Help funding this project
WatchBot was not created for profit. I built it for fun, and hoping to help other FICS players. Still, I must pay for hosting it. To date, it costed me about $400 (see below for some details if you are interested). There are some ads here, but nobody ever clicks them.
So, if you like WatchBot, consider donating something to help covering those costs. I do not expect big donations, a dollar or a few would perfectly do. You need either a PayPal account, or a payment card suitable for internet payments (all credit cards do, many debit cards do too).
Big thanks to everyone who donated so far!
About WatchBot hosting
Some hosting details for those curious.
WatchBot was initially running from my home PC, but it soon turned out that it was offline more than online, what defeated its purpose. It also saturated my home internet connection noticeably.
WatchBot is currently running on Linode. I strongly recommend this VPS. There are a lot of VPS hosting offers nowadays, but just a few are professionally supported, really stable, reasonably priced and equipped with all necessary tools. Linode and Slicehost are far ahead of all other offers (and Linode offers slightly better plans at the moment).
So I bought some small VPS and moved WatchBot there (it was August 2006). It costed me $15 a month (note that all those cheap web hosting offers were not appropriate for continously running program). For more than a year it was the only application running there. Later on I collocated it with my website (adding WatchBot web interface on the way), and (as the machine turned out to be too small) moved both to bigger VPS ($20/month). Still, it is WatchBot what takes most resources from the machine.
I don't plan to switch WatchBot off even if there are no donations, but obtaining even a few bucks from time to time would make it easier to explain those costs to my wife ;-)