Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Google's Trivia Challenge

Let's face it. For the most part, the days of the trivia question are dead--as long as you can cheat. Now, anyone with a computer and an internet connection can get the answer to just about question there is. Google excels at answering tidbit trivia. However, Google's taken that feature and expanded on it--for the next few months, they're asking a trivia question a day, and they're challenging you to use Google to find the answer. The catch is that the trivia questions are more on the obscure side, and they're designed to get you to learn how to use Google more effectively. Monday questions will be the easiest, and they'll get progressively harder through each week.

Take yesterday's question: "Two future presidents signed me. Two didn't because they were abroad. Despite my importance, modern viewers seem to think I have a glaring spelling error. What is it?"

Google provides the answer--and how to find it: "How to find the answer: Searching [two presidents signed two did not] yields the U.S. Constitution. Searching [constitution misspellings] reveals that "Pennsylvania" was spelled with only one "n.""

I love this approach. It's getting people to use your product in an innovative, fun way--and it's teaching them at the same time. Google is a really powerful tool, but many people don't use it to its full capacity. My hope is that Google archives all these questions and provide access to them in a way that people after the fact can still use them for training. But for now, swing on over to agoogleaday.com to check it out. Fun stuff.

No comments:

Post a Comment