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Microsoft Speller Challenge to Award $10,000 for a Better Spell Checker

by Terrence O'Brien on December 17, 2010 at 04:30 PM

Speller Challenge
Microsoft wants to make a better spell check and it's willing to pay $10,000 to the person or persons that can "build the best speller that proposes the most plausible spelling alternatives for each search query." The Microsoft Speller Challenge officially launches on January 17, 2011. Eligible participants (over 18, not a Microsoft employee and not living in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria) will be able to download a data set from Microsoft to start hacking away on their creations. The final product must deliver its spelling suggestions via the RESTful API, a protocol for delivering information over the Web. All entries must be in by May 27.

Though Microsoft hasn't stated exactly how it intends to use the winning entry, the contest is being sponsored by Bing, implying that it may end up as part of a search tool similar to Google's Suggest and search term correction. It could also end up powering a new cloud-based spell checker for Office that updates without the need for downloading software patches. If you've got the chops, make sure visit the registration page on January 17.

Tags: crowdsourcing, microsoft, spell check, SpellCheck, speller challenge, SpellerChallenge, top, web

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