Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

Another landmark reached: 500 questions and 40 quizzes. Thanks to all who contributed!

There is a new section called 'My.Achievements' in the profile section that lists the quizzes you scored 7 or more on (and thus passed, they are called 7of9 quiz remember?). The list is in chronological order, starting with the latest quiz you passed.

Labels: about2findout, new

I've added Question analytics and Quiz analytics pages to the site tonight.

When you are done with a question or a quiz, you will find a link to the analytics in the navigation box on the right. That's where you will see all kinds of properties of the item, but that's also the place where you can see the scores of other people. For privacy reasons, you can only see the scores of people who added you as a contact.

So for example, if a teacher asks his or her students to add him (or her again) as a contact, the teacher can see their scores. It is a first step towards reporting, but should cover the immediate needs. Oh, and the reports and difficulty levels are not reliable if not at least 10 people participated.

Labels: about2findout, new

I spent 4 days in Spain, visiting my parents who move to the south of Spain every winter for one month. It is a beautiful region with a remarkable past, and quite nice this time of the year (it's winter now but it feels like a Belgian summer...)

I made a little quiz on Andalucia and Spain:


On my return I also noticed the site was still up and running (oef) but better than that, there was a lot of activity too. Five new quizzes, and the first quiz in German, made by punktch :

We just passed the 400 questions mark on the site today! The latest questions include a (for me difficult) quiz on English literature by Dailydog, and nr 400 on movie sequels...

Youdontknowjack.com is based on a once popular game show with the same name. It is a very enteraining and witty quiz with nice questions. It is not a web 2.0 site at all, because the visitor is a mere consumer of the quiz, but I love the way they make it an engaging experience.

Every week, they post a flash-based quiz online that has a lot of outspoken comment, multiple choice questions, jackattack or didorthat questions. You play for fake dollars and a high score list is maintained. (Hint: try to position your mouse right on the top of Jack's nose.) I will never make something like that because it requires too much time each week in selecting the questions and especially the comments, but the game show format is a nice idea. If I ever get around to it, I prefer to have an API interface to about2findout.com where people can get their questions from that they can insert in quizzes like these. But that's the future. For now, I'm very much enjoying this kind of trivia experience.

The most challenging new question type that is available since today on about2findout.com is the open answer type. It just provides a textbox where you can type in the answer.

Try it here:


I did not want a stupid question type where the answer is compared to the exact string that the author provides. That leads to a lot of frustration if you don't type in exactly what the author has in mind. What if you forget a capital? What if you type in a space too much by mistake? What if there are multiple correct answers or ways to answer?

So this is how it works:

- The author types in the question and hint (optional), and indicates the expected answer. That can be free text, or one word, a number, a name (= 2 words) or a year (= 4 digits). The question taker will only be able to type in appropriate characters in the box, and see a little watermark telling what we are looking for. In my question example I'm looking for the name of a city, which is one word. So you cannot type in spaces or weird characters like @ and % in the answer box.
The default is free text without exotic characters.

- The author can also indicate if the answer should be evaluated case sensitive or not. In my example, I didn't require it, although the names of cities should be spelled with a capital. But beijing and Beijing are both fine. The default is case insensitive.

- The author can provide a list of correct answers. In my example, I accept both Beijing and Peking (the older name) as correct answers. When the answer is a name for example you could accept just the last name, the first and last name or the last and first name.

- The question taker's answer is preprocessed: trailing spaces are removed, and the spaces between words are one maximum, so extra spaces that one types in by mistake are ignored.

- Then I'm looking for the closest match with one of the correct answers. If I find a 100% match the answer is correct. If I find a match below 50% the answer is false. If the highest match is between 50% and 100% the question taker can try again, and gets a hint with the characters that were right. That way they can correct for little spelling mistakes.

I'm sure the algorithm can be improved to have a more accurate scoring, but for now it should work fine for both authors and quiz takers.

Labels: about2findout, new, open_answer

You can now also make sorting questions on about2findout.com. As an author, you can specify up to 6 items that need to be ordered. It might be a chronological order, or steps in a process, etc. As a question taker, you see the items in random order and can use up and down arrows to put them in the correct order.

Do the sample below to order the Olympic cities of the past 6 Olympiads:


http://www.about2findout.com/quickcode.aspx?code=W23U3B

At first, I wanted to use the ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit's Reorder control. But I couldn't find any tutorials on how to use it, and it seems to only work while databounded to a data source. So instead of a nice drag and drop component the arrows will have to do for now.

Labels: about2findout, new, reorder

The past weekend I programmed 3 new question types on the site. The first one was the easiest one: a true/false question type. I actually hesitated long time before making it, because it is not really a new type. It is just a very particular multiple choice questions with two predefined options. So it was easy to implement, and I reused a lot of the existing multiple choice question type.

The benefit for authors is that you don't have to type in the words 'true' or 'false' anymore, you just select the right one. That should save about 10 seconds :-). As a little extra for question takers, the default true or false text will be completed with a random message to make it a little more spicy. For example: 'False' might become 'False - Liar, liar, pants on fire.'

To sample a brand new true/false question, take the one below:

http://www.about2findout.com/quickcode.aspx?code=BN2G54

Labels: about2findout, new, true/false

I spent (wasted?) all day figuring out how to make people select and upload an avatar or profile picture to their account on the site. But here it is, from today onwards you will find a link in the edit profile page to upload an avatar. That should give a face to the people solving and creating questions and quizzes.

Asp.net (the programming language I use) only offers some file upload control, but I wanted something were users could crop the image their uploaded so the resulting avatar would always be 50 by 50 pixels. There is a great and expensive control available that does that (I-Load from Radactive) but I'm not going to spend 250$ on my free site. So I found a control named WebImageMaker. It was made by Tom Crane and does exactly what I wanted: upload an image, and select a part of it. I changed the control just a little bit so I could translate error messages and buttons in multiple languages.

The upload limit is 4 MB, and that is a default in asp.net. I did not see any reason to change that. Maybe one of these weeks you'll be able to upload images with questions, as I've figured out the basics.

Labels: about2findout.com, asp.net, avatars, new

I just send out the second Friday Quizday flash to all registered members of the about2findout.com site. The idea is to promote one particular quiz per week, and declare Friday the day to play it. It is one of the initiatives to get a community started that regularly come and play a few quizzes. This week's quiz by the way is on the Internet.


The good thing is that the mail is not considered spam (it is not intended as spam either). You can select to get the mail or not via a preference in your profile.
Last week, the response to the first flash was rather low, but I've adapted the layout of the flash since so it is (hopefully) more clear. I chose a HTML-based mail. So far, no complaints yet.

You can see the newsletter at http://www.about2findout.com/helpinghand/article.aspx?article=QUIZDAY.
If you like to receive it, just indicate so, and select the appropriate preference in your profile. The Friday Quizday flash is currently only in English.

Labels: new

I will start reviewing other quiz sites in this blog. I'll compare them to what I'm doing with about2findout.com, share my impression, get some inspiration, and each time donate and steal one question or quiz (bring on the lawsuits!).






I'm starting with the biggest of them all: funtrivia.com. By far, it is the largest and most popular trivia site and it dates back to the nineties. It has 1.900.000 members (!), and over 91.000 quizzes with in total 1.700.000 questions. Wow, that's big. At first impression: big and ugly site, but let's not jump ahead. Similar to about2findout.com the site is all about solving and submitting trivia questions and quizzes, and scoring points and get high in the rankings. But the underlying philosophy of the two sites is completely different.

Funtrivia is a typical web 1.0 site, where the design of about2findout.com goes for 2.0 elements where ever possible.. Funtrivia.com works with categories, not tags. It has forums. It works with a small group of editors who review submissions (and reject up to 2/3th) and control the quality of the site. And like all sites of that time, it suffers from severe ugliness and complexity. The complexity is probably a direct result its size and its development over time to keep people interested. It took me a while to figure out the difference between quizzes and games. Also the point system is scary at first sight. You easily get lost in the system. As for the look and feel, well, I'll try to give it a positive spin: vintage looks are hot. So this site would look great in a web museum. You know, the time sites had Times New Roman fonts. And oh my god, all that clip art. All that clip art! And what do all the icons mean? It's a good thing looks aren't everything. (I'm not saying that about2findout.com is beautiful and as simple as it can get, but at least over the last few months it has gotten better in both areas :).

The sign up procedure is easy and works with e-mail validation. But why are children under 13 not allowed? You get a few e-mails from them and can subscribe to a daily mailing list. (I also just launched one: the Friday Quizday mailing.) Once you are a member your points are kept, you can participate in the internal mailing system, etc. As a direct result of the size of funtrivia.com, you are compared within an assigned 'class', that is roughly the 5000 people who signed up at about the same time as you, so comparison makes sense. The language of the site is English.

You can search for quizzes in a certain category and questions are either multiple choice, fill in the blank or true/false. I find it strange that you have to type in 'TRUE' or 'FALSE' instead of selecting it, but it is probably good exercise for you finger muscles. You can get questions via HTML forms or via Flash. With the Flash player you get immediate feedback, with the HTML form you need to submit everything first. They also have daily and hourly quiz games that reset automatically. The global challenge is a nice initiative: it runs over a couple of months and is really for quiz die-hards. I haven't found any multi player games but maybe I didn't find them. As said: it's a complex site and patience is not a virtue I have. You can get points and badges. For example I have been on the site for two days now and made about 20 quizzes. Now I have a first level badge and this is my score and ranking:
"Your score of 1680 points ranks you as #286,574 of 777,506 ranking quiz players worldwide." Not bad after just 2 days. I conclude that a couple of 100.000 quiz players made an account once and never came back. But that is something I know as well.

The business model of funtrivia.com is in part advertisement, in part premium membership and in part selling quizzes. There is limited advertisement, it doesn't bother at all. The mainly rely on the gold membership they try to sell you for 20$ per 6 months. As a gold member you get extra things, such as access to special tournaments and advanced statistics but also some stuff that I find quite basic such as the ability to upload an avatar, visual indications of what quizzes you have already done or unlimited score tracking (for regular members only 300 quizzes are stored). I have no idea if they are as successful as Flickr in selling premium memberships. They also sell trivia questions for use in your own quiz evenings.
About2findout.com on the other hand is just starting up and changes almost every day. It is still searching for a way to get sustainable income to cover the hosting fees. The plan is to do it via the Google Adsense on the question page. So far I haven't seen a Google dollar yet, but we are hopeful.

Some other random things I like about the site: the notions of teams (for example I'm part of the Belgian quizzes group), the fact that they suggest similar quizzes based on the one you did, the whole concept of tournaments spread over days or weeks to make sure people keep playing and come back. Some things other than the complex and ugly nature I don't like: I can't upload a quiz yet. I was ready to donate the Christmas or HIV quiz, but you need to be a member over one month and have done 100 quizzes before you are even allowed to submit a quiz that will then be rejected or accepted by the editors. I guess I'll have to keep going back to funtrivia for a month and keep you informed of the authoring capabilities in one month from now...

In summary: funtrivia.com is the biggest of its kind, and that is mainly due to its size (many people, many questions) which attracts newcomers and due to the quality of its questions database. But it is big and ugly and complex and partly free, partly paying. Above all, it is a typical web 1.0 site.
In comparison to about2findout.com, I must say they had to deal with a lot of things I don't need to because I have a limited amount of players and questions. The philosophy of the sites are different: I rely on the 'wisdom of the crowds' to guard the quality of the trivia, not on editors and all kinds of rules. But funtrivia does have something that I should introduce one of these months: a purpose. You can play tournaments etc, in about2findout.com you can only do a question and a quiz. It will improve once I get around programming the challenge, where you can bet points with your friends, but still, I need some reasons for people to come back to the site more often.

Labels: about2findout.com, funtrivia.com, quiz, trivia

Last night Dailydog posted the 300th question on about2findout.com. Shame on me, I didn't have it correct.

http://www.about2findout.com/quickcode.aspx?code=F2BRCT

One of the things (I think) you will see rising in 2008 are specialized search engines for people. And I'm not talking about typing a name in Google, but really dedicated search engines that search the net, all social network sites, pictures and video's about your.
Now, let me tell you there is nothing wrong with looking yourself up in Google. Admit it, you have done it :-). One, it is a good method to see what other people know about you. You need to know what good and bad information your future partners, employers, friends, etc find about you. When you type in my brother's name for example one of the top hits is a link to an old site I had with his bad quiz score :-). Internet never forgets, much like elephants. Second, it is a good method to see how accurate the different people search sites are. What better benchmark than your own self?

So here it goes:
- There is always Google search to type in a name. Google finds my Blogger profile (surprise, surprise), awards I have played a role in, my blogs, linked in profile, my CV, some newsletters I've been in, redbooks I've written,... pretty accurate and expected stuff.
- Pipl.com: Just type in first and last name in this specialized search engine, and off you go. It takes a few seconds to get results (searching the 'deep web' as they call it). Pipl finds my Flickr album (that I used once), linkedin profile, blogs and publications.
- Naymz.com : an online reputation site. Don't know what to think of it yet. You get points for the amount of information you give in your profile and what others do with it. They have a free and paying service. But you can search member profiles and find a lot of it. Maintaining an online reputation and weed out the lies and misguiding facts that might pop up about you on the internet might be a next big thing.
- Wieowie.nl (Dutch): people search engine in Dutch. Nicely lists what it finds on you by category. But is doesn't really find much except for referring to Google and LinkedIn.
- Wink.com: again a people search engine. It renders a bit funny in IE, but the results are as expected.

So far, the people search engines are especially good in checking if you have a linked in profile, and do some Googling for you behind the scene. But they'll get better I'm sure.

Labels: naymz, people search, pipl, wieowie

I finally got around to create RSS feeds for about2findout.com. Now you can subscribe to new quizzes in English, new quizzes in Dutch and new questions by a certain member.


What are RSS feeds?
A key characteristic of modern 2.0 web sites is that you don't have to visit them every single time to check for new items. The content comes to you via something called RSS feeds. You can subscribe to news items, or get notified when a blogger posts a new article, or when a Flickr member posts a new photo, etc. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is basically a little file on a web site that lists the latest additions. So the web site has to have this RSS service. You, the user, need to have a little program to see and manage all your subscriptions. Some e-mail clients like Thunderbird have an RSS reader. Browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer have build-in capabilities for subscribing to RSS feeds these days. I'm using a free service from Google, called Google Reader to read all the stuff I'm subscribed to. Bloglines is another popular web-based RSS reader.

How to subscribe?
If a site has subscriptions, you will see it via the orange RSS icon. In modern browsers, you will be able to directly subscribe to them by clicking the icon and adding them to your RSS reader. Otherwise you can always copy/paste the URL of the feed manually in your reader.

Firefox shows the RSS button on the right end of the address bar, if a feed is available.



Internet Explorer 7 shows the RSS button next to the home button, but it is only enabled when one or more feeds are available.








RSS feeds in about2findout.com
On the home page and on the main page of the Quiz Zone, there is an automatic feed for new quizzes in English that your browser will detect. On the profile page of a member, there is an automatic feed available and a link to subscribe to all new questions of that member. The feed shows the last 10 additions and has a link to the question or quiz. A central page with direct links to all feeds that are available is here:

http://www.about2findout.com/feeds.aspx

How did I do it?
I used the ASP.NET RSS 2.0 Toolkit to create the feeds. It is a free asp.net component, available on Codeplex. You can find a nice tutorial on ScottGu's blog and on Piyush Shah's blog. What I did in essence was:
1- download the toolkit and sample site from Codeplex
2- add the components to Visual Studio (right click on the toolbar and choose 'select items' and point to the RSS toolkit dll file.
3- create an .ashx handler file, based on the sample in the toolkit that checks the request parameters of the page and creates the feed items based on that
3- add an RssHyperLink component to every page you want to have an automatic feed detection and point it to the .ashx file.
It took me a couple of hours playing with the sample site to figure out how it works, but the components are very good and you get a feed in no time published. I can recommend this toolkit to anyone wanting to publish RSS or atom feeds in an asp.net application.

Labels: about2findout, asp.net rss toolkit, feeds, new, RSS, subscription

Happy New Year! The past year was all about getting my little web 2.0 project roughly good enough for people to use and enjoy. In 2008 the main goal will be to grow the site. In this blog, I'll keep you posted on the latest developments and the various experience with web 2.0 I encounter.

Enjoy 08,
Bert