Take our Olympics quiz and challenge your friends.
I knew nothing about sports or the athletes for Beijing 2008 when we were told, "Make Olympic questions for an Olympic quiz." It was a painstaking, fact-checking, guessing, brain-racking process, all of which lead up to one question: What is interesting about the Olympics?
Then it turned into a "What is true about the Olympics?" What do you mean the 1980 Moscow Games weren't the first to be boycotted? It says so, right here, on the Internets! What do you mean this American isn't competing for America? Americans ALWAYS compete for America ... that's why we're Americans! Yaaaarrrrr!
Breathe. Cry a little. Drink some beer [the latter an ancient Canadian tradition].
And, we're back.
On top of our regular Deadline duties, we've been stockpiling trivia about the Olympics in an attempt to separate out the fanboys jumping on the Olympic '08 bandwagon from the real Olympic hardliner fans [Note: Bo is a total fanboy] (Thanks, Rob). We admit, it's a tough quiz, though from the number of 100% we've seen, you wouldn't know it (people are much smarter than ... well ... me).
Some notes on the Olympics quiz: We kept the politics out of this one. We left them for you in Deadline, but the Oly quiz is sports-flavored, athlete-focused. We also had to write most of the extended answers this time around, so we had to be a little more creative [Response upon being asked to actually write something: "I am illiterate."].
We really couldn't have done it without Tom. He made more Oly questions than all of your other editors (those lazy gits). Also, we can't forget Maureen, our underpaid ("volunteer," we call it) intern this summer who actually went to the library and checked out Olympics books for us (cute).
And the content is amazing and all (thank you, thank you), but our quiz questions wouldn't be half as much fun without the cheats, bling and what-have-you, courtesy of our boys in Dev.
They've been working strange hours, running back and forth working on stuff while we look on haplessly and feel a little useless (that could just be me). This week has reduced them from our chillax dev gurus to incarcerated, pizza-eating, computer vampires. Mad props and much love, guys. They rock hard.
Anyways, take the quiz. And enjoy the Games.
Live now:
In the US http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/trivia
In Australia http://media.foxsports.com.au/multimedia/2008/07/olympics-quiz/
In India http://sify.com/sports/olympics/olympicsQuiz.php
In South Africa http://sport.iafrica.com/beijing2008/quizz/
P.S. Our motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius, Bar Trivius Drinksus
In Australia, the games live here Interactive Olympics Quiz.
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA, August 7, 2008 - Summer Games Trivia, a newly minted online application from Newzwag, a subsidiary of Agence France-Presse (AFP), is available on Yahoo! Sports throughout the month of August. The new game synthesizes news stories and photos from the AFP's media machine into a challenging, entertaining and addictive game focused on Olympic sports and athletes, both past and present.
Newzwag's Summer Games Trivia on Yahoo! Sports makes the news engagement application about the Olympics available to the Internet's largest audience of sports fans. The game resides on Yahoo! Sports' newly launched website dedicated to covering the Summer Games at http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/trivia.
Summer Games Trivia has many appealing features that enhance community and social interaction. You earn cheats to get ahead on the leader board and you can smack talk your friends about your ranking. The game is free to anyone who wants to play, with no strings attached (you don't have to buy anything or get spammed after playing). The content is updated in real time, so no trivia stone goes unturned throughout the run of the Games. You can invite your friends to play or compete with complete strangers, all the while gaining critical Olympic knowledge you can insert into any conversation or bring up at family gatherings.
As Newzwag's first large-scale foray into the social media space, Summer Games Trivia is just a taste of what is to come, with more applications being introduced over the next year related to relevant cultural events and themes.
About Newzwag
Newzwag is a subsidiary of Agence France-Presse (AFP). The company develops technologies and ideas that bring one of the world's richest news resources to the rapidly evolving world of social media. For more information, check out www.newzwag.com.
About Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Agence France-Presse is a global media company providing real-time news coverage 24/7 with a worldwide network of more than 3,000 journalists and stringers spanning 165 countries. AFP covers the full spectrum of world events, from politics and general news to sports, business, entertainment, health and science. For more information, visit www.afp.com.
Olympic, Olympiad, the Olympic rings, Beijing 2008 and related marks are owned by the International Olympics Committee, the Chinese Olympic Committee, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, or their related entities. AFP, Newzwag, Yahoo! and Summer Games Trivia are neither endorsed by nor affiliated with any of the Olympic entities.
Contact:
Bronagh Hanley
Bronagh@bignoisepr.com
415-314-7262
AFP clients jumped at the opportunity to go beyond the news to get into social gaming with our Olympics version of Deadline which goes live next week on a couple of high-profile web properties (all I can say for now).
At this stage, the quiz includes biographical and historical information about past and present athletes and Games. It tests player's knowledge about the Olympic sports and news -- both on and of the field -- and events from the run-up to the Beijing games. With the start of the games, the quiz will incorporate news from each day's events, drawing players back to test their skills on a daily basis.
We are leveraging people's competitive spirit and their desire to keep up-to-date with the whirlwind of news events. We know our players enjoy the thrill of competing, the opportunity to learn while they play and yes, to brag to their friends too. Go ahead, train your brain.
To give and get satisfaction just go to our Olympics products home.
AFP PHOTO/ EYEPRESS
Ideally, our goal is to make things a little more competitive and give everyone a chance to play for the No. 1 spot every day. So we proposed creating a daily leaderboard. That would give everyone a chance to be king or queen for a day, and allow us to tally weekly and monthly wins so we can reward those who play often and well. In terms of ranking, you would continue to be ranked amongst your friends and the Deadline universe.
At first we told everybody that changing the leaderboard would mean resetting everyone's scores to 0 (zero), but after the overwhelming and passionate responses we got from players, we're definitely not going to erase any points you've earned.
We still have to solve another problem: those who play daily will eventually have a limited number of questions they can answer in a 24-hr period, whereas newbies will have access to a pool of roughly 350 active questions. How do you think we should handle this? Do we limit the number of questions available each day?
In any case, we haven't instituted the new changes yet, but as soon as our dev team is freed from Olympic duties, we'll be rolling out a daily and weekly leaderboard in addition to the all-time leaderboard.
After a couple of days wait, 5 to be exact, our Fuel News app has been approved and listed on Facebook’s Application Directory.
Now you can get smart, go global, and track world news without leaving Facebook.
Check it out and let us know what you think.
]]>Since then, we've upgraded; we rolled out some cool features (more to come) and expanded our players from the 11 people who brought you deadline to 35,000 players from around the world. And the swank new office is a definite improvement.
Thanks for the support (Merci, Danke, Gracias...). We hope you keep playing as we continue to roll out new features and other news-based applications.
In 2007
For 2008
You can expect to see some of these features soon, as well as some other surprises:
Not to be missed
Check out Fuel News. Fuel News is our latest App, a place where you can deepen your knowledge and discover the stories you might have missed.
We are attentive to your feedback with regards to features so keep it coming.
Last but not least, we'd like to remind you can Rate the App and Share it with friends.
Thanks again, enjoy the news!
- The Deadline Team
]]>We’ve got a sneak peek of some of the data we’re seeing; insights are pretty general but interesting (at least to us). In the past month, Jan 19 and Feb 18 2008, visits came from 102 different countries/territories. Here are the top 25:
We just released the first version of our most comprehensive news application to date.
Fuel News allows you to engage with the news and each other. It's a place where you can deepen your knowledge, and discover the stories you might have missed.
From browsing to voting, to commenting, bookmarking and sharing, Fuel News is social news right on Facebook.
Check it out at: apps.facebook.com/fuelnews
]]>Prizewinners for our Year in Review Quiz have been determined. They are:
Winners will be contacted by Deadline in order to arrange delivery of their prize, the book “World in Photos”, featuring the best images of 2007 from AFP’s award-winning photographers.
Thanks to all for taking the 2007 challenge.
Enjoy the news.
- The Deadline Team
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