It’s one of those days when I release a bunch of cool stuff!

But before I blow you away, let me remind you that I’m still soliciting donations for the Quizlet Queries for Quid school supply program. We need your help to make it actually happen! The vocabulary cartoon book proposal is about to expire, so your donations can’t wait. Thank you!

I made a video of most of it so you don’t have to look at the boring text below.

Here they are, in order of awesomeness (highest to lowest):

1. dictionary lookup feature! - on the Create Set and Edit Set pages, you can now click the little icon to define the term you just typed in. It will pop up a list of definitions, you choose one, and then click Use Selected Definition, and watch as the definition is filled in for you! If you already have a definition filled in, it will add the definition after a comma.
2. You can now disable the live discusison feature on your sets and groups if you like. Group administrators can go to the bottom of their group pages and uncheck the “Enable live discussion” box under “Admin Settings.”
3. I added a new Frequently Asked Questions page. Post a comment if you think I’ve missed something.
4. The symbols box is now available in Private Messages.
5. Other small bugfixes. (obligatory last item)

Let me know if you like it in the comments!

This is the original QQQ post. For the latest on this fundraising effort, click here.

I’m excited to announce the Quizlet Queries for Quid program. It’s a donation drive to buy materials for deserving schools all over the country.

A couple days ago I found this website, DonorsChoose.org. It’s really an amazing and unique place. It allows individual teachers to request donations for supplies and materials in their classrooms. For example, a teacher might ask for a new rug for a classroom’s reading center. Every teacher’s proposal is handled directly by the site; the teacher requests a specific product, and the DonorsChoose staff handles all the price negotiation and purchasing, then sends the materials to the teacher’s school. Thus, it’s very hard to perpetrate a fraud, because the DonorsChoose staff makes sure every proposal is buying educational supplies AND getting shipped to a school.

Individuals and organizations get to choose which proposals they donate to. Right now, DonorsChoose is running a contest for blogs to compete to get their readers to donate to causes they select. Incidentally, the blog that’s winning the contest is winning because its writer promised to shave her head if her readers donated $30,000. They did, and she did. Now, I’m not going to shave my head, but I am going to enter the Quizlet blog into this contest!

The first three projects I hand-picked because they concerned themselves with areas close to my heart (vocabulary and technology). Here are the causes:

• Help a computer classroom in Mississippi get an LCD projector.
• Buy Vocabulary Cartoon books for 8th graders in a Chicago school with 93% low-income students.
• Get a color laser printer for a school in Mississippi.

I decided to keep the list limited to 3 proposals to increase the chances that each of them would be highly successful. I may add more later as time passes.

To kick-start the competition, I just donated $400! That’s 16% of my entire goal of $2512.35, or the cost to fund my first three project choices. Surely the combined forces of Quizlet can reach this modest goal. I dare y’all!

How to Donate

Go to the project page and select one of the proposals in the list. When you find one you like, click on the Fund Now button. They’ll take credit cards, debit cards, and checks. Sorry, no Paypal or Google Checkout. Thanks!

I chose the two proposals from Mississippi because I worked in the city of Waveland as an Americorps volunteer this summer. I was working to build houses for people whose houses were washed away in Hurricane Katrina. As I wrote before, conditions are getting better but it’s got a long way to go. The people there were unforgettably friendly and hospitable, even in their luckless situation. Here are photos from my time in Mississippi.

My friend Jenny and me hammering under a house.

Bay-Waveland Middle School, the recipient school of the LCD projector, is only 15 miles away from where I lived this summer, and even closer to the houses I worked on. You wouldn’t expect it, but it’s a magical place with a lot of heart; I can’t wait to go back there someday. Perhaps some of you noticed the bracelet I was wearing on the last blog post. It was part of a program by Hancock County, the same county as Bay-Waveland Middle School, to give volunteers discounts at local stores.

So now I ask you to join me in supporting these schools by donating now. If you’re too young, ask your parents if they can help. Any amount is hugely helpful! Tell them it’s tax-deductible. With today’s passing of the 55,000 registered user mark on Quizlet, I hope that there’s enough generosity between y’all to even surpass my goal of $2512.

Not convinced? Let me throw in a few freebies. First, for anyone who donates any amount, I will remove Quizlet’s ads for life on your account. Also, I’ll place a special icon (see image) on your dashboard and list you (only if you want to) in a future blog post. You’ll be the envy of all your friends! To see how it might look, check out the Quizlet Creator icon on my own dashboard on Quizlet. Fashionable, ain’t it?

(If you’re not a Quizlet user, you can definitely still donate!)

Also, DonorsChoose.org is running a contest between various sites and blogs to see who can get their users to donate the most. I entered Quizlet(’s blog) in LitLiberation category. Let’s grab that #1 spot!

So who chose such a silly contest name, Quizlet Queries for Quid? Well…I did. It was my poor attempt at being comically alliterative. For your information, Quid is a slang term for the British currency, the Pound Sterling. So the phrase pathetically translates to “Requests for Money.” Clever, I know.

Lastly, to all the teachers using Quizlet: You should check out this website! If any of you create a proposal on the site, let me know and I’ll be happy to add your cause to Quizlet’s list.

One last time - the Quizlet Queries for Quid is here!

I’ve been noticing something lately, and it’s been in the back of my mind long enough to write a blog post about:

The more my programming and general computer skills advance, the further from an “average” user my perspective becomes. In other words, my spectacular computer talents give me a slanted and potentially puzzling approach toward building Quizlet’s interface. It’s kind of like when scientists start talking to you about their projects, and they use all sorts of jargon and science-speak and you have no idea what they’re talking about!

Why is this a problem for Quizlet? Things that seem obvious to me aren’t obvious to regular users. And so it’s easier for me to build a confusing interface that seems perfectly obvious to me but perfectly ridiculous to others. I think so far I’ve done a good job on Quizlet, keeping it simple and not letting its interface get too convoluted. But I could be flagrantly mistaken, and have no idea! The horror!

So now here are a few questions. Let’s call it a report card on how I’m doing. What’s confusing to you about Quizlet? What processes should be simplified? What have you had to spend some time to understand? Or is it just amazing and simple and perfect?

Thanks y’all!

P.S. I should stop it with all the Photobooth pictures

(the 50,000th user just got this little surprise when they signed up)

Woo! It took just 252 days for Quizlet to reach the 50,000 users. I couldn’t be happier with the road Quizlet has taken up to here, and I’m glad to share this moment with all of you!

Thanks to everyone who has told their friends and colleagues about Quizlet. I couldn’t have done it without you!

Hey all,

I just got Quizlet back online after an annoyingly long stretch of time - it was about 10 hours long. I hit a hard disk space wall, which is the same problem I had last time (the only other time) Quizlet went down.

I want to extend a sincere apology to all of you who tried to use Quizlet today. I know how frustrating it can be when something you depend on isn’t working. I’m sorry. Over the next few days I’m going to work on implementing some more preventative measures to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. And I’ll be investing in some sort of monitoring service to make sure I know the instant Quizlet tanks out.

It’s a good thing this happened on a Saturday, eh? Saturday is always the low point of the week for traffic, which is perfectly logical considering that no one studies on saturdays. Well, most people I mean. If you study on Saturday that’s cool too. OK bed time for me!

My new buddies! (I’ve got the helmet)

Hello Quizlet! It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I’ve had a busy summer, and I thought you might like to hear about it. I had the great opportunity to spend 2 months volunteering for AmeriCorps and the Student Conservation Association. It was the best way I could spend my summer; it was refreshing, educative and very enjoyable.

The first month I spent in Pearlington, Mississippi, a town that was wiped away by Hurricane Katrina. Our SCA crew had ten people from all over the U.S., and we stayed in a small bunkhouse with another SCA crew of ten. Every day we went to work on various construction projects for victims of the hurricane. I don’t think very many people realize this, but the Gulf Coast area is still a huge mess two years after Katrina. They’ve made a ton of progress, but many many people are still living in their FEMA trailers. So we were helping local residents rebuild their houses by framing, hanging drywall, siding, mudding & taping, and various other constructions tasks.

Me nailing in scaffolding. Note that all the houses down there are built on huge stilts for the floods

After Mississippi, we flew over to Acadia National Park in Maine for another month of work. Our projects were very different in Acadia - we worked on trails instead of houses. We built bogwalks, cut back brush on miles and miles of trail, cleaned up beach trash, and constructed a heavily-used wheelchair-accessible trail. Acadia is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been - check out our photos of Maine to see if yourself.

That’s me in the foreground. We were building bogwalks for a muddy trail.

For any high schoolers out there interested in conservation and volunteering, I highly recommend you check out the SCA website. They do big crews over the summer (usually only a month long) but they also do weekend crews during the school year in many major cities. As a 3-year veteran to SCA, I can unequivocally say that it’s changed my life in many positive ways.

One more thing - I created a website (because that’s my favorite thing to do…) for all of my crew’s photos. Not everyone has posted theirs yet, but there are some damn good ones. You can also check out the album of just pictures of me if you’re interested.

Having some fun on one of our scarce laundry breaks

So now that I’m back, what’s next for Quizlet? Lots of stuff!

I’m going to try to make this the year of big growth for Quizlet. I’m hoping to bring a few more people into the company (send us an email if you’re interested). I’ve got plans for new features and organization. The first big task on the to-do list is an overhaul of the search page, which is getting pretty clunky with the plenitude of data you all have entered. By the way, Quizlet just passed the 40,000 registered users mark the other day. Sa-weeet!

School started here in California last week, so senior year here I come! Mmm I have to apply to college soon (in case you’re wondering, I’m gunning for MIT)…Hopefully all that won’t be too distracting.

Also, a big shout-out goes to my friend Neil who looked after Quizlet for me over the summer! As far as I can tell, Quizlet ran even smoother than I expected while I was gone.

Hope you guys are well, and I’m looking forward to another exciting year of Quizlet with everyone. Later!