It’s true.  You can’t.  And you should’t even try or this might happen to you:

You Can’t Hug Every Cat

If you read Josh Linkner blog post, you know we have a special fondness for this video.  We are looking to make more of our t-shirts, and if you would like to know when they’re available, sign up here.

Thanks!

YES!

This is one of the most common questions we get about PlayThru.  The short answer is yes, PlayThru absolutely supports HTML5 / Canvas.  We have supported it the entire life of Are You a Human.

When a site makes a request for a PlayThru, we do a check to see what technology the user’s browser supports.  Our first choice is to serve an HTML5 game.  If unsupported, we then default to Flash.

We prioritize HTML5 for a few reasons:

1) It is one of our most requested features.
2) It supports most mobile platforms.
3) It is rapidly growing in popularity.

Now, we definitely still support Flash and appreciate it’s characteristics.  It has an extremely high penetration rate (99% in June of 2011).  It works virtually the same across multiple browsers, immensely simplifying testing.  And while the basic canvas element is supported by the majority of browsers, they support them to varying degrees with about 20% of the browser not supporting it natively.

Even though Flash lost the battle for mobile, we feel very comfortable developing for both HTML5 and Flash at the same time.  Using both allows Are You a Human to serve a larger group of sites and expand our reach, and that helps us fight more bots with fun.

A common question we get from new PlayThru users is about the Publisher and Scoring keys we use.  What are they, and why do we need them?

To use PlayThru, and this applies to most human verification tools like Captcha, a user must generate a set of keys, usually long and random sets of characters.  They are used to identify who is using PlayThru, as well as make the system more secure.  We call ours Publisher Keys and Scoring Keys.  Even though we communicate with our sites and users over SSL, without them, we might not know who we are speaking with.

The Publisher Key is used primarily to identify the site serving a PlayThru.  Think of it as an identification number.  It gets sent both to the user playing the game and to Are You a Human.  It is also public and can be found in the source code of the website.  This allows us to serve the appropriate games based on the publisher’s settings, like ad categories, subscription, and customized games.

The Scoring Key is used when a site makes a score request (amazing naming, right?).  It allows Are You a Human to make sure the right site is making a score request.  The Scoring Key should be kept private and fits only with one Publisher Key.  If someone else acquires your Scoring Key, they would look like you to Are You a Human.

Most users will only deal with the keys the very first time they set up an account.  After that, it’s smooth sailing.

Search Twitter for “are you a human” and it is clear people do not know why sites annoy them with this question.  What are these sites thinking?  Are they getting attacked by aliens, vacuum cleaners, or unicorns?

While that may be the case (how will we ever know?), there are two reasons why sites ask their users this simple yet annoying question:

Since the very beginning of the Internet, spam has been around.  Fun history fact: the first recorded electronic version was sent via Western Union in 1864.  It is now a known annoyance on the Internet, like animated GIFs and Justin Beiber.  Even more fun, spam comes in many forms.  There’s email spam, comment spam, IM spam; pick a technology and there is probably a little spam mixed in.

Sites also need to protect certain assets on the Internet.  Think about the last time you wanted to buy awesome concert tickets.  How quickly did they sell out?  This can happen with anything that has an expiring value.  Scalpers are out there to buy up the good stuff quickly and then resell it at inflated prices.  It ruins the experience for the artist, the fans, and the ticket seller.

There is one additional reason why sites like to insist on asking this question: anonymity.  But I’ll save that for another post.

Sites don’t hate you.  They do, in fact, love you and your business/attention/time.  There is just a tidal wave of junk that sites must defend against, and sites ask “are you a human” as a shield.

They can, however, make the experience better than CAPTCHA…

Hello Humans.

This is Reid, one of the founders of are you a human. Today, we are releasing our new CAPTCHA replacement called PlayThru into the wild, so to speak, and I think an introduction is in order. I hate CAPTCHA. Really, I hate them. They are obnoxious. They annoy me. They ruin my day. I get that we need a filter so websites aren’t bombarded with spam, but why does it have to be so abrasive? Ask around and try to find someone who loves CAPTCHA. Try to find someone who gets excited when they see one. Right now, they are a necessary evil, but when has anyone really tried to improve the process? Well, we are doing something about it.

300 million times a day, humans are forced to go through a CAPTCHA just to prove they are, well, human. That adds up to a lot of headaches and frustration. We want to replace all of that with fun. How much better off would we all be if we we had less annoyance in our day? We started with this dislike of CAPTCHA, and then we said, “what if we make these fun?”

Enter PlayThru. Instead of squinting at that horrible, distorted text, you can play a quick game instead. If you use CAPTCHA on your website, you know you are frustrating your visitors on a daily basis. You have another option! PlayThru is just as quick as CAPTCHA, will not annoy your visitors, will keep more people on your site, and it’s fun.

PlayThru is a new tool, and we know there is a lot we can do better, so tell us. Sign up, try it out, and let us know what you think. We LOVE feedback. I think you will like what you see, and so will your visitors.

Reid