized I was working my butt off and not getting anywhere. All my life I worked multiple jobs, even when I was in school full time. Maintaining a work-hard, play-hard lifestyle got to be exhausting. No matter how hard I tried to break free from the rat race I was living in, the fear of the unknown got the better of me. At one point I was working FIVE jobs! Who does that? When you are working hard, 70 hours per week between three jobs and not seeing the results promised, what are you supposed to do? To my great surprise and rescue, Seth recognized my over the top work ethic and invited me to be a part of his team.

When Seth first approached me about working for his software company I was hesitant. My technology background was limited, and the thought of programming was a bit scary. But the more I learned about what UBot was and all of the amazing things it could do, my interest began to outweigh my insecurity.

Seth took a big chance on me and all I wanted was to work harder for him than anyone ever had. But as I learned more about UBot and what it actually did, my whole way of thinking started to transform. My whole life, I was lead to believe you needed to find a path and work relentlessly, non-stop, until you made it to where you wanted to be. Through the use of automation, my eyes have been opened to an entirely new world. A new meaning of success began to reveal itself to me. I feel as though I have been welcomed into some elite club, and you all are showing me the secret back door to success.

For as long as I can remember, I have wished there were more hours in the day. The crazy thing is that UBot was helping me accomplish just that! Of course, I still work ridiculously hard, but it is on more fun and creative things. Now I have MUCH more time to play, too! “Working” and “success” are beginning to have completely new meanings.

A small example that I am too excited to keep to myself: our local grocery store has this online coupon area, where you can add coupons directly to your loyalty card. Generally, I spend about an hour every week before I go shopping to add the coupons I want. It saves me $60-80 a month. Work hard + save money = success, right? Driving home one day, it hit me! Why don’t I just make a bot to add all the coupons? Then I can have that hour back every week!

With UBot Studio, I made that bot in 7 minutes flat.

I clicked play and sat back. 42 seconds later I had all 389 coupons added to my card. I felt like a freaking genius!

In my excitement, I told a friend of mine what I had made. She said, “I will give you $50 for that right now.”

It was my very first “shut up and take my money” moment!

I felt guilty taking her money, so I just gave it to her for free. But I learned a very important lesson. Selling my smart bots is incredibly profitable. She was willing to pay me $50 because she could save $50+ every month.

If I were to sell just my coupon bot at $50, I would only need to sell 4 before I made back the cost of upgrading to UBot Studio Dev and saw my first completely in-pocket profits! I could do that by lunch.

Even if you’ve never thought about selling software before, UBot Studio Developer Edition gives you the power you need to evoke the famed “shut up and take my money” response.” Thank you for the opportunity to learn a new way to life. I hope this story helps you on the way to yours!

Jess Nowell
UBot Studio

The Present and Future of UBot Media

It’s been one hell of a year at UBot Media. Old friends and moved on from our team, new friends are making a name for themselves, and all the while, UBot Studio has been evolving. For the last few months, I’ve taken a hard look at the UBot Studio source base. I got to see some ideas expertly executed, other ideas sloppily and hurriedly done, and still other ideas that were started years ago but never saw the light of day.

It had been a while since I had worn my programmer hat, and I’m glad for the opportunity. The experience has rekindled a passion for something I crafted years ago in my own hands. After all, UBot is more than just business software. UBot is a different way of thinking about the world, about how we get work done. And as it stands, it has only seen but a fraction of its full potential.

Such a thorough audit of our code base has revealed a multitude of things I would like to see fixed or all together changed. Accomplishing everything I want to accomplish will take time, but it’s a journey that will be well worth the effort. I’ve never been so sure that the people on my team are the best humans for the task at hand. And after painstaking experimentation and selection, the technologies we’ve chosen for the future of UBot Studio are the strongest that are available for this moment in time.

So what does that future look like, exactly? I can’t give all the details, but what I can say is that the next update of UBot will be for version 5.5. It will contain a number of internal changes to make the software heartier and more sustainable. I also plan to check some items off the community wish list, and off my personal wish list as well. With this announcement, I will begin updating the tracker to mark the development of UBot 5.5.

So with a team of truly exceptional people, it’s now time to move forward with all the passion, talent, and sweat we have to offer.