donderdag, februari 21, 2008
600 and going up
Last night the 600th question was added to the site. The recent 5-day Google Ads campaign also had a good effect: 100 visitors a day, and 13 new members. Tho most clicked add was the one for the 'Confusing Words' quiz, made by dailydog.
Here are the latest quiz and question 600 (in Dutch).
Here are the latest quiz and question 600 (in Dutch).
Labels: about2findout.com, cats, claus
zondag, februari 17, 2008
Animatronics: make a movie in Second Life
Lately, we have been experimenting making animatronics. Animatronics are movies that are shot in a virtual world like Second Life or ActiveWorlds, or in a game environment. Our idea is to use Second Life as a cheap environment to make 3D animations for use in e-learning courses. So far the tests look good. The alternatives are to make real-world video or do it all in Flash, but both options tend to be more expensive.
Shooting movies in Second Life or another virtual world are very similar to shooting movies in the real world: you need an avatar to be the camera man, you need an avatar for every actor, and you need to scout for good locations (and maybe ask permission to film there if you don't own them) and make sure nobody runs in the way. But the benefits are that compared to real live shooting, you cut the expensive recording equipment, you eliminate travel, and the avatars can be made to look like any actor you need. The downsides are that the interaction is more limited and expression of emotions (especially facial) is not so good. But for a lot of animations, that isn't a problem.
We have used a very cheap and good software called Fraps (I believe it stands for frames per second) to capture the in-world movie. The built-in video capture of Second Life gives more troubles, and the 37$ you pay for a Fraps license is worth it.
After the raw shooting the editing and voice synchronization remain the same as with other movies.
Here are some links that helped us on the way, and might do the same for you:
Amazingg life blog (in Dutch)
Second Life help: http://secondlife.com/showcase/machinima.php
Second Life Wiki
Shooting movies in Second Life or another virtual world are very similar to shooting movies in the real world: you need an avatar to be the camera man, you need an avatar for every actor, and you need to scout for good locations (and maybe ask permission to film there if you don't own them) and make sure nobody runs in the way. But the benefits are that compared to real live shooting, you cut the expensive recording equipment, you eliminate travel, and the avatars can be made to look like any actor you need. The downsides are that the interaction is more limited and expression of emotions (especially facial) is not so good. But for a lot of animations, that isn't a problem.
We have used a very cheap and good software called Fraps (I believe it stands for frames per second) to capture the in-world movie. The built-in video capture of Second Life gives more troubles, and the 37$ you pay for a Fraps license is worth it.
After the raw shooting the editing and voice synchronization remain the same as with other movies.
Here are some links that helped us on the way, and might do the same for you:
Amazingg life blog (in Dutch)
Second Life help: http://secondlife.com/showcase/machinima.php
Second Life Wiki
Labels: animatronic, Second Life
zaterdag, februari 16, 2008
New: challenge someone!
You can challenge one of your contacts or anyone else on the site now. Here is how it works:
After you answer any question, click the link 'Challenge a friend' in the navigation box on the right.
A new screen opens, where you can select who to challenge. When you position the mouse over the 'send a challenge to' link, all your contacts are shown, and you can select one. You can also type in the user name of anyone on the site.
Next select for how many points (2-5) you bet that the other person won't know the question, type in an optional message, and hit the 'send' button. An e-mail and an internal message are sent out, and the challenged person has 7 days to accept or reject your challenge. If he or she answers the question right, you lose the points to him, otherwise you get the points from him.
Let the duels begin!
After you answer any question, click the link 'Challenge a friend' in the navigation box on the right.
A new screen opens, where you can select who to challenge. When you position the mouse over the 'send a challenge to' link, all your contacts are shown, and you can select one. You can also type in the user name of anyone on the site.
Next select for how many points (2-5) you bet that the other person won't know the question, type in an optional message, and hit the 'send' button. An e-mail and an internal message are sent out, and the challenged person has 7 days to accept or reject your challenge. If he or she answers the question right, you lose the points to him, otherwise you get the points from him.
Let the duels begin!
Labels: about2findout.com, challenges, new
zondag, februari 03, 2008
World 66 : where have you been?
Just for fun: you can create a map of all the countries you've visited on www.world66.com.
Here is mine:
create your own visited country map
Here is mine:
create your own visited country map
Labels: world66
about2findout.com second month results
The site was launched in December last year, and I've already reported you on the first month. Here is what happened in January:In January, some new features such as RSS feeds, 3 new question types and the Friday QuizDay newsletter were introduced. But what is different from last month is that there were no Google or other advertisements to drive traffic to the site. I wanted to test the 'residual' visits after promoting it one month, and just rely on the blog, visitors own promotion and Friday Quizday flash. It was not bad. Statistics come from the free Google Analytics service.
- The site had a total of 1392 unique visits (down from 1512), 65% of them new visits and good for a total page view of 9282.
- There is a lot of variation in visitors per day. The high peaks are not there anymore because there were no Google ads this month. The average is around 45 daily visitors, with peaks of 80 or more. In the weekends there is a drop in visitors. The Friday Quizday flash has effects on Friday and Monday.
- Visitors stay on average 4 minutes, but there is a 58% bounce rate (only visit 1 page)
- Browsers: IE is still the most used browser with 66%, but that is a 7% drop by last month.
- 61% of people find us via Google.
- There were 19 new members, some of them got really active on the site. This month we also had the first quiz in German.
- The numbers of questions and quizzes increased significantly. We went from 225 to 522 published questions!
- The top 5 of visiting countries: Unites States, Belgium, United Kingdom, India, Netherlands.
- The Hall of Fame after two months:
| Name | Accuracy | Points | Member since | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuizMan | 53% | 988 | 16 Sep 2007 | BE |
| Dailydog | 85% | 872 | 23 Sep 2007 | BE |
| bert_decoutere | 62% | 759 | 09 Sep 2007 | BE |
| Stijn | 73% | 542 | 02 Sep 2007 | BE |
| elgotes | 69% | 385 | 16 Dec 2007 | AR |
| Kareltjeslimmerik | 58% | 210 | 13 Dec 2007 | BE |
| Popol | 78% | 194 | 18 Sep 2007 | BE |
| belandje | 67% | 137 | 27 Jan 2008 | BE |
| shubhox | 69% | 108 | 20 Dec 2007 | IN |
| monnu1380 | 73% | 85 | 21 Dec 2007 | IN |
Labels: about2findout, analytics, google analytics, statistics
Second Life still exists
I've been planning to revisit Second Life ever since I got my more powerful computer. A couple of weeks ago I tried, but of course had forgotten my password. And the online retrieval didn't work, and just referred me to make a US based support call. Right. Not going to happen.Today the password reset did work, so I made my reappearance on Second Life after about 6 months of inactivity. One striking change: you now have to agree to an empty terms and conditions. (See screenshot). I took the risk and was back in. There have been a few improvements in the time I was away. The most remarkable and high on my wish list: they have voice communication now! But Second Life is still a very lonely place unless you make appointments or have events. I teleported to about 10-15 places and found myself all alone on every single one of them. And I can't say the performance is much better than on my older computer, in spite of having a QuadCore processor and 4 GB of RAM memory now. Buildings still reveal themselves very slowly.
The IBM islands have also changed, and there are much more of them. Even a dedicated one to the Benelux region. On one of the IBM islands there is a cool water slide, try it out! And the SOA group (that's acronym talk for Service Oriented Architecture) even made a kind of learning experience / game.
Second Life is still the biggest virtual environment, but not the only one. I've been in ActiveWorlds also lately. For a comparison of different virtual platforms, please visit :
http://www.virtualworldsreview.com/
Labels: Second Life, virtual worlds
