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September 14, 2006

Blufr tests your b.s. radar

Marshall Kirkpatrick

20 comments »

Blufr is a cool little site that makes true and false statements about history, science, geography and other topics. Some of the statements are true and some are bluffs (untrue), if you can tell which are which you win points and climb up the Blufr scoreboard.

The site comes from Answers.com, though it also accepts user submissions. It’s a great example of a large knowledge base put to use in a compelling way. Who knew that an online dictionary and encyclopedia could be so engaging? I don’t know if Answers is collecting the data they get from the game and putting it to use like the Google Image Labeler is. All of these sorts of services underline why I think the Q and A sites, and their APIs, are more than just a place to get help as an individual.

Did you know that catsup was sold in the United States as a patented medicine in the 1830’s? It was known as “Dr. Miles’ Compound Extract of Tomato.” Or was it?

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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    September 14th, 2006 at 5:54 pm

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    September 14th, 2006 at 6:03 pm

  3. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Blufrはあなたの脳力をテストする

    September 14th, 2006 at 8:20 pm

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    September 15th, 2006 at 12:59 am

  5. Make You Go Hmm: » Calling their Blufr, yes, way

    September 16th, 2006 at 12:34 am

  6. citizenZero.net » Do you, indeed, know jack?

    September 25th, 2006 at 7:43 pm

  7. 小小研究員的學習之路 » Web 2.0的小遊戲策略

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Comments

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  1. Startups.in/India

    September 14th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

    Nice concept. Well designed and very addictive/engaging.
    I wish it also allows me to just enter a question and in return provide an yes/no answer.

    User: “Is Web2.0 a hype?” :)
    Blufr: Yes

  2. Ryan

    September 14th, 2006 at 6:00 pm

    Ok, this site is going to be insanely addicting. I started using it and knew I had to stop myself after two tries. :P

  3. Peter

    September 14th, 2006 at 6:06 pm

    Definitely addicting, and a nice concept. Useful? Probably not, but it’s still nice nonetheless!

  4. Tcruncher2

    September 14th, 2006 at 6:42 pm

    Addictive – yes. Useful – definitely yes.

    While their concept is a little different to the Google Image Label, simply because they are not ASKING you to provide an answer to a question as much as they are providing you with the answer. Google are asking you to tag the images in order to verify that the images are correct – obviously if you tag an image with a whole lot of tags that are completely different to what they have – it will flag them to them to check it out and set the right tags to improve it.

    What I find particularly more interesting about these types of apps, is how they are starting to get HUMAN AGREEGATED search involved as opposed to your traditional web search. The more that Google can integrate humans into their search (with the obvious checks in place to avoid spam etc) the more relevant their results will become.

    It wouldn’t take much for Google to do the old ‘You can win a Ferrari if you and your team score the most points in labelling Images’. Can you image the amount of data that they would gather from doing something like this? It would be absolutely phenomenal. For what $250,000? Come one Google, I want to win!

    Either way – cool little app! :)

  5. John

    September 14th, 2006 at 7:18 pm

    That sure is a cool little app. Why didn’t I think of that…

    How do they check that user provided questions are not bluffs themselves?

  6. SutroStyle

    September 14th, 2006 at 7:38 pm

    My BS radar tells me that web 2.0 has gone a little too far…

  7. Stoyan

    September 14th, 2006 at 7:54 pm

    I played this game for about 30 mins. and i got top 10. I cheated but i got there. i know that it makes no difference but if you click on the link to get the url for the blufr you can go back and answer the correct answer over and over again till you get 10k points. i got pics too.

    http://img110.imageshack.us/im.....fr1br2.jpg
    http://img177.imageshack.us/im.....fr2uu1.jpg

  8. Anshul

    September 14th, 2006 at 10:24 pm

    Nice and addictive but not very compelling.

  9. Drama 2.0

    September 14th, 2006 at 11:41 pm

    Has Web 2.0 really sunken to the point where this type of thing gets a review on TechCrunch? :) Surely there must be other heavily-funded startups that went into Alpha 2.0 today that are more deserving?

  10. paul

    September 15th, 2006 at 6:56 am

    FYI, the feedburner email on this points to the family “ANWERS dot com”, instead of ANSWERS dot com

  11. cg

    September 15th, 2006 at 7:42 am

    SLOW NEWS DAY

  12. Shiri

    September 19th, 2006 at 6:35 am

    Dear #1 - please go here, this is soooo funny - the answer is yes!
    http://www.answers.com/main/nt.....+a+hype%3F

    Whether Web 2.0 is a hype or not, though, this app is super-fun. I think it’s a great example of Answers’ wide variety of uses. I absolutely love their site - have been using it for years in their older versions.

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