Wednesday 5 September 2012

To Screen or not to Screen...

Interesting debate been happening on the Quizmasters group page on Facebook (a very good page if you want to hunt it down). Basically the issue was raised, as usual, about cheating and how to conquer this new app/phone tool that allows user to scan the picture to identify who the person is....thus making picture rounds a doddle for anyone with the app. I have tried it myself and it is very powerful indeed and it shocked me how good it was. I tried all kinds of pictures big and small, black and white and colour, crumpled and straight...even cropped pictures it managed.

The quizmasters on the page were thinking of ideas to combat this and the discussion was entered into about the possibility of using screens. What do other readers think of this and have you seen it work?

The only time I have ever seen it was at the World Quiz Championships where they put pictures on a large screen, mainly for people who struggle to see the ones on paper and/or want a colour image.

However in a normal pub quiz there are tons of problems here. Most pubs are not designed in a way where everybody could get a good luck at the screens. A few pubs I go to would get this done superbly on the various TV's but then again you don't want to upset those in there watching sport. One big screen raises the problem of getting the best seats, some people won't be keen on getting up and down and it still may not not stop cheating as this powerful app could probably read the screen from a decent distance away.

How else could you stop picture round cheating? Any ideas would be appreciated!

6 comments:

  1. Google googles is the most powerful tool out there and if a photo has been taken from Google Images or another site then it'll be in the database and easy to find for the application

    To avoid this, don't steal photos online!

    We get very few problems, our images are purchased from photo libraries and haven't appeared online - hence very difficult for Google Goggles to find.

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  2. I was thinking about this last night. I thought about cutting up two images - so the top of one person's face and the bottom of another's and putting them together to form one image - but not having a smart phone I don't know if Google Goggles could work this out or not.

    Also would scoring through an image with lines have any impact? A series of white lines, say, across the image?

    Also, I had a quick look for this quizmasters facebook page but there are quite a few different ones - which one are you talking about? Can you put a link?

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  3. Hi Ben

    If the image is on google even cropping it would be hard as the app is very powerful.

    http://www.facebook.com/groups/355731954460781/ is the link if it works

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  4. Essentially, using your mobile in a quiz is automatically cheating! People texting their friends wouldn't be allowed, this shouldn't be either. The quizmaster should make sure that everyone's phones are well and truly off.

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  5. Thanks for the link Daniel - seems very good. I've certainly got some quizzes to share with them in exchange for the few I've just robbed!

    I didn't know Google Goggles was that powerful - so you could do something like I just did last week: so I had a picture of Tonto and had the question "If this is the sidekick, who is the hero?" They can still Google, but it'd take longer and so less discreet.

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  6. So I've just been testing Google Goggles with a friend's phone. I typed "Brad Pitt" into Google, took the first images from Google Images. Then I cut it in half, turned the top half 180 degrees and it recognised it. Not liking being beaten, I used paint to draw a star over the centre of the image and Google failed to identify it, and yet it remains instantly identifable to anybody with half a brain. I've uploaded the image so you can see what I mean:

    [IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/3525ge1.jpg[/IMG]

    It took me all of thirty seconds to create using as simple a tool as Paint.

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