Thank you so much for your reply. I'll have a look at the plugin_weather and see how that one works.
Regarding the neural net, I think that's an important feature because the most difficult part about guessing triggers is, well, guessing. Our language is awfully diverse and I think you'll get better results in the long run.
I've applied for membership to the mailing list. I'll keep my questions there.
You're also right that Abot plugins as they stand now do not improve or learn automatically over time. I've done some work on a training system which will enable a Facebook M or Magic-style human-aided training backend. It'll be a plugin just like any other which will eventually be hooked up to a neural net with optional centralized training (so you don't need a GPU rig or tons of data to get started). An early version of that is probably going to be ready going into June with the v0.2 release.
Thanks so much for the feedback. I'd love to continue this discussion and find ways to improve plugins and training. If you're interested, there's a mailing list here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/abot-discussion