Detroit based Are You a Human gives users a better, funnier solution to a confusing website accessing problem.
There are several annoyances when it comes to being a citizen of the World Wide Web, but survey says the number one complaint has to be those Internet turnstiles, CAPTCHAs. Short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (…umm, okay, if you say so guys), this human authentication tool helps protect websites from invading automated bots and spammers by having visitors type letters or digits based off a randomly generated distorted image.
CAPTCHAs have been around since the early 2000s, but it’s only recently that they’ve become more of time-wasting nuance. Today, having to read the given CAPTCHA on a website and determine if a B is either a B or probably the number eight, is like trying to read ancient script left by aliens who discovered our planet millions of years ago (that’s how the pyramids were made, I hear). It’s frustrating, and leads to many a failed submission.
Are You a Human, a Detroit start-up, with a cute cut-to-the-chase name to boot, wants to change all that. They’ve introduced a cool alternative to the CAPTCHA, called PlayThru. Instead of the annoying former, PlayThru uses minigames to make sure the guest accessing the site is indeed a human – sorry zombies. The platform is also promised to be easy to embed on a multitude of CMS-based websites; WordPress, Drupal, PHPBB, vBulletin, and even libraries for all popular code formats.
You won’t be playing anything of great merit when you stumble upon one of Are You a Human’s minigames, although you might see Flo from those Progressive ads pop up in the future. At most, a typical PlayThru involves simple actions like making a pizza or collecting scattered tools into a toolbox. Nothing GOTY-worthy, but it gets the job done. In fact, websites that use PlayThru have seen a rise in their submission rates go up by 40 percent, all while curbing those nasty bots from going where they shouldn’t.
Over 200 websites, from Quicken Loans to Fat Head, are currently using PlayThru as their human authenticating tool of choice, and if more websites catch on to Are You a Human’s awesome idea, we could finally see CAPTCHAs go out to pasture. That sounds okay to me. Be sure to visit their website to play a quick demo of PlayThru, and see how you can spread their good graces through your favorite social medium, the Twitters, Facebook, and what not.
Don’t you forget to spread our good graces here at Walyou. Where, we’ve got Star Wars’ Darth Vader vs every conceivable fictional adversary your 10-year-old-self would have though was awesome (still is!), and a Indiana Jones Ark Of The Covenant Cake that looks absolutely scrumptious, and you don’t even have to worry about your face melting off, either!
