zondag, augustus 17, 2008
Google Gadget
I've experimented with Google Gadgets. Gadgets are little pieces of web applications that you can plug into your personalized home page such as iGoogle or add to the Google sidebar.The one I made simply lists a random trivia question, taken from the about2findout.com database, and refreshes it every 5 minutes. If you hover over the questions you get the full question and question type, and there's a button to show another random question. Plain and simple.
Clicking on the question will open a new browser window on the site itself where you can do the question as you usually would. I choose not to implement the answering logic in the gadget itself because that would make things much more complicated, and I need people to go to the site to answer questions otherwise I loose all statistics and tracking of answer questions.
There is a very nice tutorial on creating Google Gadgets here:
http://www.seoish.com/how-to-make-google-gadgets/
I especially like the interactive part where you add gadgets with video explanation next to the Google Gadget editor. Google Gadgets are nothing more than xml files that describe the gadget's properties and logic. The logic can either be written in javascript, or redirected to another URL, and that last option is what I've done. It saves me the trouble of having to rewrite everything in javascript, but especially allows for people that are logged in to keep their credentials via the normal way. There is more detail on Google's Code site on creating and publishing gadgets.
This is the first of what I hope will be many ways to open up the site to the rest of the web. About2findout.com was never meant to be a locked database. After the screens, I've implemented a module to randomly generate 20 questions every minute. It's that module that feeds the Google Gadget and any other way of sharing I'll add in the future. It keeps the calculations on the site down (although I don't know how this behaves under heavy traffic), and avoids bots to suck out all questions and answers from the site. There are only 20 questions per minute. Should be enough for the real people among us.
To check out the Gadget or add it to your page:
Add to iGoogle
Add to webpage
Labels: about2findout.com, gadget, googlegadget
vrijdag, augustus 15, 2008
Widgetbox test
On widgetbox.com, you can create and share widgets. Widgets are small parts of web pages that you can insert in your site, blog, personal homepage such as iGoogle or NetVibes or social site such as Facebook.Creating the widget based on the RSS feed of my quiz site was fairly easy. Not sure what I can do with the widget now, but hey, at least I have a widget shared with the world :-).
Labels: about2findout.com, widget
1500 questions
zaterdag, mei 24, 2008
New home page and other improvements
The home page of about2findout.com is renewed. First of all, there is a new slogan for the site. Instead of 'quiz 2.0 has arrived', it is now 'what do you know?'. The main page still has the same general navigation at the top, but the search link is now on the right top accessible anywhere. The center of the new home page has two colored pieces: one for the quiz zone and one for the author zone, with many direct useful links. Every 30 seconds, a new random question and associated author are shown.Another new feature is the page 'All questions', that as the name suggests shows a list of all published questions in the database. You can order the list by clicking on the column headings, and you can filter it by language and filter out questions you have already done.
Last but not least, there is a 'Tell a Friend' page that allows you to send an e-mail message to invite a friend to check out the site.
The Hall of Fame page shows the 50 highest scores by default, or the 50 highest accuracies, 50 most recent, most difficult, most popular or best rated questions. And when you have answered a question, the left bar shows a link to the quiz the question is part of, if any.
Labels: about2findout.com
donderdag, mei 01, 2008
900 questions
Labels: about2findout.com, news
April in numbers
This month, the site had 2731 visitors that did on average 7 pages per visit and came from 83 countries. The top visiting countries are in order: USA, India, UK, Belgium, Canada.The most popular quiz was the Capitals quiz. In April 17 quizzes, 46 new people and 139 questions were added to the site, and Dailydog had the top score, and India was the top scoring country. Except for 1 week, there were no special advertisement or other promotion campaigns. The peak on April 26 I guess is because of a lot of StumbleUpon traffic that day.
Labels: about2findout.com, news
zondag, april 13, 2008
800 questions and counting - yet another science quiz
About2findout.com is over 800 questions big now. Number 800 is part of the 'Yet another science quiz'. There are over 200 people and 70 quizzes now.Thanks to all the people who contributed questions and quizzes so far, and please keep 'em coming.
Labels: about2findout.com, science
vrijdag, april 04, 2008
A Quiz on the iPhone
Last night I added a quiz on one of the most popular things around: the iPhone. I don't own one, but I played with it when I was in the US last year. One day I hope to find the time to write a mobile version of the about2findout.com site, that you can view on the iPhone or other mobile devices. One day...Labels: about2findout.com, apple, iphone, quiz
March numbers are in...
So how did the site do in the last month? As always, an update on the latest numbers, brought to you by the free Google Analytics service.- The site visits went up again to 3776 visits, for 7.85 pages per visit on average. That makes almost 30.000 page views. 83% are new visits.
- The top day was 25 March with 373 visits. That day the site was listed on the Museum of Modern Beta blog.
- Top 5 countries are United States, India, Italy, United Kingdom and Belgium.
- Most popular quiz was the one on Confusing Words.
- 15 new quizzes, 84 new members and 139 new questions were added to the site.
- 59% internet explorer, 38% firefox
So March was a good month, but I wished I found some more time to bring you new features. April looks busy too, but I'll do my best.
Labels: about2findout.com
zondag, maart 30, 2008
More listings
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
woensdag, maart 26, 2008
about2findout.com featured on the Museum of Modern Beta
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 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.htmlLearn it lists
learn a little every day
Labels: about2findout.com, MoMB, museum of modern beta
Change to 'remember me' in login page
Labels: about2findout.com, cookie, login, remember me
zondag, maart 16, 2008
Video tutorials (also on YouTube)
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
vrijdag, maart 14, 2008
Browsershots.org shows your web site on various 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
donderdag, maart 13, 2008
Measure just how much you suck on mobiles
http://ready.mobi/results.jsp?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.about2findout.com&locale=en_EN
Labels: about2findout.com, mobile, ready.mobi
zaterdag, maart 01, 2008
State of the site: February
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
donderdag, februari 21, 2008
600 and going up
Here are the latest quiz and question 600 (in Dutch).

Labels: about2findout.com, cats, claus
zaterdag, februari 16, 2008
New: challenge someone!

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
vrijdag, januari 11, 2008
We want your face
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
maandag, januari 07, 2008
Other quiz sites: FunTrivia.com review

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

