Customer Profile
Echolink
Echolink.net provides real-time content for their clients, especially in developing entertainment engines such as Trivia and fantasy sports.

Our Solution
ESN has developed the Java applet as a thin client. This applet obtains quiz and chat information from a server-side Visual Basic application using sockets. The Visual Basic application is highly parameterized so that Echolink can design new quiz strategies without changing the application source code.

• Java 1.1 for client-side applet
• Visual Basic for server-side program
• MS-Access as database

Methodology
One of the design goals was to provide highly interactive content that should be downloaded very quickly. Also, the application has to be tested in multiple environments so that users get the desired experience.

A sophisticated communication scheme was employed so that the client-side applet and server-side application are always in sync.

Benefits
Trivia helps our client in improving their customer-base by providing entertainment and at the same time in building communities of users.

Introduction
Trivia is an online quiz and chat application in which users can login, participate in chat and answer quiz questions posed by the system. The user can also create new chat rooms and can also form new quiz teams. The system also tracks users, their teams and also the scores.

Situation
The goal of Trivia was to provide a real-time multimedia game with integrated chat functionality to be deployed by the World Wrestling Foundation (WWF). The application provided high level of interactivity in order to engage the participants. It also provides a facility to sell WWF’s merchandise while a game is going on.

Features
The application has a thin client interface that was developed as a Java applet. This applet interacts with a server-side Visual Basic program to display content.

Basic features in the system are:

• User security
• Displaying multimedia quiz items, including images and audio
• Multiple models of games that are driven by server-side scripts
• Chat
• Advertisement Banner
• Intermediate Macromedia Director movies and Macromedia Flash images
• User’s score display

Our Process
The system was designed using UML. Since the system has a very high degree of visual content, a series of user interface diagrams were created before implementing the system.

The system comprises of a client applet and a backend server program. The client program is a Java applet, which interacts with the server program to obtain user information, quiz, and chat information and other such details. The applet

also displays multimedia advertisements at set intervals. These advertisements are Macromedia Flash images. The server program obtains game strategies from a configurable script file. The server program obtains quiz and chat details, user, and team information from a database. The quiz questions may contain background sound. The question information may be a combination of image, text and sound. Users can join chat and answer quiz questions at the same time.

Conclusion
Trivia provides online entertainment and at the same time provides facilities to display advertisement banners. Community building applications like Trivia engage audiences and at the same time help improve the image of the company. We played a major role in terms of the design and implementation of this system.