(12/10/10 4:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Pizza and beer, a classic combination on any college campus, is becoming more accessible. Next semester, students will be able to use Btown Menus to order beer for delivery from B-Town Pizza. B-Town Pizza started offering beer delivery about two months ago, said Haley Locke, a B-Town Pizza employee.“It’s been a little slow. We’d like to see more orders. So far I’ve seen mostly small groups of a few friends ordering,” Locke said. Locke said she expects orders to increase once ordering beer with pizza online becomes an option. “I can see myself ordering pizza with a beer if I had a couple friends over and we were short,” junior Tyler Adelsperger said. Besides the convenience of having beer delivered with dinner, students consider other factors such as the cost of the beer and the sobriety of the group ordering it. Senior Bob Goode said he would order beer for delivery if he was out and the liquor store was closed or if everyone he was with had had a couple drinks and did not want to drive. “Price is a huge factor,” Goode said. B-Town Pizza does slightly increase the price of beer, charging $1 for a can and $2 for a bottle. Students might appreciate the convenience of delivery, but restaurants have to consider the additional liabilities of delivering alcohol. “We are very strict,” said Ray McConn, co-owner of Mother Bear’s Pizza. “You must have your ID ready, and we do not deliver to campus addresses.”Mother Bear’s has been delivering beer for five or six years and has had no problems, McConn said.“When you understand the responsibilities and adhere to them, there are very few liabilities,” he said. B-Town Pizza also takes preventative measures to avoid providing alcohol to anyone underage. “When we deliver, we always take two IDs and evaluate how intoxicated they are,” Locke said. B-Town Pizza also puts a limit on the amount of alcohol it will deliver. Three cases is the maximum order, but a six-pack is the minimum, Locke said.“I don’t think I can eat pizza without beer anymore,” Adelsperger said.
(12/02/10 4:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Seniors Eli T. Drumm, Chris Cashel-Cordo and Josh Hall said they have a Sporcle “fetish.” The website www.sporcle.com is an online self-quizzing site that contains quizzes covering almost every topic imaginable. Drumm, Cashel-Cordo and Hall said they use Sporcle both individually and collaboratively.The trio doesn’t compete but rather works together to solve quizzes. Cashel-Cordo and Hall said they have both generated about 10 quizzes each, and they are each other’s harshest critics. “The best quizzes to me aren’t the ones with the highest ratings but the ones that have like threes because people get angry when they can’t get them all right,” Hall said. In the past year, IU’s site usage ranking jumped from No. 39 to No. 9 compared to other college campuses.“We want to be involved in the college life. There’s a lot of traffic and energy from college that helps shape the site,” said Derek Pharr, Sporcle’s vice-president of products.Pharr said when Sporcle first started, usage was all over the map, but in the last 18 months to two years, Sporcle has taken off on college campuses. However, Pharr maintains that Sporcle is a resource that every demographic can enjoy. As a dad, Pharr plays Sporcle with his kids and said it is a resource teachers use in the classroom. It is also a way for people who have been out of school for a long time to stay sharp. “We try every day to create trivial diversions, with educational quizzes and study guides on the other side of the spectrum,” Pharr said. “There are plenty of sites out there where you can not challenge yourself and not think. Our foremost function is to create a crossroads of social gaming, social interaction and education, and our mandate is to provide game-engaging fun over and over again.” Sporcle was created by Matt Ramme, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus who wanted a tool to help him get better at “Jeopardy” and crossword puzzles. Ramme couldn’t find an existing website that satisfied his needs, so he created his own. Sporcle has grown to a resource that contains more than 4,000 Sporcle-approved quizzes and more than 129,000 user-generated quizzes. Another way the Sporcle team is trying to increase user interaction with the site is through the new Sporcle iPhone app, which came out in January. The app, which costs $1.99, allows users to access new quizzes from their phones every day. There is also a free version of the app, “Sporcle Lite,” which gives users access to a limited number of quizzes. Hall and Drumm sometimes brainstorm about other ways Sporcle can continue to evolve. Both said they would like to see more video and audio clips implemented.Even as the website continues to expand across platforms, it continues to serve the purpose that Ramme intended — to bring together education and entertainment.“It’s a big educational party, and we want everyone to come in and hang out,” Pharr said.