Quick Updates 2

Since my original review "I'll Take Triv for 200, Alex" was originally published on October 31, 2000, a new version of Triv has been released. Triv 3.0, released on December 15, adds another new trivia game to the fold. In addition to Quick Quiz, Trivia Pizza, Triv Grid, and Triv Tac Toe, Triv now also supports Trillionaire. Based on the popular television show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?," Trillionaire presents a sequence of questions for money. The first question is worth ten dollars, and each successive question adds a zero to the end of your winnings. Get twelve questions right and voila! you are a trillionaire. If you get any question wrong (unless a helper is used, see below) the game is over.

Each game of Trillionaire provides four helpers (like lifelines on the TV show) - two safety nets that let you continue on if you get a question wrong, one new question helper that lets you replace the current question with a new one, and an eliminate choices helper that removes two of the choices. You can use any of these helpers after viewing a question but before answering it.

Trillionaire can be played with any Triv module but it was designed for multiple choice questions. It is significantly harder with alphabetic or numeric modules. Also, the eliminate choices helper is useless unless you are using a multiple choice module. Because of this, Triv 3.0 ships with several new multiple choice modules include two especially made for Trillionaire that combine some of the easier questions from other modules into new multiple choice modules.

Trillionaire is very well designed as are all of the Triv games. My favorite little extra is scorekeeping by whiting out a letter in the word "trillionaire" every time a question is correctly answered. It's sort of silly, but I really like it.

Since my original review Coola was originally published on November 7, 2000, Coola has added improved interfaces for web developers. Coola provides APIs that basically provide a template for formatting dynamic data (data pulled into the page from a database) into Coolets. In order to use this service, web developers have to register and obtain a provider ID. I've had this API for some time, and although I haven't had the chance to do much with it, it is quite straightforward and easy to use. Now they've gone public with this API and provide a quick form on their site for Partner registration. After supplying some basic company and contact information and agreeing to the terms of service, a parter ID is generated and sent via email. You can be up and running with dynamic Coolets in mere minutes. As you may remember, I had a mixed review of Coola, feeling they had a good idea but the execution wasn't quite there. I think dynamic Coolets are done well, and making it this simple to obtain a partner ID can only help make Coolets more pervasive, hopefully addressing one my major reservations with respect to Coola - the fact that very few websites provide Coolets.

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