One of Yahoo!’s gems is Yahoo! Answers, the wonderful service where Yahoo! users help answer your general questions. It’s a great service, but the community is young and sometimes not exactly who you want to answer your questions.

I’m a spur-of-the-moment type person, And I’m a FriendFeed lover. So while I was stuck without wireless internet for most of the day, I thought about all of this. The result is AnswerFeed, a FriendFeed room with the simple mission of allowing FriendFeed users to ask any question on any topic and get some answers (and some of that fun-loving FriendFeeder debate). The goal is to have the same type of help you receive from Yahoo! Answers, but from the more trustworthy FriendFeed community.

This is also an opportunity to do some research and learn about the possibilities and limitations of Q&A within the FriendFeed interface. Does the comment format spurn more discussion than the Yahoo! Answers interface? Does having AnswerFeed appear in your feeds make you more likely to answer questions?

I’m going to watch the room as it grows. After 5 minutes, it already had 8 members and I hope it will grow ever larger to facilitate Q&A and discussion.

Oh, and if you are interested in being a moderator of the AnswerFeed room, drop me a line at my AIM (YGRPG).

Update - 10 hours in, 48 members

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One of Yahoo!’s gems is Yahoo! Answers, the wonderful service where Yahoo! users help answer your general questions. It’s a great service, but the community is young and sometimes not exactly who you want to answer your questions.

I’m a spur-of-the-moment type person, And I’m a FriendFeed lover. So while I was stuck without wireless internet for most of the day, I thought about all of this. The result is AnswerFeed, a FriendFeed room with the simple mission of allowing FriendFeed users to ask any question on any topic and get some answers (and some of that fun-loving FriendFeeder debate). The goal is to have the same type of help you receive from Yahoo! Answers, but from the more trustworthy FriendFeed community.

This is also an opportunity to do some research and learn about the possibilities and limitations of Q&A within the FriendFeed interface. Does the comment format spurn more discussion than the Yahoo! Answers interface? Does having AnswerFeed appear in your feeds make you more likely to answer questions?

I’m going to watch the room as it grows. After 5 minutes, it already had 8 members and I hope it will grow ever larger to facilitate Q&A and discussion.

Oh, and if you are interested in being a moderator of the AnswerFeed room, drop me a line at my AIM (YGRPG).

Update - 10 hours in, 48 members

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For the last few days, I’ve been working on some design and functionality features of BenParr.com. I’m nowhere near done, but I’m ready to release a new section of BenParr.com: The Internet Tools Wiki

The Internet Tools Wiki is a project designed to aggregate the most useful information on the internet regarding internet tools and social media. What does that mean? It means that, unlike Crunchbase or Wikipedia, which are focused on general, non-biased information about companies and products, the Internet Tools Wiki is chiefly concerned with effective utilization of these products and aggregates the most impressive articles and community knowledge to that end. In the next few weeks and months, you can expect blog articles to coincide with wiki articles, for articles across the net to be added to the Internet Tools Wiki Database, and for more and more tools to be added over time.

The information you will find on most of the wiki pages:

• A Brief Description of the internet tool, no more than two sentences
• A Value Proposition explaining why you should use the tool, no more than two sentences
• BenParr.com Articles, an aggregate of all relevant articles on improving your use of an Internet tool from the BenParr.com blog
• Other Featured Articles, a collection of articles from myself and the community on how to best utilize each Internet tool.
• Community Advice, the section where users can place their tips, tricks, and information on how to best utilize Internet tools.

The wiki is currently bare bones and does not have proper information for most internet tools - That will come with time. Instead, functionality and information will be gradually added as articles are written and found.

Everyone is welcome to contribute to the wiki and to add their tips and information . You are also welcome to add new tools and new articles.

Expect more integration between the blog and the wiki as time goes on and my coding skills improve. In the meantime, I hope you get some utility and usefulness out of the Internet Tools Wiki!

- Ben

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For the last few days, I’ve been working on some design and functionality features of BenParr.com. I’m nowhere near done, but I’m ready to release a new section of BenParr.com: The Internet Tools Wiki

The Internet Tools Wiki is a project designed to aggregate the most useful information on the internet regarding internet tools and social media. What does that mean? It means that, unlike Crunchbase or Wikipedia, which are focused on general, non-biased information about companies and products, the Internet Tools Wiki is chiefly concerned with effective utilization of these products and aggregates the most impressive articles and community knowledge to that end. In the next few weeks and months, you can expect blog articles to coincide with wiki articles, for articles across the net to be added to the Internet Tools Wiki Database, and for more and more tools to be added over time.

The information you will find on most of the wiki pages:

• A Brief Description of the internet tool, no more than two sentences
• A Value Proposition explaining why you should use the tool, no more than two sentences
• BenParr.com Articles, an aggregate of all relevant articles on improving your use of an Internet tool from the BenParr.com blog
• Other Featured Articles, a collection of articles from myself and the community on how to best utilize each Internet tool.
• Community Advice, the section where users can place their tips, tricks, and information on how to best utilize Internet tools.

The wiki is currently bare bones and does not have proper information for most internet tools - That will come with time. Instead, functionality and information will be gradually added as articles are written and found.

Everyone is welcome to contribute to the wiki and to add their tips and information . You are also welcome to add new tools and new articles.

Expect more integration between the blog and the wiki as time goes on and my coding skills improve. In the meantime, I hope you get some utility and usefulness out of the Internet Tools Wiki!

- Ben

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