Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

I'm very happy to see that the site gets listed in web 2.0 directories, and gets reviews. Here are some of last week (BTW, in case you are wondering, Technorati is my spy).

Got listed on a German site:
http://www.web2null.de/about2findout

And on this one:
http://diystartupnews.com/2008/03/25/about2findout-beta/
Like the comment 'the pub quiz without the pub'.

And on Techie-buzz they say:
About2FindOut is a site which quizzes you on various topics, it allows community members to answer quizzes as well as solve it. So if you are a avid solver of quizzes head there and solve quizzes or create some cool ones and share them with others.

There is an article and review on socialtake.com that I like to quote from:
"Why it might be a killer - This trivia site will agree with thinking minds all over the world. The quizzes actually make you think, unlike other game sites out there. Plus, you’ll get to compete against other people, make challenges, and find out if you’re really the fab brain you think you are." Indeed, I do hope people learn some things (also about themselves) when they are on the site. They also end with a very pertinent question "Are questions vetted in any way? How accurate are the answers?". I might need to work further on that one, but for the moment people can send a message to the author and administrators with the link 'I think it is wrong.' The author can then reply or change his question. Administrators can also edit all questions. So far this has worked well, and on the 700 question I guess about 10 have been corrected so far.

Finally an article on two Italian sites (that I can't read unfortunately):
- http://blog.atuttonet.it/applicazioni-web/about2findout-crea-i-tuoi-quiz.php
- Geekissimo

Labels: about2findout.com, blogrol

About2findout.com has been added to the 'All Things Web 2.0' directory in the Game 2.0 category. So far, no reviews but being in those kind of lists is a good step forward. The list is very extensive and you might want to check it out for your other 2.0 'needs'.

http://www.allthingsweb2.com/mtree/GAME_2.0/about2findout.com_trivia_site/details/

Labels: blogs

Last week I've been working in Paris, some days till 2 o'clock in the morning in a room without a window. But yesterday, on Saturday at last I got some time to wander around in the city. It was very nice weather, and I enjoyed it. First I wanted to revisit the modern art gallery (Centre Pompidou) but the queue at the ticket desk was just too much. I've seen the collection before anyway. So I did the quick and cheap way to visit a museum: I visited the bookshop and looked at all the postcards they were selling picturing their main pieces of art. Centre Pompidou has an excellent bookshop. I remember being struck by a photobook on 'post mortem' for example. At the end of the 19the century there was a habit of making a final photo of the deceased. Very touching and confronting in a world where we have hidden all reference to the end of life.

I didn't go to the Eiffer tower because I've been there before, but I read there are plans to build a large hanging platform on the top of the tower next year to celebrate the x'th birthday of the tower. It looks weird to change the pointy shape, and I imagine there will be lots of people against it. But then again, most people were against building it in the first place...

On my way back to the hotel I stopped at a Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysées, and there they had what I couldn't find in Belgium or Holland for over a month because they were all sold out: they had Nintendo Wii available! So I just bought one and took it home. I'm not a gamer. Actually, I hate all those point and shoot games. Long, long time ago I had my share of the at that time popular 'Lazy Larry', and the best game I've seen was 'The Incredible Machine'. (How nerdy is that :-) ). But I wanted a Wii because they focus on other kind of games, like games involving actual movement with their innovative motion sensor, brain academy etc. I just got it hooked up to the television yesterday (manuals are too long, not very clear) and it works. I'll keep you posted on my gaming newbie experiences.

Labels: eiffer tower, paris, wii

The site got listed on March 25 on the Museum of Modern Beta blog. Saurier Duval maintains this list of web 2.0 sites that are typically in perpetual beta.

And speaking of the Museum of Modern Beta, here are some entries related to learning 2.0:

Schoolfinder

SchoolFinder places K-12 school information at your fingertips, enabling you to search and compare public, private, charter and online schools

Edmodo.com
The free communication platform for education.
As discussed on : http://www.somewhatfrank.com/2008/03/edmodo-microblo.html

Learn it lists
learn a little every day

Labels: about2findout.com, MoMB, museum of modern beta

Two days ago, I was on easter holiday spending a few days in the youth hostel on the Dutch island of Texel. It was snowing (yes, indeed, at Easter of all times!) and it's a little island so I bought a 5 euro hour on the Internet to make a new quiz on my site. Oh horror: I could not login. Only when I cleared the 'remember me' box on the login page, I could access the site. That has probably something to do with persistent cookies or other food, but then it hit me: so that is the reason why so many new users on the site don't fill in their profile page or have a 0 score! All people on Internet kiosks in Internet cafes probably have problems logging in. So I changed the behavior: the 'remember me' box is now by default unchecked. It will help everybody to log in. But for people returning to the site, they'll have to provide their userid and password again, except when they check the box.

Labels: about2findout.com, cookie, login, remember me

I have my new computer for 90 days now, so the pre-installed version of Bullguard antivirus has expired. I did not feel like paying for a subscription, so I opted for a free antivirus. If you search on the net, most often AVG or Avast are recommended. I opted for Avast. It is available in Dutch, and has automatic updates and real time protection.

Avast Home Edition 4.7 is free for non-commercial and home use. Installation is easy, but you have to register for a free code that will keep you protected for a year. Afterwards, you need to apply for another free code. It works on Vista.

At the moment, I haven't decided on a free firewall yet. The build in firewall in Windows Vista protects against incoming evil, but is not very good by default in outbound protection. It is not very easily configurable for outbound either. But I have a firewall in my router as well, so I'm not sure if I need an extra more advanced firewall on my PC. If I install one, choices will be between ZoneAlarm or Comodo.

Labels: antivirus

I made 5 video tutorials and put them in the help section of the site. At the same time I adapted the help section to look like the rest with a navigation box on the right. The screen capture videos are made with a free copy of the previous version of Camtasia that you can get from TechSmith. Camtasia is market leader in their segment, and it shows. It was very easy to make the captures, and to convert them to AVI, flash or WMV video. For the links below you need the Windows Media Player.

Video 1 : How to solve questions and quizzes on about2findout.com?
Video 2 : How to create questions on about2findout.com?
Video 3 : Hints on creating questions, and all question types
Video 4 : How to create a 7of9 quiz on about2findout.com?
Video 5 : How to add a contact?

I have also uploaded these videos on YouTube. For some reason, only 2 out of the 5 wmv files converted on YouTube. I redid the others as AVI files and that worked.

See all videos on http://www.youtube.com/decouteb

Labels: about2findout.com, camtasia, tutorials, video, youtube

It's not easy (for me at least) to design a web site that looks good and looks the same on all browsers. I test it out on IE and Firefox, and that's it. But you don't need to have a machine installed with 20 exotic browsers such as Flock or Epiphany or others. Go to browsershots.org and type in the URL of your site. You will be put in a queue and after some time (30 minutes for me) you'll get little screenshots of your site as seen by 44 different browsers.

About2findout.com renders pretty much the same on browsers, but on Konqueror and Flock 1.1 it doesn't show for some reason. Oh well.

Have a look:
http://browsershots.org/http://www.about2findout.com/

Labels: about2findout.com, browsers, browsershots.org

About2findout.com is not intended to run on mobile phones (at this point in time at least). And there is a site you can use to measure exactly how bad your web site runs on a mobile phone, or how much it would cost for someone to download it to their phones. It's scary. But you also get advise on how to make it work better on mobiles. The site is called ready.mobi, and please, don't go to about2findout.com on your mobile, unless it is an iPhone with full browser capability. On iPhones it works well, I've seen.

http://ready.mobi/results.jsp?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.about2findout.com&locale=en_EN

Labels: about2findout.com, mobile, ready.mobi

I've attended the Belgian launch event from Microsoft's new products today. It is called 'Heroes happen here' and celebrates the release of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. As usual I got a very professional show, good food, a vendor exhibition and once more 1/3 or more of the audience seemed to be students.

I go to these events part out of nostalgia to the times I was a Microsoft Certified Trainer, and gave courses, or even made some like on the Wolfpack cluster. Good times. It's not my job anymore to follow these evolutions, but I still keep a high level view as a hobby. Actually, I don't find the new releases that dramatically different from when I stopped around 2003. They became more secure, more reliable, more easy to manage, faster, more trouble-free, etc, but the core was there. Actually, Microsoft has a hard time to come up with a big bang announcement on what is so great about these releases. And the reason is the products have been reworked at their core. They do their jobs better, more secure, etc. But not dramatically different. And I think that is a good thing.
So marketing-wise, the main message was not on the products (yes, they are released and they are great and have tons of new little and bigger features on all kinds of areas) but on the participants. Microsoft celebrated the 'silent heroes', aka the IT people that make all these great applications and that make sure they keep running. It was also the first time I did not go home with a nice conference bag with goodies like the actual software. They gave everyone a book that has photographs of various IT heroes around the world by Carolyn Jones. There are 20.000 copies of it, only handed out to the participants of the launch events around the world. (When I came home and showed the book to Stijn, he immediately called it 'the book of nerds'. I don't agree but can see his point.)

While I appreciate the hero message, I would have preferred the copy of Visual Studio 2008 I was secretly hoping for. I guess I'll keep making about2findout.com on the copy of Visual Studio 2005 they gave me at the previous launch event.

Labels: heroes happen here, microsoft, visual studio

I've updated the challenges. Now you can challenge a contact directly, or just go to the 'challenge contact' page in the Club Zone, and select from one of three random questions to challenge with.

The Club Zone main page also has an overview of open challenges and challenges won and lost.

Labels: about2findout, new

Some weeks ago I stumbled upon the excellent quiz site purposegames.com. Like about2findout, it is a site that adheres to the web 2.0 principles of letting you all add games to the site and build a community around it, and it is also made by a single person. The site was started in 2006 by David Andersson and now has 4138 games and 7721 members. When I played around on the site there were 3 registered members and 147 visitors around.

While a lot of the concepts are similar with about2findout.com, the biggest difference is the kind of quiz games you can play on purposegames.com. The site specializes in very engaging, visual games where you have to point and click the right answer on an image. To give you a flavor: here are two samples I enjoyed and are typical:
- Game on the national flags of Asia
- Game on the Simpsons characters
You can play these games registered (then your score is stored) or anonymous, and when you play them again, the order of questions will be different.

Here are some of the things I wrote down:
- The main menu is games - create - community - leatherboard. Except for the last one that is similar to the quiz zone, author zone and club zone we have. The leatherboard is where you find the latest scores on the tournament. Purposegames has tournaments that spread over time. That is actually a good idea.

- Registration is easy : just one page, and the password is send to you via e-mail. You don't have to wait to be able to have access to all parts on the site, including creating new games. Only when you create games for the first time you need to agree with the terms and conditions.

- Games are flash-based. I like the clear and soft site design and looks. Wish I could do that :-).

- The community has players of the week and the month, and a history of players of the month (I like that idea very much.) It also has a member directory and you can see who is online and who are the top 5 contributors. Furthermore there is a discussion forum.

- There are a few Google advertisements on the site, but they don't bother at all.

- The home page has a game of the day.

- The site is only in English.

- There are two kinds of games: image-based games and multiple choice games. Games have a high score tab, rating, comments but you can also add a game as a favorite. Games can be marked as public or not.

- The help section is very limited, just a minimal FAQ. But when you create games, you do get clear instructions.

- I tried out the game editor for multiple choice games and created the first quiz I had on my site : Aids Day. The editor is easy and intuitive with clear instructions. They also use a concept of making - preview - publish. And the editor is actually a combination of a form-based screen where you need to fill in the boxes, and a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) at the same time. Very impressive. You cannot add feedback to questions or extra links, and for some reason my first question wasn't saved, but otherwise it went very smooth. Check it out:

http://www.purposegames.com/game/aids-day-quiz-quiz/info

My end conclusion: very good site, worth checking out!

Labels: purposegames.com, quiz, trivia

A somewhat longer than usual February has just passed, so it is time to have another look at what happened to the site last month.

I did not have much time in February to work on the site and that shows: only the challenge has been added from a functional point of view. But we did have a steady increase of visitors that subscribe and come back, usually to make the Friday Quizday quiz.

The 'natural' number of visits is currently around 30 per day. For 6 days I paid 5 euro a day for Google Advertisement and that got the site up to around 100 visitors per day. The Confusing Words Quiz was the most popular click-through.

One more important fact: after having Google ads (via Google Adsense) on my blog for over a year and on the site since December, I finally got a 76.30 euro payment from Google! I actually spend more on paying them ads for my site, but who's complaining, it's a good evolution. By the end of the year I hope advertisement will cover the hosting fees of the site.

Labels: about2findout.com