It's been nearly a year since Microsoft's Satya Nadella proclaimed "bots are the new apps". Yet despite the promise of a revolution in how we interact with services and companies online, progress has been utterly miserable - the vast majority of chat bots are gimmicky, pointless or just flat out broken. But this week I was given great cause for optimism, in the form of Alec Jones, a 14-year-old from Victoria, Canada. For the past six months, Alec been working on Christopher Bot , a chatbot that helps students keep track of homework they've been given over the course of a week.