Invasion of the Robots

May 23, 2006 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

This contest went live a couple of days ago but I didn't have time yet to write about it until tonight. Microsoft is challenging developers worldwide to create conversational robots, or BOTs, for MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. The most original and useful robots collect 40.000$ in total prizes, more info at contest website.

If you are a developer but you don't have a clue what these BOTs are all about, I'll list some of the already existing BOTs right here so you can play around with them for a bit and this might get you some creative ideas. So add those to your MSN or Windows Live Messenger buddy list and get in a conversation. Unless mentioned differently, they're all English BOTs.

Existing BOTs:

TechEd06@hotmail.com (NEW)
encarta@conversagent.com
volkskrant@nieuwskraker.nl (Dutch)
blabla@chatman.nl (Dutch)
espbilly@msn.com
indeedjobs@hotmail.com
yellowpagesqa@hotmail.com
smarterchild@hotmail.com
msnguiftguide@hotmail.com

Have fun! And thanks David for pointing out the new Tech Ed bot on your blog.

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About Kris Hoet

My name is Kris Hoet and this is my blog dedicated to subjects such as advertising, gadgets, interactive, internet, movies, games … and whatever things that interest me. More at http://crossthebreeze.com/about-cross-the-breeze/

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3 Responses to “Invasion of the Robots”

Hillary Reply November 22, 2007 at 1:24 am

Wonderful pages! Keep up the grat work.e

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

John’s blog » Blog Archive » MSN attacked by Bots. Microsoft says it’s a competition - June 1, 2006
[...] Anyway it’s quite a funny thing seeing these Bots showing up on the MSN IM net. Where do they come from? It turns out it’s an ongoing robot invasion launched from the deep inner of Redmond, Microsoft. The invasion is carried out in a disguise of a competition “to create conversational robots, or BOTs, for MSN® Messenger and Windows Live™ Messenger”. The army of them (currently five) can be visited here. [...]
‘Cross The Breeze » Blog Archive » Oberon Livebot Gateway - August 17, 2006
[...] Oberon Medialab has come up with a new way to make it easier for agencies to create bots for MSN & Windows Live Messenger. If you haven’t heard about bots before, they’re basically an innovative way to interact with the +200 million Messenger users out there. Here are some examples. [...]