Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

It has been months since I visited my quiz site and I was pleasantly surprised that although there have been no new quizzes, no newsletters, no friday quizday or google advertisements since december last year, the site receives still 2000 hits per month, and new people still enroll and enjoy the quizzes. There were also new questions added by various folks.

Yesterday I updated the site, basically upgrading it and throwing out a lot of stuff. People tell me my site is complicated and has too much. So as of today:

- Upgraded to Visual Studio 2008 Express edition, with .net framework 3.5
- The interface is only English, no more Dutch or multilingual (questions can still be made in multiple languages)
- No more tag assistent, and only 3 instead of 5 tabs for making questions
- No more news line on the home page
- No more contact information via MSN, Yahoo, etc in your profile
- Layout modifications (small) to various pages

There is more simplification and adjustments in the pipeline, but I'll need to find the time for it. I also have a book I wanted to write on competent people. You'll be the first to hear about new changes. And I'm open to suggestions.

Labels: about2findout

I'm on holiday this week, so after our 3 night trip to visit Bucharest (I made a quiz on it), I found some time to create the League of Smartypants!
The site has lacked a purpose for a long time. Every game needs a goal and just the most points is not enough to stimulate most people. So from today onwards, you can earn a color in the League of Smartypants. The colors are similar to the belts in karate or judo. You automatically get a new Smartypants grade when you comply with the prerequisites for it. For now blue is the top color, with brown and black reserved for future use once the site grows.

	White	You need 100 points.
	Yellow	You need 200 points.
	Orange	You need 500 points and need to have authored 10 questions.
	Green	You need 1000 points and need to have authored 20 questions.
	Blue	You need 2000 points and need to have authored 50 questions.
	Brown	Not available yet.
	Black	Not available yet.

Labels: about2findout, smartypants

Announcing : the first trivia tournament on about2findout.com!

In July, the first Big Trivia Tournament will go live. This is what you can expect:
- There will be 25 brand new quizzes posted during the entire month. That is almost one per day.
- Only logged in users can participate (if needed you can create a free account)
- You have the entire month to solve the quizzes, so you can do it when best fits you. Do one every day, do them all at the end, or before or after you take a holiday.
- Your tournament score is the sum of all points on all the questions in the tournament. You will still get your regular points too and those include the double points for getting 7 or more on a quiz. For the tournament, it's just the sum of your points on the questions you had right.

So, just a little more patience, and the game begins...

Labels: about2findout, game, quiz, tournament, trivia

Similar to the about2findout.mobi site, I changed the main web site to also give you the choice of 3 different random questions when you are not following a quiz.

Check it out here.

Labels: about2findout

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

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

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

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 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

Today I launched another new item on about2findout.com : the What's New? page. You can find the page via the navigation box in the Quiz Zone, or via a new link in the top right corner of the main screen.

It shows you what has happened in the last 1, 7 or 30 days.

- Top scorer and top country of that period (for this week it is elgoto with 60 points and Belgium with 95 points).

- New quizzes

- New persons who joined

- New questions

Labels: about2findout, new

I 'stumbled upon' a new bookmarking site, called AddThis.com. It allows you to submit a page you like to many social bookmarking sites at once (like Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati, etc). So I changed the bookmarking buttons on the question and quiz pages (actually, I moved them to the 'share this' popup) and replaced them by the AddThis.com button. The button with a pull-down menu doesn't work together with the AJAX JavaScript, so I had to add the static one.

Labels: about2findout, addthis.com, del.icio.us, social bookmarking, stumbleupon

I've implemented an automatic adjustment of the difficulty level of questions. As you know, the difficulty level is indicated by 1, 2 or 3 gray dots, and depending on the level you can win or loose 1, 2 or 3 points when you solve the questions. The level is set by the author in the Author Zone (properties tab).

But once a question has at least 10 views, the level gets updated automatically once a day by Otto, the new automatic agent of the site. The rules are:
- If more than 66% of people know the answer, the level is 1 (easy)
- If between 33% and 66% of people know the answer, the level is 2 (moderate)
- If less than 33% of people know the answer, the level is 3 (difficult)

Otto (the automatic agent of the site) is implemented in ASP.NET. I looked hard to find an asp.net task scheduler, but couldn't find one. Many implementations use a console application that calls a web service, or use the Windows Task Scheduler. I don't have access to either on my hosted environment at seekdotnet.com. If you do control your own server, those solutions might work for you:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/ASPNETService.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/vb/WebJobScheduler.aspx

I don't need fancy schedulers that run if the application is down or idle, so I just added some code in the global.asax file in the Session_End section. That way every time a session is ended, the code runs and checks the database if a job should run. It works.

While I was at it, I also made Otto send messages when your questions reach 10 or 100 views, or when someone adds you as a contact. Otto only speaks English, and I hope that is not a problem.

Labels: about2findout, asp.net, new, otto

I fixed a few bugs in the points system. You can no longer get points for your own questions. And when you publish a new question or quiz, you get 3 points (previously 5), but you get one extra point if the question has feedback, and one more extra point if your question contains more information in the form of links or text. (So that is still 5 in the end.) Here are the new rules:

• Only logged on users can get points, so join for free to keep track of your score!
• You get or loose points when you answer questions.
  • If you answer correctly, you get 1, 2 or 3 points depending on the difficulty of the question. The difficulty of a question is determined by how many people have it right.
  • If you answer wrong the first time, nothing happens because everyone makes mistakes (but smart people only make them once).
  • If you answer wrong on the same question again, you loose 1, 2 or 3 points depending on the difficulty of the question.
  • There is a grace period of 30 days wherein you cannot get scored for the same question again. You can see if you've done a question lately by the green or red squares in the overview tables.
  • You cannot get points for your own questions.
• You get double points when you have 7 or more on a quiz.
  • When you score 7 or more on a 7of9 quiz, the points you scored on that quiz are doubled. You only get the extra points when you have made all 9 questions.
• You get points when you publish a question or quiz.
  • You get 3 points when you publish a new question or a new quiz.
  • You get an extra point if you provide feedback with your question.
  • You get an extra point if you provide more information (either via text or via links) to your question or quiz.
  • You do not get any additional points when you republish a question.
• You can loose all your points when you are violating the code of conduct.

Labels: about2findout, new, points

I've implemented a long awaited feature on the site: you can now see what questions you already did.

On the question and quiz tables in the Quiz Zone and Club Zone you now have icons to indicate if you have done a question before. If you hover over the icon, you even get the question QuickCode and the last date you took it. On the image you see the latest questions from my contact Diego (elgotes) on Spielberg. They are difficult :-).

Means you did the question or quiz successfully in the last month. You can do it again, but you can't get any more points during this period.

Means you did the question or quiz unsuccessfully in the last month. You can do it again, but you can't get any more points during this period.

Means you did the question or quiz successfully but more than a month ago. You can do it again this time and see if you still remember. But beware! If you are wrong points go off.

Means you did the question or quiz unsuccessfully but more than a month ago. Now is the time to prove you have learned something and do it again. But beware! If you are wrong again points go off.

Labels: about2findout, help, new

I've updated the search page. Now you can search for people in the same country.
- Go to the search page via Quiz Zone --> Search
- Click on the tab 'Search for people'
- Select the country in the drop-down box (it should be populated with your own country)
- Press OK

Other improvements on the search page include a link to the questions created by the persons you search. Under the navigation box you can also see how many questions are in the database and how many of them you have solved. If you click on any of the search result questions, you can just click the Next Question button to go to the next question in your search list, no need to go back to the search page. And searching for people will now get you a direct link to their questions. Did you also know that you can click on the underlined headers in the table to sort it? Click once for sorting ascending, twice for sorting descending.

I was surprised to see 17 members from India, out of the 57. Welcome guys and girls!

Labels: about2findout, new, search page

The site launched a month ago with the AIDS Day Quiz. As I used Google AdWords to promote that quiz, there were about 80-90 visitors a day. Later it dropped back to 20 per day and went up again around the time the Christmas Quiz was launched. That one was promoted again via AdWords, and linked in my Christmas wishes to everyone. Biggest hit was on December 21 with 145 hits. Yesterday on Christmas I had 70. Here are some statistics from the first month of the site, provided by the free service Google Analytics:

- I had 1512 unique visitors (83.10% new visits) that viewed 12745 pages.
- That is an average page view of 7.06.
- People stay on average 4 minutes 36 seconds on the site.
- 47.37% only visit one page.
- Browsers: 73.91% use Internet Explorer, 22.99% use Firefox.
- I had visits from 106 countries. The top 5 country list is: USA, India, UK, Belgium, Canada.
- 32.24% is referred via Google, 23.38% via advertisement
- I spent 62.71 euro on Google AdWords advertising, and got 710 clicks for it. My add showed 410.392 times.
- There are now 225 published questions in the database
- There are now 59 registered members
- The Hall Of Fame after one month:

Labels: about2findout, analytics, google adwords, statistics

Tonight question number 200 was posted on the site. (Actually, there are now 204 published questions in the database.) Nr 200 is part of the 'Belgium Quiz' by Stijn. Thanks Stijn!

QuickCode: DYAZ5
URL: http://www.about2findout.com/quickcode.aspx?code=DYAZ5

Labels: about2findout, belgium

Today I started a new blog, this time not at Blogger, but at Wordpress. I'm happy with Blogger, don't get me wrong, but I want to experience the difference. And above all, for the new blog I want to be able to postdate articles so they automatically get published on a future date.

So far I find the service very similar, with a little more ease of use for Blogger. Time will tell which one I like more.

The purpose of the new blog called 'Quizman's Quiz Qlog (QQQ)' is to promote one new quiz per week. It's one of the initiatives I'm taking to make the site more well known. After building the basics in 2007, the focus for 2008 is going to be on growing it and getting people to visit, use and like the site. (And I'll keep improving it naturally.) Today I got the nicest compliment from Diego, a friend from Argentina who visited my site: "Its not just for fun, its like a drug!!!! hahahaha. Excellent site! and im learning a lot too!!Hugs back ". And that's indeed what's it all about. (The learning and fun, not the drugs thing.)

Labels: about2findout, blog, blogger, quizman, wordpress

Ho, ho, ho!
The Christmas Quiz has gone live. It has 9 questions on Christmas, the history of Christmas and Santa Claus. So, what do you know about it? Only one way to find out...

QuickCode: DGZMU
Link: http://www.about2findout.com/quickcode.aspx?code=DGZMU

Labels: about2findout, christmas, quiz, santa

Another new feature added today on the Quiz site about2findout.com is the Question Card or Quiz Card. When you publish a question or quiz, a card image is automatically generated with the first lines of the question on it. Clicking on the card will directly get you to the question or quiz. Via the promote link in the Author Zone, you can get the HTML code to add such a card to your website or blog. The cards are also used internally to offer random questions to visitors.

Labels: about2findout, new, promote, Question Card

There have been updates to the question and quiz screens.

- The 'more information' and 'share' links are now moved to the navigation box on the right.
- The share link shows the QuickCode as well as the direct URL to the question or quiz
- Quizzes also get scored for anonymous users now.
- The tags are always visible and moved to the central part, under the question information.
- The quiz page only shows the green score box, not the red one and the question backgrounds
have been updated.

- There is a new part that shows the last three people who succesfully made the question or the last three people who scored 7 or more on the quiz.
- The links to post the question or quiz to Blink, Digg, Furl, Google, Magnolia, NewsVine, Reddit, Spurl, Technorati and Delicious now work.
- Three random other questions or quizzes are suggested in the right bar.

Another small improvement is on the search page, that now also searches quizzes. But best of all, when you click on one of the questions on the search page, you can navigate to the next on the list without having to search again. And on popular demand you now get an indication if you have already answered a question recently. Recently means in the last 30 days.

Labels: about2findout, design, new

There are a bunch of new features available today on about2findout.com. The first one I'd like to introduce is the QuickCode.

Every question and quiz has a unique code with numbers and letters. A question has a 6-digit quickcode, and a quiz has a 5-digit unique code. You can find the codes back in various places on the site, for example under every question. You can also find it back in the promotion page of your own questions. (Go to Author Zone, and click on the link Promote next to one of your questions.)

The home page now has a new box in the upper left corner where visitors can directly type in the QuickCode and go to the quiz or question at hand. That means you can share your quizzes and questions by just giving other people the QuickCode and the site name.

Try it: the QuickCode for the Aids World Day Quiz for example is AMH7E .

Labels: about2findout, new, quickcode

Now that a beta version of my site has just gone live, it is time to promote it! So I've decided to try out the world's most famous Internet advertisement company: Google. Google has a paying service (that generates about all of its income by the way) called AdWords. It allows you to create the familiar ad campaigns you see on the Google search pages. The principle is simple: you create your ad and link it with a list of keywords. Then you say how much you are willing to pay per click (I chose 0.09 euro cent because the estimator didn't give any results below that) and a maximum amount you want to spend a day (I chose 5 euro). An auction mechanism then determines what users will see your add based on the search terms they entered and other advertisers that bid for the same words.

The setup of the account was easy. You get the choice between a starter and a standard account type. The differences are listed here. I had to go for a standard account because otherwise I could only target one country. There is a lot of help assisting you choosing the right keywords and settings. But you should very carefully check the review page just before you sign up! All of the sudden Google had changed my maximum rates to 500 euro a day and 9 euro per click. I suppose a calculation error with the comma, but not funny if it is your money. So I went back and changed it. I also linked my AdWords account with my Google Analytics account.

I obviously don't want to go broke on AdWords because I'm running a completely free site here, but I want to see its effect and play around with it. The campaign I'm running right now is about the World Aids Day Quiz. I'll let it run for 1-2 weeks and let you know its impact in a follow-on post.

Labels: about2findout, Adwords

I added a quiz type to about2findout.com. It is called the 7of9 quiz, and the concept is simple. The quiz has 9 questions. As before, every question will get you 1, 2 or 3 points according to its difficulty level. After you've done all questions and if you answered at least 7 or more questions correct, you will get double points for the quiz.

The Author Zone now has a new button to create the quiz. First you edit the quiz by just adding the IDs of 9 questions. They don't have to be your own questions even, you can add any question. Next you can preview, publish or promote your quiz, just as you can for individual questions.
Please let me know if you like this new feature and how it can be improved or made easier.

The site has just gone live with its first quiz, the Aids Day 2007 Quiz. World Aids Day is traditionally held on Dec 1st, which is also my target date for the going live. Try it on:
http://www.about2findout.com/quickcode.aspx?code=AMH7E .

Labels: 7of9, about2findout, quiz

AIDS has been around for more than 25 year now. Despite the fact it has killed more than 25 million people since 1981, AIDS is still unspoken and unknown in many countries. What do you know about HIV and AIDS? Take the 7of 9 quiz and share it with your friends!

http://www.about2findout.com/quickcode.aspx?code=AMH7E

This quiz is also the opening quiz on the brand new about2findout.com quiz 2.0 site, a site dedicated to questions, answers and quizzes. Hint: create an account if you want to keep scores.

Labels: about2findout, AIDS, HIV, quiz, World Aids Day

I just realized I haven't posted an article in just under a month. First I was on holiday in Florida, then work got in the way and the last week I've been very, very busy preparing the go live of about2findout.com on Dec 1st. So it was just silence before the storm really :-). In fact I just uploaded both the brand new about2findout.com quiz 2.0 site to the root of the domain, and moved the experimental about3findout.com site to another server. So if you made links or bookmarks before, you will need to update them. The blog hasn't moved.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving for Berlin, where I'll attend the annual Online Educa Berlin conference on e-learning. It will be the fourth time I'm going and I'm looking forward to it as usual. The conference is a unique place with a mixed crowd of business and academics, and it is the time of year I go to contemplate on the work I've done so far, and what I want to do the next year. I'll be giving a session on the IBM Knowledge Factory and social software, and chairing another on learning in the enterprise.

Labels: about2findout, berlin, online educa

This Saturday I'm leaving for Orlando, Florida and I'm not coming back for 2 weeks. So I took the opportunity to create a little quiz with 9 questions on Florida. Hope you enjoy.

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

Labels: about2findout, florida, quiz

The development site about3findout.com is 6 weeks old, and already got its third major user interface redesign. This time I tried to apply the most common principles of web 2.0 interfaces. Hope you like it and find it easier and more intuitive to navigate. It's still not done completely, but hey, it's 2.0 so perpetual beta :-) .

In this article I want to point you to the various places on the Internet that helped me to reshape the site.

First of all I redefined the color schemes for the site. I still have four separate color coded zones Quiz zone, Author zone, Club zone and Help zone. But the very bright and painful pink and green colors have been replaced. I went from a 3-color scheme to a 2-color scheme. For every zone there is one color 'letter' for the characters, and one softer color 'lightshade' for the background. There are a lot of color sites out there on the mighty Internet, and these were most helpful to me:

• The color toolbox lists useful sites that will learn you about colors on the web
• Color combos: this is the site I used to get matching color pairs in pink, blue, green and yellow. You can create and share color palettes on this site. Nice initiative.

The next site that helped me a lot was the 'Web 2.0 How-do-design Guide' on webdesignfromscratch.com. It inspired me into applying the following design principles:

• Simplicity: (As good as it gets - don't think users won't find their way and clutter the screen with useless information)
• Central design: My previous interface could scale across the screen. This one has a fixed body of 800 pixels so it should fit on 800*600 screens. Larger screens will have white margins.
• Two columns: one main body and one navigation and command column on the right
• Separate and clearly visible top section: I now have a big black belt on top so the body stands out from the header. The logo is always 'in your face'.
• Navigation: clear navigation sections in the colored boxes on the right.
• Big text: average font sizes have increased on the Internet since web 2.0
• And then things like the 'beta' star, the rounded corners, the gradient backgrounds,...

And luckily these days you don't need to be a graphical artist yourself to create nice logo's, boxes, gradients, backgrounds or tabs. All that is available for free on the net. Here is what I used and recommend:

• Tabsgenerator.com : nice site to generate tabs in various formats and colors
• Stripegenerator.com : from the same makers as tabsgenerator.com, this site lets you very easily create the o so popular striped backgrounds
• Web20badges.com : didn't use them yet, but if I ever need a badge or 'new' star sign, this is the place to get it
• LogoCreatr : the web 2.0 logo was created with the logo creatr. There is another popular logo creator site here, but I found the logocreatr better because it allows for multiple designs and more configuration options such as colors, size and transparency.

Labels: about2findout, design, interface, web2.0

I added a new question type to about2findout.com today. From now on you can create multiple choice with multiple answers questions. The way you create them is identical to multiple choice with 1 answer, except for the fact you need to check the correct answer boxes.

When the question is played, you get two tries if you answer incomplete the first time. All the rest is the same.

For this type of questions, you can have either 0, 1 or up to 6 correct answer options.

You can find a sample question here on the cities of the state of Florida.

Labels: about2findout

I've designed the site from scratch as a multilingual site. Boy, has that been more work than I anticipated. Today I want to explain how I see languages in about2findout.com. It's more than just the interface.

But there is of course first and foremost the language of the user interface. At present the site's interface is completely translated into English and Dutch. You can set the language at the top bar and the setting is remembered when you next log on. For anonymous users the language is the one from the browser, with English as default language. Multilingual interfaces are very common across the Internet, but most sites keep it at that.

The dynamic content (the questions that is) that users make can be in one of six languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Users can take any of these when they create new languages and also spell check is provided in these languages.

And then there is something (I think) new: I'm not assuming people only speak one language. There are basically only two countries in the world where it is a safe choice to only speak one language. In most other parts of the world you'll need to understand 2, 3 or more languages. So in your profile, you can indicate all languages you understand. Regardless of the interface language choice, when you opt to get a random questions you will be offered in any of the languages you understand. Also the search screen will automatically filter for the languages you understand.

BTW, doing questions in languages you don't completely master is also a nice learning experience. My friend for example currently flickrs (is that a verb?) in Spanish, to learn the language.

Labels: about2findout, languages, multilingual

Creating questions is four easy steps: 1- edit, 2- preview, 3- publish and 4- promote. I made a little video tutorial on how to do it. Since Jing has a 5-minute limit, it is split in two parts. So enjoy and surprise me with your questions!

Part 1
Part 2
















Transcript:
Hello big world!
My name is Bert and today I want to show you how to create questions on the about2findout.com site. Creating questions is 4 easy steps: first you create and edit the question. You fill in all fields on the form, and don't forget to add relevant tags so people can
easily find your question back. Next in step 2 you preview the question. You can go over all options and links just as any user would see them and check if everything is as you want it. Step 3 is an important step where you publish your question. Once published, the question becomes available to anyone and you get rewarded for making a question. In step 4 we offer you some ways to promote your question like for example linking it from your blog or site.

Let's just do it.

Go to the author zone. You can go to anywhere in the site from any page by going to the main menu in the top left corner. It's the little drop down icon. Select author zone. Here you see a list of all the questions you have made. Questions can either be in draft (that means not published yet), published or expired. To create a question, either press the create button or just hover over it and select the question type from the menu.

That brings us to step 1: editing the question. Notice that the 4 steps are listed in the menu on the right side. Fill in the fields. Fields in bold with an asterix are mandatory. You can't have a question without well... a question, can you? Let's fill this in with an example. The assignment should usually be left blank, but you can type in specific instructions. Don't just say: select the best answer. Everyone knows that. For every type of question you can have other fields to fill in here. For a multiple choice question you provide between two and six answer options. The first one you type in is the correct one. When we show this question the options will always be displayed in random order. Also select the language of your question, and very important, select some tags that classify your question. Whatever you do, don't give away the answer in the tags! Because tagging is so important, you can also use the tag assistent. When you click refresh, the tag assistant will parse the text you typed in and suggest some tags to add.
Before filling in other tabs, I recommend to hit the create button. If you want to provide additional information such as feedback to the options, additional settings, type in a little text that explains, or provide links to relevant places on the internet, by all means do so. The quality of your question will greatly improve when you provide additional information. Don't forget to hit the save button before you go to step 2 and preview the question.

In the preview you can go over the question like anyone on the site would see it. The only differences are that it's a green background because you are in the author zone, you can submit several times to try out all possibilities, and you don't get any points for answering. So you see the instruction belongs here. The links you provide are shown here. If you need to go back and make a change, use the menu on the right. If all is well, proceed to step 3, also with the menu.

Before you are allowed to publish, a few checks are made. You also get to select all the publication types of your question. For example, a multiple choice question with one option, can also be shown as a multiple choice question where the user can select more than one option.
You can go back and correct by clicking on step 1, or hit the publish button if all is OK. You get 5 points every time you publish a new question.

The fourth step allows you to promote your question, for example by copy/pasting the URL to your blog or site. Returning to the Author Zone shows us that we indeed have made a new question, with direct linkt to edit, preview or promote. And that's how easy it is to create questions. Remember: quality goes over quantity, so make good questions and provide proper tags and feedback. Don't make 100 questions at once, it's too much work. Personally I try to make one new question a day. I hope to see some of your questions one of these days!

Labels: about2findout, quiz, tutorial

I added a poll to my site. You can now vote on new features on the wish list, and help me to understand what is important to you.

You can find the poll at:
http://bertdecoutere.about2findoutwishlist.sgizmo.com

First I wanted to make the poll with my own survey tool Feedback Server, but somehow the tool got corrupted and doesn't do matrix questions anymore. So I searched for free survey and poll tools on the net. This is a list:

http://www.polldaddy.com/
http://www.surveygizmo.com
http://questionform.com/
http://info.zoomerang.com/
http://polls.blogflux.com/
http://www.dpolls.com/
http://www.pollpub.com/
http://www.vizu.com

Some of these tools are too basic (only 1 question type) or too commercial. I finally selected surveygizmo.com where you can open a free account next to paying accounts. The free account has a lot of options, and furthermore I was pleasantly surprised with the general look and feel and easy of use of the site. (Wish I could do the same :-) )
Happy voting.

Labels: about2findout, poll

In this video I show you how to solve questions on the about2findout.com quiz site.

Transcript:

Hello world once more.
I'm Bert De Coutere and today I'm going to show you how to do it. Solving questions on the about2findout.com site that is.

There are many ways to get a question. For example, you can use the menu at the top of the screen (the little arrow) and select a random question. Or you can go to the questions displayed at the ticker bar right here. On the ticker bar you see new questions made by people. Or you can go to someones profile (let me just show you my own profile quickly) and see the questions there. You can launch one by clicking on its ID right here. Or you go to the quiz zone and there you can search for questions or see questions with a common tag in the tag cloud. It's all good. For simplicity sake, let's go back to the home page and select 'Take a random question'. That should do the trick, don't you think so?

Next we get a question. So select an answer, and click submit. If you don't like the question, you can go to a random other question by selecting skip question.

Next you'll see your score. You get 1-3 points for a good answer, depending on the difficulty of the question. If you answer wrong, nothing happens unless it is not the first time you answer this question wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, but smart people only make them once. So the first time you answer wrong, just learn what the right answer was. Next time you answer wrong again, it can cost you 1-3 points (again depending on the difficulty of the question). You can only get points of course when you are logged in, and you cannot get scored twice for the same question in a 3 day grace period.

So we have a full screen right here, what's on it? First of all your score and if you were correct or not. You see how other people did and if you are logged on.
Next you see the correct answer and your own.
At the bottom you see dots as an indicator of the difficulty of the question. There are three levels of difficulty. You also see who created the question and when. If you like the question, why not click on the author and see what other great questions he or she has for you?
Next you have a button for more information. A popup will show you any additional message the author wanted to give you, and links to popular sites such as google or wikipedia.
The next button is 'share question'. With that button you can get the direct URL link to this particular question, in case you want to include it in your blog or site. The next button either closes the window or selects another random question.

On the right side bar, there are a lot of actions you can take to participate in the site and give your feedback, or send a message to the author. First of all you can rate the question. It doesn't take long, just click on the number of stars you want to give and 'send rating'. You'll make the author happy. Under the box you see all the tags related to this question and clicking on one of them will take you to a list of questions with similar tags.

Finally, you can leave comments on the question at the bottom of the screen. Click show to see or add comments. For example, explain why you were wrong or right or if you disagree with the answer provided or have more information on it.

That concludes how you can solve questions on the about2findout.com site. Have fun!

Labels: about2findout, Jing, tutorial

I've added a new page today: the Hall of Fame. There are 6 different top 10 lists:

• Top 10 most recent questions
• Top 10 most popular questions
• Top 10 best rated questions
• Top 10 most difficult questions
• Top 10 highest score people
• Top 10 highest accuracy people
  

You can access it via the main menu or directly at:
http://www.about2findout.com/a3fo/findout/top10.aspx

Labels: about2findout

In August the magazine EOS surveyed 713 Belgians on their general knowledge of sciences. The survey had 28 questions on general science topics such as technology, universe, health, ICT and history of science.

I've published the questions on about2findout.com. At the moment all questions are available in Dutch and already some in English. I'll translate more later on.

So does the Earth revolve around the sun or is it the other way around?
Try it yourself! You can find back these questions at:
http://www.about2findout.com/findout/search.aspx?tags=eos2007




(Update Dec 20: link updated)

Labels: about2findout, eos, quiz, science

About2findout.com is a quiz site, so getting points for answering questions is a vital part of it. Here are the rules for scoring points:

• Only logged on users can get points, so join for free to keep track of your score!
• You get or loose points when you answer questions.
• If you answer correctly, you get 1, 2 or 3 points depending on the difficulty of the question.
• If you answer wrong the first time, nothing happens because everyone makes mistakes (but smart people only make them once)
• If you answer wrong on the same question again, you loose 1, 2 or 3 points depending on the difficulty of the question.
• There is a grace period of 3 days wherein you cannot get scored for the same question again.
• You get 5 points when you publish a new question.
• You can loose all your points when you are violating the code of conduct.

Labels: about2findout

Yesterday the home page got a new and more simple (I hope) design. Today I revamped the question page. Those two pages are the two single most important entrance points to the site. Most visitors will only see those. I tried to eliminate all clutter (although it hurts so badly to through away things I spent a day or more building :-( ).

Screen asking a question:











Screen showing the correct answer and score:

Labels: about2findout

Sitemaps are little xml-based files that describe the navigation logic of your site. I've used ASP.NET Sitemap components and the associated SiteMapDataSource, Tree and Menu components in the top bar menu of about2findout.com. The whole site structure is written in a file called Web.sitemap, and all navigation components read from it. The file is also localised.

Google also uses sitemaps to index websites, and webmasters can configure their sitemap on the Google Webmaster Central site. It allows the Google crawler robots to better understand your site and what to index. But guess what: the asp.net sitemap xml file and the one Google piloted are not compatible... Luckily, there is a free component on Bertrand Le Roy's blog that converts the asp.net one into one the Google crawler understands. The component is obsolete now because it is in the ASP.NET Futures release, but as I only use stable asp.net releases I'm going to stick with this component until the ASP.NET Futures stuff is released in production.

Labels: about2findout, sitemap

The experimental about3findout.com site is only two weeks live and already the front page got a total, extreme make-over. Both test users I interviewed so far felt completely lost and couldn't tell what the site was about. Shows you just how good I am at usability and GUI design :-).

The new start page still has the information the previous one had, but the screen is more simple and clean. Site navigation has now moved to the brand new top bar that features a menu based on the ASP.NET hover menu AJAX extender. Basic actions for the logged on user are also available in a similar menu, and the score of the user is shown between brackets. The visual indicator for messages is now always present. And the language indicator has changed to a two-letter language image instead of a flag. Other pages will need major make-over too but the start page is the most important one as users decide to stay on your site or not the first 5 seconds of their visit, so I'm told.




[Based on the feedback of Stijn and Ralph. Thanks guys.]

Labels: about2findout, GUI

For the redesign of the homepage, I used web2.0-style buttons from the site My Cool Button. It's an easy site to create buttons in 4 steps. Some examples below.

Labels: about2findout, buttons

About2findout.com - Quiz 2.0 has arrived...

I guess you can best describe about2findout.com as a Quiz 2.0 site. It's a new way of solving trivia questions and scoring points. But you can also create new questions yourself and interact, challenge and compare with your friends and with the world.

The site has four color-coded zones. You can navigate between them with the menu at the top bar of the screen.

• Quiz Zone (pink)
  Anyone can answer questions and get or loose points, search questions or view the question tag cloud.


• Author Zone (green)
  Members can create new questions and get points for that. They can also promote their questions.


• Club Zone (blue)
  You can join the site for free. Members can keep track of their scores, create a profile, become contacts of other members, send and receive messages and compare themselves with their contacts or with the rest of the world.


• Help Zone (yellow)
  In the Help Zone you can find tutorials and frequently asked questions.

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the smartest of us all? It could be you...

Labels: about2findout

The registration and login on the site are pretty much as you will find them all around the Internet. It is based on your user id and password, and the computer can remember you for your next visit. When you don't remember your password, you can recover it via e-mail by answering a security question. The video tutorial below shows how easy it is to create a free account and start collecting points for solving or creating questions.




Video transcript:

Hello again world!
I'm still Bert and in this video I'm going to show you how to join the about2findout.com quiz site and how to logon.From the home page, there are a couple of links you can click to logon. For example here in the middle, or in the quick navigation bar at the bottom of the home page. But let's take the link in the top frame of the screen that says 'login', that should do the job, don't
you think?

The logon page is like any other you will find on the Internet, just type in your user id and password and hit the button. Unless you type in the wrong credentials, you'll be logged in. Since we don't have a profile yet, let's create a new one via the link "Not a member yet? join for free.".

Joining is a short, five step process. It starts by typing in the code you see on the image. This prevents robots from automatically registering fake accounts. We want real flesh and blood people inside! If you have visual disabilities, you can click the speaker button to hear the code out loud. Click next. Second step is to agree with the code of conduct. Basically, we want you to be a good boy or girl. Don't cheat, don't misrepresent yourself, don't be rude. Just be your own likeable self. Click the box to agree and click next. Third step is to select a login name. It has to be 5 characters long at least. If someone else already took the name, you will be warned about that. We advise you to register under your real name.
Fourth step is the most important one. Fill in the form with your password and e-mail. The security answer and password is something only you know and is only used to recover your password. When you forget your password, it can be sent to you via email if you answer the security question correctly. Hit next.
Step 5. We are done. Now we can login and edit our profile. On the login screen, type in your user id and password. I'm also going to check the box to remember me so the next time I go to the site it will remember me and automatically log me on.
Once you are logged in, the top bar on the screen will show your name, and clicking on it
will take you to your profile.

That concludes the overview of joining and logging on.
And remember: about2findout gets better with you inside, so join!

Labels: about2findout

In april I asked readers from my blog for quiz questions. Today I loaded most of them on the experimental about3findout.com quiz site. So go along and try the first 10 questions on the site!
You can leave feedback at the bottom of the page for bugs or suggestions as explained here, or you can comment on the questions themselves after answering them. Have fun!

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4
Question 5
Question 6
Question 7
Question 8
Question 9
Question 10

(Update Dec 20: links updated)

Labels: about2findout, questions, quiz

On the experimental development site about3findout.com, anyone can leave us comments via the comments box on the bottom of almost every page. The video (made with Jing) shows you how.

Transcript:

Hello World!
My name is Bert and in this video I'm going to show you how you can comment on the development of the about2findout.com project. We need you to tell us what you think of it, and to tell us about bugs, inconveniences, any suggestions, or even just to tell us we're good.

The experimental development site is actually called about3findout.com. On the very bottom of almost every page you will find a section where you can view and add comments.

Let's try it. Type in any text in the box. If you are reporting a bug on the page, be as specific as you can. Note that you can only type in normal characters. If you are an anonymous user, you will also have to fill in the code you see on the picture. If you are logged in to the site, you just have to press the button. We do this to prevent spamming from web robots. As a side note, sometimes the code will be considered wrong due to partial page updates. The best way to leave anonymous comments is to refresh the page and type in the comment before doing anything else on the page.

But also if you don't want to leave a comment, you can help us by deciding on what's important and what's less important. For every comment you can vote and give it a 'thumbs up' or a 'thumbs down'. Comments that get a lot of thumbs up will be higher in the list. That way we will know what you find most important. Anonymous votes count for a little less than votes from registered users, so make sure to sign up for a free account!

Happy commenting!

Video link

Labels: about2findout, beta, comments

The start screen centrally features the logo and current tag line ("Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the smartest of us all") of the project. There is also a mirror image I nicked from the Ikea website. (Sorry Ikea, consider it free advertisement untill I get a real graphical web developer on the project.)
The greeting is in a random language.

The top bar is similar to all pages on the site and features the name of the site, of the logged on user, a flag button to change the language of the site, a link to log on or log off and a link to the help section. The site name is either about2findout.com (from December, real site) or about3findout.com (experimental development site, live now). Clicking on it will take you back to this home page. If a user is logged on, the name is shown and clicking on it will take you to the profile page. If a user has unread messages, a little clickable envelope icon is shown centrally on the top bar.

Beneath the logo and tag line area is the ticker area that refreshes every 30 seconds. At present it shows a link to join the site, but as the site is filled it will show messages on recently published questions, recently won challenges, etc.

On the right of the screen is the news area. First is a random piece of general news. If the user is logged on, some personal news like score and accuracy information is shown.

The bottom part of the screen has the quick navigation area with some quick links to pages in the four main sections of the site. The site is color coded and all pages relating to one of the four sections will have matching top and bottom color bars. The four panels are expandable and collapsed by default for logged in users and expanded for anonymous site visitors.

• Find out: searching and solving questions - pink
  
• Author space: making, publishing and promoting questions - green
• Community: profiles, messages, compare with your contacts - blue
• Helping Hand: FAQ, tutorials - yellow
  

Labels: about2findout

The interviews with the early guinea-pig aka testers will follow the following pattern:

1. (icebreaker) Name one of your hobbies or passions.
2. What is about2findout.com in your opinion?
3. Any first impressions you like to share?
4. (guided) Create an account and edit your profile - feedback online
   
5. (guided) Search a question (on your hobby) - feedback online
6. (guided) Make a question (on your hobby) - feedback online
7. Pick a random screen and discuss it for the 3 design principles
   
1. SIMPLE : What would you remove from this screen?
2. SOCIAL : Do you feel alone on this page? Why or why not?
   
3. STYLE : How would you change the layout of this page?
8. (optional) Repeat for other screens
9. What is the most urgent need for the site right now?
   

If you care to give me your feedback on the experimental about3findout.com site, please let me know by sending a note to bert at about2findout.com.

Labels: about2findout

After too many months of solitary programming, I launched a very first version of the site today. It is an empty skeleton that serves as a development site before going live.

The planning:

- Sept-Oct : the experimental site about3findout.com is available for testing
- Dec : about2findout.com goes live

Over the next weeks I will post some articles on how to use the site, and I'll start talking to people to improve, prioritise development and start filling it. I want to have at least 100 questions when going live in December.

I also registered two extra domain names today. About3findout.com will take you to the development site. And quiz20.com is an alias to about2findout.com.

Labels: about2findout

I have updated the Tag Assistant component.

- You can now refresh the tag suggestions by pressing on a link. You don't have to save the page anymore. During the time of the refresh a typical web 2.0 waiting indicator is shown, courtesy of ajaxload.info.

- The suggested tags are filtered for correct spelling in the appropriate language. The spell check component I used is a completely open source .NET component called 'NetSpell', and you can find it also back on CodeProject. On the NetSpell site you will only find code that runs under .NET 1.0, so head to the CodeProject site and follow the link in the comment posted by Eric Woodruff. He has fixed some bugs and updated the code to run under .NET 2.0 as well. The spelling libraries are compiled from the OpenOffice site.

- If the tag already exists, a * is added to the suggestion. That way I hope people will use similar tags where possible.

Labels: about2findout, tags

Tagging is one of the most essential elements of a web2.0 site.

I have wasted a lot of time on this, but my about2findout.com project will have a Tag Assistant. Where ever you can put tags, a collapsible assistant provides some help on tag syntax and suggests tags based on your content. All you have to do is click on one or more of the suggested tags to add them.

How does it work? The collapsible panel is a feature of the AJAX toolkit. The tag edit box itself only allows approved characters such as a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _, - and a comma to separate tags. That is a feature of the FilteredTextBoxExtender in the same toolkit.

At present, the suggested tags are a tag cloud based on the frequency of words in the text you typed in on the various fields of the page.
- I have used parts of the TextSearch project on CodeProject.com for breaking the text into words.
- I have added stopwords for English, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish to the filter mechanism of the word breaker. You can find back the stopword lists for many languages on ranks.nl.
- The tag cloud itself is the cloud component from Rama Krishna Vavilala on Codeproject.com. I have wasted a day on this component but could not find a better one. Basically the component has bugs when not used with a datasource, and a click on any other component on the page makes it disappear on a postback.

Later on, I want to add more intelligence and spell check to the component, and suggestions as you type on existing tags. But for now this component allows to add tags with a few clicks, and that is not bad.

Labels: about2findout, tags