Re: virus: Virus: banner ad prototype

Paul Prestopnik (pjp66259@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu)
Fri, 9 Jan 1998 15:30:27 -0500


While I was writting about the new banner David developed, I started
thinking about how to attract people. I was thinking about my own browsing
habits, and I realized that I at least am fairly willing to try out a new
direction from an offered link, but if it does not quickly attract my
interested I'll back out and probably never return. If others here seem to
think this is true for the general population then, what we need is
something that would hold someone's attention when they first visit the CoV
page, and keep them there long enough to get involved.

I think that one thing that would help to hold peoples attention once they
have seen the web page would be some interactive stuff to do on the CoV web
page. Web pages are so static now, that I think many people who search
the web and the CoV page would be more inclined to stay if there was
something to do on the page. I don't know what sort of stuff would be
good, but I'm looking for ideas. I have some experience writing in Java
and I would be happy to lend my limited expertise to CoV to help hold
others.

If you would like to look at some things I have written to get an idea of
what I currently can do, check out <http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~pjp66259/>,
write me at <pjp66259@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu> if something doesn't work for
you, and I'll try to figure out the problem. You need a Java enabled
browser to run the programs.

One thing I was thinking of was maybe a puzzle or series of puzzles which
they would have to solve to get to the next page. They should be simple
enough that anyone can solve them in a couple minutes. I was thinking of
one of those eight-tile puzzles where there is a scrambled picture in a 3x3
frame, and you have to move the tiles to get it back into order. Maybe a
scrambled IdeoHazard (is that what it was called?).

Or hangman with a memetic message that changed each time.
Of course us full fledged members would know the shortcut to the main page.
Any thoughts, responses, or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

-paul

(that last message was me too ( the one about the implicit 2-levels in CoV)
, I think I forgot to sign it. :) )