Bot Contest

That's too bad. Oh well, things happen. Also, we can't expect one person to run a whole contest

if anyone wants to sponser it for me and make it that would be fine. they do everything but make the rules and put it under my name! lol

Bwahaha.. Like most other bot contests

The 2004 Chatterbox Challenge is just around the corner. $2000 in prize money will be awarded to the winners. However, we don't have any extra money for the medals or the postage to send them to the winners. Instead of asking for donations and the like we hope to earn the money. However, things haven't turned out as expected. So I've been working to come up with something of my own. I'm hoping bot enthusiast like we all are will fine something you like. The main page of the contest in now a link to what I have to offer. As you know the move is to have your bot speak via Text to Speech and I have two such packages. One is a Q&A bot built in Flash. You click on the question in the drop down list and the answer is spoken back to you. I am using one on my Talk-Bot site and I think they're pretty cool and can be used in a lot of different ways. We have a wide variety of characters to choose from with a lot of options. Second is a Full Text to Speech Bot. Everything your bot would normally display as text is also spoken back aloud. You gets some quirky pronunciations sometimes but that's part of the fun. A large portion of anything I sell will go towards the contest. I invite you all to check it out and pass the word. We all benefit by having the extra money so we can
continue to offer nice cash awards along with the award medals.

Chris Cowart

I am having so much fun today. I would tell you all about it but I would just bore you to death. Anyway don't talk to Nickisafag or pie...something because they are really annoying people who will just try to crash your computer. You have been warned.

Wow. You mean there are bot contests and you can actually win money. Cool

how can you enter a contest?

hello there, it has been almost.. i dont remember since i entered here... lost my password..found it again

Chris, I see you're using AT&T Natural Voices. I looked into several ways of getting the voices to work with the lowest bandwidth, and that was one of the options, but at the time they couldnt encode mp3. Do they do that now? And what's the plug-in for?

We looked at a number of options. Converting text to a mp3 file and then playing it back was way too slow. Some of the options worked on Window servers only and not Unix. The plug-in seems to be the easiest way. It works in conjuction with Microsoft's TTS engine. We also offer a version that works with the shockwave plug-in from Flash. It sure is a big upgrade from text only bots with static pictures.

Chris

HOW DO YOU ENTER A CONTEST

Mr. Bob you can enter the 2004 Chatterbox Challenge by visiting the site at www.chatterboxchallenge.com There you will see the link Enter Bot. Deadline to enter is 3/15/04 and there is no entry fee. $2000 in cash will be awarded along with 24 medals in 8 different categories.

Chris