November 21, 2007 at 12:23 pm · Filed under On the Web, Advertising
Keeping it simple can make a difference, and Poverty.com’s sister site FreeRice is a perfect example. FreeRice has two goals:
- Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
- Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
Execution against these goals resulted in a very casual online word game which, for each correctly answered multiple-choice question, contributes 10 grains of rice to end world hunger.
In a quick session (that actually became somewhat of a contest with my wife) we contributed several hundred grains. It doesn’t sound like much, but it all adds up—between October 7th (when the program launched) and yesterday (November 20th) over 3 billion world-hunger-ending grains of rice have been racked up. Yesterday alone FreeRice donated over 218 million grains.
Wondering who is paying for all this? There are small advertisements placed on the FreeRice site. The money generated by the advertisements buys the rice. Thankfully the ads are placed on the site in a restrained manner. A ClickZ blog posting notes that Apple, American Express, Toshiba and Macy’s are among the participating advertisers.
The game itself (while incredibly simple) is fun, has an addictive quality, and provides an assessment of your progress by way of 50 game ‘levels.’ The game was designed with everyone in mind:
FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.
There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48.
Ready to test your vocabulary? Go help end world hunger! Report back with what level you made it to!
Tags: Advertising, Casual Gaming, End World Hunger, Free Rice, FreeRice, FreeRice.com, Games, Games in Education, On the Web, Philanthropy, Poverty.com, United NationsShare This
November 14, 2007 at 11:12 am · Filed under Hardware, Peer-to-Peer, Industrial Design, Online Marketing, Social Networking, Applications, Games, User Interface
The One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) XO laptop is on sale in the U.S. by way of their “Give One Get One” program. Sales kicked off on Monday (November 12th) and will be running until November 26th. As if getting your hands on the XO to kick the tires isn’t enough, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary WiFi access at their HotSpots for all donors. From the OLPC site:
This is the first time the revolutionary XO laptop has been made available to the general public. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).
It was also announced last that Maxis (Electronic Arts) has donated the original SimCity game to the project, allowing for free distribution of the addictive classic which was originally developed for the Commodore 64.
Don Hopkins created a UNIX variant of the game in the past and has been advocating the use of SimCity for educational purposes for years. Hopkins commented on a Slashdot article earlier this year:
“The goal is to enable the open-source community to renovate SimCity and take it in new educational directions, by applying Seymour Papert’s ideas about constructionist education, Alan Kay’s ideas about interactive user interfaces and object-oriented programming, Ben Shneiderman’s ideas about direct manipulation and info visualization, and many exciting ideas about multiplayer games, blogging, storytelling, game mods, player created content, and lessons learned from World of WarCraft, The Sims, Spore, etc,”
The cause sounds noble. One way or the other games will make it to the OLPC. Let’s hope the educational angle triumphs.More about SimCity on the OLPC XO from Don Hopkins:
Tags: $100 laptop, Applications, Commodore 64, Don Hopkins, Education, Electronic Arts, Free, Games, Games in Education, Hardware, HotSpot, Industrial Design, laptop, Maxis, OLPC, Online Marketing, Peer to Peer, Quick Hits, SimCity, Social Networking, Spore, T Mobile, The Sims, User Interface, WiFi, World of Warcraft, WoW, XOShare This
