One of the cooler games that launched with the original iPod was music quiz. It did something interesting (albeit a little under-developed) by making you guess which song you were listening to in an attempt to see how well you knew your music library. In that same spirit of using content that's already there is PopJax, a trivia game that uses Web media and user-created questions to entertain. It started out as a Facebook app, but has launched as a standalone site this morning.
The quizzes on the site are designed entirely by users. Most are multiple-choice, but creators can pick true-or-false and fill-in-the-blank questions, too. After each question is created it goes into a pool for other users to view and vote on. The cream of the crop gets added into each genre of game feed that plays a little bit like "Jeopardy," with point values for each question answered correctly. There are also variations of the board with a simple 3x3 grid, and two 4-in-a-row modes; one that plays like baseball (too many strikes and you're out), and another that plays like a slot machine with random questions that spin into place.
The one weak point of the service is your connection and the legal status of the content. Sometimes videos are slow to load, and if a video is taken offline (which tends to happen with movie and music clips) it's your job to alert the system. Other than that I found it to be an enjoyable distraction and one of the few sites to graduate from Facebook into a destination of its own.
Related: New York Times' Facebook app is testy, inquisitive.
PopJax quizzes are created by users and use YouTube videos to test your knowledge.
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eSnips has launched a service called Social DNA, a series of quizzes created in-house to help its users connect with one another. Quizzes can have any mashup of content--although most is text--ranging from toilet etiquette to political views to current events. The service is starting out with text, pictures, and audio clips, and is expected to expand to video in the near future.
What makes Social DNA interesting is how it pairs you up with other eSnips users as you go, providing percentages of how well you match other users based on your responses to the quizzing. Those who are willing to take an entire quiz (which usually has 10 to 12 questions) will get a more precise pairing. eSnips also takes the liberty of clumping you into one of its "social genes" groups, which are quizzes put categorized by sub-genre.
Along with its Social DNA section, eSnips is integrating people's Social DNA results into their profiles, so they can compare and contrast quiz results with people they're already friends with, or when browsing any old profile. eSnips will actually break down your total "compatibility" with a person, along with the best match of a quiz you've both taken. Yael Elish, CEO and co-founder of eSnips thinks this is a far better system for finding common areas of interest with your social networking buddies compared to Facebook and MySpace, which takes any information you've entered and turns it into tags. Incidentally, the company is planning to widgetize Social DNA to let people take it off the site and onto blogs and other Web sites, which I think could lead to a standalone Facebook app if somebody takes the time to code it.
This is a nice value-adding service for eSnips users but nothing revolutionary. It's not a platform launch or an open API (application programming interface). Social quizzing services are all over the place including Tickle (formerly Emode.com), QuizFarm, and MTV-owned Quizilla, to name a few. Social DNA is, however, much easier on the eyes and more user-friendly than any of those. I also have to give eSnips a nod for their writing. Say what you will about the wonder of user-generated content, but having pros write the initial batch of these has made the quizzes both quirky and entertaining.
Related: fooWHO: social bookmarking with a pinch of eHarmony
Get your quiz on with eSnips' new Social DNA testing center. Based on your answers, it lets you know who you should befriend.
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While knowing how to string together words puts food on my table, FreeRice.com is trying to let you use such powers for the good of others with their vocabulary-testing site. FreeRice will service up a quick little vocab quiz with a word and four answers. If you answer correctly, the service donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program to give away to impoverished or hunger stricken people. If you're wrong, it'll let you know what the correct answer was and give you a chance at a new word while ramping down the difficulty. As you continue to progress the site will keep track of your "level" by changing the difficulty of the words for every three you answer correctly, which ends up getting pretty tough once you get above level 40 or so. The site caps off at 50, although you can continue to play as much as you'd like.
The site manages to work through sponsorships, whose tiny ads you'll see below the testing area. Since launching in early October, the site has donated more than 1.5 billion grains of rice, which it keeps a daily tally of here.
As your progress, the rice bowl gets filled with your smartness. And eventually goes into other people's bellies.
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