Chatty Addie
A Virtual Friend You Can Talk
Play, Laugh and Grow With
Play, Laugh and Grow With
Chatty Addie is a virtual friend for 4 to 12 year-olds. She listens, understands, and talks with your child in English using voice recognition, a chat engine and speech synthesis. It feels like having a FaceTime video call with a charmingly beautiful animated character, featuring full Retina support for all devices. In addition to conversing on a wide variety of topics, she tells jokes and can play word, math and number games that are both entertaining and educational.
Requirements:
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad including full Retina support. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. WiFi or mobile network connection required for speech recognition.
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad including full Retina support. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. WiFi or mobile network connection required for speech recognition.
About
- Talk, play, and laugh with Chatty Addie - your new virtual friend.
- Ask Addie a question and hear her reply in English.
- Helps kids with language learning: Addie's lip movements and speech bubble text are synchronized with her voice.
- Helps kids with math learning: Contains number guessing, number order and basic arithmetic games.
- She loves to tell jokes and play word games, math games and number games.
- Chatty Addie can talk about a wide variety of topics.
- Chatty Addie is age appropriate for 4 to 12 year-old children.
- Feels like having a FaceTime video call with a charmingly animated character.
- No ads, in-app purchases or pop-ups - just good, clean fun!
- Hands-free auto-listening - no tapping needed to continue conversation.
- Usable by kids with visual or touch impairments who can interact through speech.
- Uses the same voice recognition technology as Siri, but works with older devices.
Video
Video
Updates
Version 1.1.1
May 30, 2013-
NEW
- Chat Engine Upgrade
- Conversation Improvements
- User Interface Improvements
- Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements
Version 1.1
March 26, 2013- Now a Universal app fully supporting Retina iPad.
- Conversation engine and script additions, changes, and improvements.
- More games, including new Math games.
- Graphical and interface improvements.
Version 1.01
January 17, 2013- Conversation fixes for users getting stuck with knock-knock jokes and other games. Other conversation improvements.
Version 1.0
Released on December 19, 2012- Initial Release
News
News
iPhone / iPod touch Screenshots
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iPad Screens
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Inspiration
The story of Chatty Addie began when my three year-old daughter was playing with a talking app on an iPad. The app repeated back what she said, but then she started asking the app questions. After a few copycat responses, she turned to me in frustration and asked "Why won't it answer me?"
That question lit the spark of inspiration for Chatty Addie. Siri had recently been released, and it seemed the timing was right to create an app where children can have full conversations with a charmingly animated character.
My daughter was invaluable in helping during the development and testing process. She was involved from conception to completion. In a sense, the app was my gift to her. And now, it can be her gift to you and your family.
The current version has a wide variety of conversational topics, as well as educational and entertaining games and jokes. Addie makes a great virtual friend. But there is much more planned for the future.
Her knowledge and abilities will expand. She will eventually have the option to connect to kid-safe knowledge areas on the Internet and look up information your child is interested in. She'll be able to answer questions that you might not even be able to, and all your child will have to do is ask.
Technology
Chatty Addie is positioned at the forefront of the trend towards voice-enabled mobile interfaces. It's unique interface is delightfully pushing the boundaries of how users interact with their devices. Despite being extremely simple to use, there is a lot of complex technology built into the app to make this experience possible:
- Hands-free Auto-Listening: There is no tapping needed to continue conversations and users can freely speak with her, just like interacting with a real person over FaceTime (or with an advanced computer in a science fiction film). Everybody will appreciate this immersive experience, while having the added benefit of enabling the app to be used by kids with visual or touch impairments who can interact through speech.
- Speech Recognition: Addie uses the highly acclaimed best-in-class Dragon speech recognition engine by Nuance to hear what you are saying. It's core voice recognition capabilities are the same as those used by Siri, but Addie does not require Siri and therefore works perfectly on older devices.
- Artificial Intelligence: Addie's brain uses a sophisticated natural language processing engine called ChatScript. This engine was developed by one of the brightest minds in AI over a number of years. It has won top honors in the strenuous Loebner Prize competition to select the most human-like conversational software for two of the last three years.
- Speech Synthesis: Addie's voice is provided by NeoSpeech, one of the most realistic sounding voices available on the market. This voice engine also provides information to Addie about which sounds are being spoken, enabling her detailed mouth movements to be perfectly synchronized with what she is saying.
Team
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Chris Boraski (Application Design and Development) is an indie developer / entrepreneur / consultant creating mobile apps for his company, InfAspire.
Prior to focusing on mobile development, Chris worked for most of his career creating web applications, and worked for a number of companies including Scholastic and InterCall.
In addition to Chatty Addie, he has recently collaborated with What Are Minds For, Inc to create an iPhone app named Voice RT which allows adjustment of a WiFi Radio Thermostat using speech commands.
Chris currently lives in Montgomery, New Jersey with his wife, a special education teacher, and their four year-old daughter.
More info about Chris: about.me/boraski
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Helen Huang (Illustrations, Icon and Logo Design) is a self taught digital artist based in Los Angeles. She was born and raised in China. Art has always been her true passion and motivated her to change career choice from lawyer to designer. During the day, she is an Art Director at an interactive ad agency. In her spare time, she wanders in her fantasy art world, trying to capture every inspiration she has and share her vision with the world.
She uses vector art as the main medium for her feminine and elegant style. Her work is often filled with soft pastel palettes and flowing curves with delightful and playful characters in a surreal, imaginative world. Manga, fashion and her Chinese heritage are the major influences on her work.
Her current work focuses on fashion illustration, editorial and character design. Clients include Mattel, Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, American Girl, Shutter Stock and Imagezoo.
More info about Helen: helen-huang.com -
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Helen Huang (Illustrations, Icon and Logo Design) is a self taught digital artist based in Los Angeles. She was born and raised in China. Art has always been her true passion and motivated her to change career choice from lawyer to designer. During the day, she is an Art Director at an interactive ad agency. In her spare time, she wanders in her fantasy art world, trying to capture every inspiration she has and share her vision with the world.
She uses vector art as the main medium for her feminine and elegant style. Her work is often filled with soft pastel palettes and flowing curves with delightful and playful characters in a surreal, imaginative world. Manga, fashion and her Chinese heritage are the major influences on her work.
Her current work focuses on fashion illustration, editorial and character design. Clients include Mattel, Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, American Girl, Shutter Stock and Imagezoo.
More info about Helen: helen-huang.com
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Todd Greenwood (Character Development and Writing) is a writer, speaker, game designer and storyteller.
In addition to having worked on shaping the character of Addie for Chatty Addie, Todd and his family published a top-selling app “Family Car Games.” (A collection of 100 “no-stuff-needed” games that families can play together on road trips.) Other apps he has published include Best Jewish Jokes, Classroom Games, and Waiting Games. 2013 is a busy year with the publication of a new tabletop family game and a book of short fiction called “Three Window Fiction.”
Todd lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife Ruth, a singer-songwriter.
More info about Todd: toddg147.wix.com/lotsowatts
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David Newyear (ChatScript Programming and Development) is a cataloger and instructional librarian at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio.
He has presented on the topic of artificial intelligence at the LITA 2011 National Forum and Computers in Libraries 2012.
David won the 2011 PLA Polaris John Iliff Innovation in Technology Award for “Emma the Catbot,” a chatbot designed to help library patrons.
More info about David: www.infotabby.org -
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David Newyear (ChatScript Programming and Development) is a cataloger and instructional librarian at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio.
He has presented on the topic of artificial intelligence at the LITA 2011 National Forum and Computers in Libraries 2012.
David won the 2011 PLA Polaris John Iliff Innovation in Technology Award for “Emma the Catbot,” a chatbot designed to help library patrons.
More info about David: www.infotabby.org
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Bruce Wilcox (ChatScript Engine Development) has been involved in the forefront of Artificial Intelligence research for decades.
He is the author of ChatScript, the dominant platform for managing natural language dialog. The bots he has created using it have twice won the Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence.
ChatScript is being used in mobile phone entertainment apps, as a virtual patient simulation for training doctors in diagnosing patients, as an English-as-a-second-language teaching bot, and as an IT help desk agent for a commercial company in Israel, amongst others.
ChatScript even powered a demo where one could get better search results on Amazon by using natural language to control Amazon's own search engine.
More info about Bruce: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Wilcox
Press Info
If you want to review or write about Chatty Addie, let us know. Promo codes can be supplied to press members and bloggers upon request.
A zip file with unaltered screen shots for publication is available here.
Contact
We're continually improving Chatty Addie. Please contact us with any questions or feedback!
support@chattyaddie.com