Talk to Santa This is a website that you can go to and register your kids to have a Chat conversation and Phone Conversation with Santa. Below is what was emailed to me. I won't be home this weekend to try but thought I would post it incase someone else wants to give it a shot.
"Three companies, Elix, Nü Echo, and CONCEPT S2i, joined forces to showcase their expertise in using voice and Web technologies by jointly developing a novel service for the 2003 Holiday season. Called "Chat with Santa," this project enables adults to register children for a conversation with Santa and his automated elf, Pixel. The adult fills in a Web registration form at www.talktosantaclaus.com and provides basic information that will help personalize the interaction with the child. The child then receives an e-mail from Pixel inviting him or her to call and providing a "secret" code to enter. When the child does this, they have an interactive, personalized chat with Santa and Pixel. The adult can even specify hints for good behavior, like "eat your vegetables," that Santa will convey to the child. The portion of the call where the child tells Santa what he wants for Christmas can be recorded and sent to the adult by e-mail. Besides providing a fun and unique holiday experience, this multimedia project involves use of the Web and of VoiceXML to retrieve information from the Web to activate speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies, and to respond dynamically to the child’s utterances. The project also vividly demonstrates the ability of today’s voice technology to provide synthetic speech that sounds completely natural. After all, if the children believe they are really chatting with Santa, imagine how "human" your solution can be! "
"Three companies, Elix, Nü Echo, and CONCEPT S2i, joined forces to showcase their expertise in using voice and Web technologies by jointly developing a novel service for the 2003 Holiday season. Called "Chat with Santa," this project enables adults to register children for a conversation with Santa and his automated elf, Pixel. The adult fills in a Web registration form at www.talktosantaclaus.com and provides basic information that will help personalize the interaction with the child. The child then receives an e-mail from Pixel inviting him or her to call and providing a "secret" code to enter. When the child does this, they have an interactive, personalized chat with Santa and Pixel. The adult can even specify hints for good behavior, like "eat your vegetables," that Santa will convey to the child. The portion of the call where the child tells Santa what he wants for Christmas can be recorded and sent to the adult by e-mail. Besides providing a fun and unique holiday experience, this multimedia project involves use of the Web and of VoiceXML to retrieve information from the Web to activate speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies, and to respond dynamically to the child’s utterances. The project also vividly demonstrates the ability of today’s voice technology to provide synthetic speech that sounds completely natural. After all, if the children believe they are really chatting with Santa, imagine how "human" your solution can be! "
