What is this you ask? a) it is a strangely addictive game b) it is an experiment for a blog post I'll be writing on user experience design -- particularly around offline IA. Some more info here: joshrweinstein.com
I'd guess its an experiment about when people stop clicking. Most people either only click a few times, or stop right at 20 times, when they receive the easter egg buttons.
So, the lesson is: give your users a perceived reward for taking action on your site, to get them engaged long enough to get the reward.
Or maybe the lesson is: as soon as users perceive there are no rewards left they'll leave.
Yes, it seems to be A/B (or maybe multivariant) testing. Tried the site through hidemyass.com and got the numbers running in bottom-top order while loading it directly I got top-bottom order. I hope the creator will publish the results when finished :).
yeah I have no clue what it is... and I even read the blog. Pretty sure it does not count as a game or an experiment with so little explanation... who knows?
Of course. Give the numbers a randomly generated id, and check for the winning value server side. You'd also want display the numbers in a way where it's tougher to compare them than checking the text values--the target value is $('#left h1').text().trim(). So that means using images (not named 1.jpg!) or canvas or something like that.
Also, your app is vulnerable to replay. I can keep POSTing the same request over and over and my score increases.