SpeakingBuddy! A free educational software to help children improve reading, writing and basic maths skills.

The SpeakingBuddy! software is a project I developed primarily for my wife, who is a special needs teacher. I was often trying to find a way to apply my programming knowledge in some sort of software that could help with her work at school, so I thought "... why not develop something that could entertain the children and at the same time helping them to learn? ...".

I hadn't (and still don't have) any knowledge on the education area, and had no idea of where to start, so she helped me a lot with ideas of what would be useful for her and the children, and for this reason, the SpeakingBuddy! software was entirely inspired and dedicated to her.

The original idea was to make a kind of an amusing text editor, where the children could write stories and have funny characters reading the stories back to them. I had some experience with Text-To-Speech before, so that was my first bet, and in a couple of weeks I had something ready to go, back in January, 2007.

But I still needed more. I thought "... well, if I were a child, I would find this really boring after a while ...". I needed something that could draw their attention to the "practise and learn" stuff and making boring tasks become fun.

That's exactly where the Microsoft® Agent and its animated characters came in handy. Bingo! That was my way to go, and I have to say that although I never found these characters very useful before, now I see they are responsible for most of the fun on the SpeakingBuddy! software.

When I finished the first beta version and presented it to her, I had no intention to distribute it, because I wanted it to be something restricted to her classroom only.

But the result was so good that she suggested me that it could be nice if other children in other classrooms could have the SpeakingBuddy! on their computers.

I didn't want to go through all the trouble of distributing software, even because SpeakingBuddy! uses third-party components and this involves copyright matters in which I didn't want to get into.

Selling it would be too restrictive, and I have to admit that even though the SpeakingBuddy! is a nice piece of software, it is not something I could classify as a "commercial" product.

Also, it was developed having the children in mind, and I would feel as if I were taking advantage of them by selling it.

So after several months, in December/2007, I decided to launch this website and distribute SpeakingBuddy! for free instead, for non-commercial purposes.

Hope everyone enjoys using SpeakingBuddy!, as much as I enjoyed developing it.

Thank you very much,

Clemente W. B. Silva

2) Copyright notices

2) The SpeakingBuddy! software uses Microsoft® Agent technology and its animated characters: Peedy, Genie, Robby and Merlin, which ones are all © 1996-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. For further information about licensing Microsoft® Agent and its animated characters, please refer to the Microsoft® Agent End-User License Agreement document.

3) Terms and conditions of use (for the SpeakingBuddy! software)

1) The SpeakingBuddy! software was developed and fully tested on Windows XP and Windows Vista, and is intended for use on computers running these same versions.

2) The SpeakingBuddy! software is free, and it is being distributed 'as is', without any kind of technical support and/or warranty.

I have done my best to provide the safest use and experience for children, however, the SpeakingBuddy! software (as well as any other product from any other company) is subject to possible failures and other issues.

Being so, I accept no liability for any kind of problem, loss or damage that the SpeakingBuddy! software (or unauthorized, altered versions of it) may cause, under any circumstance. This same condition applies to the Microsoft® Agent files and animated characters, and/or any other third-party component used by the SpeakingBuddy! software, which are the responsibility of their respective owners.

3) The download, installation and the use of this software means the acceptance of the above terms.

If you do not accept these terms, please do NOT download, install or use the SpeakingBuddy! software.

Otherwise, you may proceed to the Downloads page.

4) Privacy Policy (for the SpeakingBuddy! website)

In this policy I explain how and why the SpeakingBuddy! website collects information from visitors, what the SpeakingBuddy! website does with it and what controls you have over the use of it.

From time to time, I add or change functions to this website. This may result in periodic changes to this Privacy Policy. As a result, please remember to refer back to this Privacy Policy regularly to review any amendments.

Any questions regarding our Privacy Policy should be directed to privacy@speakingbuddy.org.

By using any of the pages on this website, you unconditionally agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy.

The web server where the SpeakingBuddy! website is hosted (as well as any other web server) automatically logs http requests. This means that we (the web server and I) know the originating IP address of the user agent requesting an URL, as well as the referer and the user agent information.

However, I do NOT log the specific identity of visitors. Also, this website uses only pure HTML and CSS. I do NOT use technologies such as databases, javascript and cookies to maintain any information on users, and neither is there any pop-up window, script or malicious code in any of the SpeakingBuddy! pages.

In other words: I make NO effort to identify you in any way, to know who you are, where you live, or collect any information about you.

There are several external links on this website, which will redirect you to other websites, for instance, Microsoft®, W3C®, SurfSafe™, amongst others.

I am not responsible for the content of these external links, and I accept no liability for whatever happens when you are redirected to them.

You should refer to their respective privacy policies, if you want to know if they collect information about you, how they do that and what they do with that.

5) Labels, Certifications and Ratings (for the SpeakingBuddy! website)

This website is labelled, certified and rated safe for children. For further info, click on the following icons:

6) Links to other websites

As I am offering the SpeakingBuddy! for free, I also don't use any paid service to promote it and try to make it known.

I appreciate very much the hard work of other people who donate their time, patience, care, love (and even money) in order to provide useful and free stuff on the web.

This is, I repeat, a hard work that most the times is not even recognized, because Internet users tend to "use and abuse" what is so kindly offered for free and never come back to say at least a "thank you"...

So, I would like to thank the people at the following websites (in which the SpeakingBuddy! software have been gratuitously supported somehow), by linking back to them.

Once again, thank you!

Links

7) Technical specifications

The SpeakingBuddy! software was developed in Microsoft® Visual Basic 6.0. The SpeakingBuddy! website uses HTML 4.01 Transitional (iso-8859-1 encoding) with CSS 2.

If you want to validate the website documents, visit the Markup Validation Service provided by W3C®.

8) Donations

If you, parent or teacher, think that SpeakingBuddy! is useful, you may consider making a donation, which will encourage me to work on further improvements and new features.

I have plans to improve it by adding, for instance, user profiles (children could have their own username and password to access stories and words list individually), printing capabilities, automatic e-mail download (to be read by the animated characters), amongst others.

To donate any amount, just click on the PayPal icon below.

9) Final considerations

Thank you very much for visiting SpeakingBuddy.org!

Even if you are not using the SpeakingBuddy! software, there is no problem: you are welcome anyway.

Since English is not my native language, you may find silly grammar/syntax errors on the SpeakingBuddy! website pages. In this case, be patient, it doesn't take long until I (or in most cases, my wife) spot and correct them.

Anyway, if you see something that is really being a pain in your eyes, feel free to send me a e-mail on webmaster@speakingbuddy.org.

See you!

Clemente W. B. Silva