Hey all–

I just wrapped up development on a new home page for non-logged-in users. The page had had the same exact design since Quizlet launched more than a year ago. The “Top 5″ thing had a great run, but everything needs to get retired at some point. The new design presents a lot more dynamic information and cuts down on plain boring text.

In case you’re wondering, the new picture is a picture of me having breakfast (!) when I was about 10. I just felt like using it…haha.

I also shot a new demo video, available here: http://quizlet.com/demo/. I would say it’s a big improvement over anything I’ve done before

On top of these improvements, I’ve made several bug fixes. Most notably, the ending analysis from the Learn page is back in Internet Explorer after a month-long vacation. I made Space Race wrap text so huge scrolling wouldn’t happen as much. I’ve also been working on a few things that should reduce static file sizes to make Quizlet load a little bit faster. Lastly, I upgraded this blog Wordpress 2.5.

In other news, it’s pretty much assured that I’ll be going to MIT. They gave me a pretty impressive financial aid package, and it should be a fun place to be. I’ll be in Boston Tuesday-Sunday visiting MIT for their Campus Preview Weekend, so if anyone’s in Boston and wants to meet up, send me an email (andrew at quizlet).

You asked for it, and you got it! I’m happy to announce a new game on Quizlet:

Space Race

The object of the game is to kill words before they cross the screen. You type in your answers (then press enter) into the input box at the bottom, and if your answer matches any of the words scrolling across the screen, it will fade away and die. When a word gets all the way across the screen, it will tell you what you missed and make you type it in. You get to keep playing until you lose 2 words in a row without getting one correct answer.

The game gets harder as time passes - words appear in greater frequency the higher level you get. At some point, it’s just too overwhelming.

You score more points the higher level you are. You can score a lot more points by being correct over a large number of consecutive words. Every miss loses you 10 points.

When you’re done, your high score is saved and compared to everyone else who played Space Race on the same set. Can anyone beat me on the U.S. State Capitals?

To make room for the new game, I decided I needed to redo the buttons for the different study modes. Here’s how they looked before:

And now…

The new kind also has a special effect - it expands when you hover over it.

Let me know what you think!

Update: A couple hours after the release I accidentally broke most studying modes for Internet Explorer users. It should work fine now. Sorry!

Update 2: I’ve adjusted it to wrap text on particularly long words. Hopefully that works better for y’all.

I just built this super cool system for translating Quizlet’s interface into different languages. You can already use Quizlet to type in data in other languages, but this will actually translate Quizlet’s English interface (the navigation, the instructions, etc.) into other languages.

It’s ready to be translated into any language (except maybe a right-to-left language like Hebrew). So if you’re fluent in any language other than English, send me an email at andrew@(quizlet’s domain) with what language you can translate Quizlet into and a little about yourself and your fluency level. Experience with (very) basic HTML will help you, but it’s not strictly required. You will receive credit in the footer of every page on the site for people using your language. The system for translating the site is super slick - you’ll enjoy it!

I’m also looking for an expert systems engineer to work on making Quizlet faster. If you’re interested, I’ve posted the details on Craigslist, and I won’t repeat them here. Thanks y’all!

I’m super excited to announce that I’ve launched forums on Quizlet. I announced my intention to build them back in March, but never got around to finessing the administration parts of it until recently.

Why forums? Because they’re oh-so-useful. They can provide communication in a way that discussion can’t. Last week, during my finals, I wished Quizlet had forums when my entire French class was studying at the same time, and we needed to talk about which words were going to be added to our test at the last minute. Before forums, we had to do kludges like this.

Each group has its own private forum, only viewable to members of its group. Group admins can delete individual posts and whole threads in their forums, as well as make stickies and close topics. These forum threads will be displayed in the group page as well as well as the main forum section.

There are also public forums, accessible to anyone. The goal with these is to become a language forum, where users can ask vocabulary questions and discuss usage. These forums will be closely moderated by myself and NeilKelty. Note: there is no “Lounge” forum, and I currently have no intention of making one.

By the way - I’m going to “soft launch” them today, meaning that they’re a little green and not thoroughly tested. So you can only get there through your group page or by a direct link to http://quizlet.com/forums … In the next few days — possibly tomorrow — there will be a link among the “My Dashboard” and “Create Set” links.

The more feedback you all have on this the better. Send in your comments!

P.S. Perhaps you’re wondering about the new Learn mode. Well I was using it to study for my finals this past week and it’s very sexy and all but it just isn’t as useful and functional as the current one. The current one has problems, sure - it can get very stop-and-go when a lot of people are online - but it’s proven to work well. I just want to make sure the new one is better than the old one.

Hey everyone. I’m back!

And guess what today is? …. Quizlet’s birthday! Quizlet launched to the world on January 17, 2007. And I’m very proud to say Quizlet surpassed 100,000 registered users a week before turning one.

I’ve been working on a new version of the Learn mode for quite a while now, and I was hoping to have it out for the big b-day, but that’s not happening. But you do get this awesome sneak peek video of what it’s going to look like! I’m hoping to release it in the next two weeks or so. It still needs a lot of testing and quality assurance.

And in case you’ve been keeping score at home, I’ve been accepted at MIT. Lots of good news these days

I’m back in California, after spending the earlier half of this week visiting colleges in Boston. I fortuitously arrived in Boston only several hours before the Red Sox won Game 7 and clinched their spot in the World Series, so my MIT hosts had plenty to be happy about.

The best way to celebrate the Game 7 victory was inside an elevator.

I had a great time in Boston and it feels like a great place to be a college student. My visit confirmed my suspicions that MIT seems like a great fit for me.

So anyways, I flew back on Wednesday, the first day of the World Series. The tension ran extra high on my flight between Boston and Denver (ergo Colorado) - there was lots of talk of “fleeing Boston.” United was cool enough to patch in a live but crackly transmission of the game through the in-flight radio.

With all this flying time, I had some downtime to work on Quizlet (for some reason, I can never do actual work on planes). I’ve got a complete copy of Quizlet running on my laptop, so I can work on it compulsively whenever and wherever I please. What did I do this time? A lot of really good small stuff:

1. Navigation amelioration: I’ve gotten rid of those easy-to-miss links added to the main navigation bar on certain pages, and replaced them with a sweet second row of navigation below the title of each page. The Familiarize, Learn, Test, Export, My Groups, Dashboard, and Group pages all got the treatment. Hopefully this will make it easier to navigate Quizlet.
2. I replaced the Answers.com lookup links with inside-Quizlet lookup links on the Set page. Activate the links by clicking on the little icon next to each term. Just like the Create Set page and the Quizmarklet, a box will pop onto with a list of definitions. So if you see a word you like on someone else’s set, you can click on the icon and save it into one of your own sets. Notice the linked vocabulary words in this post - they’re set up with this feature as well. Très cool!
3. You can now delete your account if you need to. There’s a link in your dashboard. The delete page gives you the option of leaving your old sets for other people to use, or deleting everything. For security, you’ll need to type in your password before permanently deleting your account.
4. I upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.3.1 and moved the RSS feeds to Feedburner (the old feed URLs will automatically redirect). You can now subscribe to this blog by email if you like. I guess you could consider this blog the official Quizlet newsletter…
5. A few speed improvements here and there. I’m aware of intermittent speed problems, and they are being addressed.

Meanwhile…

Quizlet Queries for Quid has had a few interesting twists in the past few days. First, two of Quizlet’s projects are now fully funded and complete! Mississippi’s Bay-Waveland Middle School will be getting a LCD new projector and a fifth grade class in the Bronx will be getting six Scrabble games. These proposals were brought to life in part by Quizlet users! (other people not from Quizlet contributed too.) To date, we’ve raised $550. Impressive…But there’s still $1,962 to go!

I’ve added another proposal to the list to keep us on track for our goal of $2512. This time, we’re helping another hurricane-impacted school (this time in Louisiana) get seven Scrabble sets. I’m working on finding more projects I’d like to support - if you browse through the site and find one you like, post it in the comments. Donate now by clicking on the thermometer and clicking Fund Now on one the proposals in the list. And teachers, submit a proposal to the site and I’ll be happy to post it under the Quizlet Queries for Quid challenge. Man, this DonorsChoose thing is addictive - even Stephen Colbert is doing it now!

Now, my first college application is due Thursday, so I’m going to go finish that…