no.stupid.answers

We’ve just returned from a wonderful day at TWS 2008, a hi tech conference that took place in Tel Aviv, Israel. Ten Web 2.0 start ups were chosen from hundreds to present their pitches to the diverse audience, including yours truly (the other nine are summed up over at Mashable, CenterNetworks, Blonde2.0, and VC Cafe).

Judges included Om Malik, Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore, and others.

We made a 5-minute presentation based around the ever-crucial question: Is the wrapper of Trident gum chewable?, which included handing out many many pieces of the stuff to the audience for some real, live social knowledge sharing.

The rest of the day was spent sharing the wonder and beauty that is WikiAnswers: A Q&A website that is based on the wiki format, where anyone can edit questions or answers to create - oh, sorry, there I go with the pitch again.

Here are some of the day’s highlights:

The booth: where all the magic happens.

The pitch: It’s pretty easy with such an awesome site.

This is the face of a person who has chewed too much Trident gum before doing a presentation which includes… Trident gum.

A conversation about WikiAnswers.

The name of the game.

Nothing like a bit of chocolate goo at a conference!

A big thank you to the judges of TWS 2008 for including WikiAnswers among ten of the finest start ups around!

We really should talk about your Wiki addiction. We’re here to help you, you know. We want to make it easier for you…accessing information should be a seamless process!

That’s why we, over here at Answers.com, are proud to introduce a brand new tool bar that toolbar enables you to quickly look up terms in the search box or browse the library with one click. Now you can search Answers.com and WikiAnswers directly from your browser. It’s even pimped out with a radio and weather forecasting!

Can you imagine such a delight!? An instant Wiki-fix!? Right from your browser!?

Click here to check it out now…

Flex your intellectual muscles, promote worldwide knowledge-sharing and win cash for your favorite charity! Help a good cause by sharing what you know.

The latest and greatest WikiAnswers AnswerThon will be held at the end of July and we’re so excited about this one because we’re banding together to raise money for some fantastic causes. YOU can help!

Upon registration for the AnswerThon, you will be able to choose from a list of participating charitable organizations. Each participant then becomes part of a global team competing against other teams to win a donation for the charity of their choice.

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The participating organizations include:

ArtWorks provides children and young adults suffering from chronic and life-threatening illnesses, and their siblings, access to creative and performing arts programming which encourages the use of the creative process as a vehicle for healing, communication, self-expression, and personal development. ArtWorks seeks to empower, validate, and honor these children by offering them the hands-on experience and materials with which to create, as well as the opportunity to publicly share their artistic accomplishments.

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CaringBridge® offers free, personalized websites that allow people to stay in touch with family and friends during a health crisis, treatment and recovery. The goal of the service is to ease the burden of keeping friends and family updated, while also providing a way for them to send their love, support and encouragement.

With a few keystrokes, CaringBridge authors quickly and easily create private and personalized websites that display personal journal entries and photographs. Family and friends visit the site to read updates and leave messages of support in the guestbook.

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The Global AIDS Alliance seeks to mobilize a comprehensive and compassionate response to the global AIDS crisis, while addressing the epidemic’s fundamental links to social justice issues such as poverty and gender in equity. They demand faster, bolder action and concrete results for people living with HIV/AIDS and at risk of HIV infection.

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The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) is the world’s largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer research and providing education and patient services. Founded in 1949, they are relentless in pursuit of their mission: Cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

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World of Good is focused on building strategies to substantially improve economic and social conditions for millions of artisans and their families living on less than $4 per day. Their organization promotes fair trade practices and invests in fair trade artisan communities around the world. They strive to educate US consumers and corporations about the benefits of engaging in ethical trade practices to bridge the gap between the global north and south. Key initiatives include catalyzing the development of transparent fair trade craft standards, promoting fair trade among craft trading companies and other community development projects.

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Click here to register for the WikiAnswers Charity AnswerThon now!

Check out our new friend!

Thanks to Denise, who is a genius with the graphic art conceptualization stuff, WikiAnswers has a new little logo for when an itsy bitzy logo is necessary, like as the favicon in your browser when you’re scrolling through WikiAnswers pages.

Try it out; go to WikiAnswers and raise your eyes towards the browswer address bar. See it to the left of the link? Isn’t it just so perdy?

I’ll tell you why I love it so much. When it’s so tiny like that, it kind of looks like two people joining hands together, with rays of collaborative contribution awesomeness coming from their raised arms.

Right?

Mozilla just released the latest Firefox into the wild, and it’s supposed to be 3 times the fun. While I’m playing around with the new toy, I’m noticing something even cooler:

The Answers.com add-on for Firefox is featured on the Firefox start page in the Learn tab. The add-on is basically a version of 1-Click Answers for your browser. It’s cool for a lot of reasons which I will now list:

• No matter what page you’re browsing in Firefox, you can Alt-click any word and get an instant pop up with the definition or additional facts. Kind of like the way you can double-click anywhere on this blog - you’d get the same AnswerTip. The AnswerTip is easy to close and non-invasive, in case you’re creeped out by pop ups.
• This will totally help you out when you don’t feel like leaving the web page you are viewing to find out what a weird word means.
• Eventually, you will start to Alt-click real things in your life, like a bizarre vegetable or fancy statue, in order to find out more… and you’ll be sad when you realize that there is life away from the computer screen.

If you just want to add it right now, go ahead. If you want to learn more about accessing Answers.com from Firefox, you can do that too.

Good news everyone!

Looks like we aren’t the only ones who love the idea of a wiki-based community-driven Q&A database, where anyone can ask, answer or edit questions and answers. There’s a new friend in town, and that’s Redpoint Ventures, a venture capital firm who believes in the WikiAnswers vision as much as the rest of us do.

Reuters already has the story here. The official Answers.com press release breaks it down like this:

Answers Corporation Announces Private Placement to Redpoint Ventures of up to $13 Million
WikiAnswers Exceeds Three Million Questions

“Through a transaction executed on June 16, 2008, Answers issued $6 million of series A convertible preferred stock, convertible into 1,333,333 shares of common stock at a conversion price of $4.50 per share, with 50% warrant coverage at an exercise price of $4.95. Additionally, Redpoint was issued a second tranche warrant, exercisable over the next 12 months, to purchase up to an additional $7 million of series B convertible preferred stock, convertible into 1,272,727 shares of common stock at a conversion price of $5.50 per share, with 50% warrant coverage at an exercise price of $6.05.”

Is that a lot of jargon for you? Let’s have a word from Answers Corp CEO Robert Rosenschein:

“We are extremely pleased with this strategic investment and validation of both our products and growth opportunity by a top tier Silicon Valley venture capitalist… With this partnership, we gain access to Redpoint’s team, connections and industry experience. The last public company they invested in was Intermix, parent of MySpace, subsequently sold to News Corp in 2006. We look forward to Redpoint’s valuable contribution and support.”

Damn! MySpace, eh? Thems pretty big apples. Speaking of apples, Allen Beasley of Redpoint (I’m sure he likes apples or something) had this to add:

“The Answers properties, but especially WikiAnswers.com, represent the type of high growth opportunity we look for. With over 11 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May, according to comScore, WikiAnswers is an emerging leader in the social knowledge space. We look forward to working closely with the company to help accelerate its growth.”

Check that out - Allen gets the social knowledge thing. What a great new force to have on board (literally, he’s joining the Board of Directors).

Well, this makes me feel so good I’m going to have an ice cream cone. I wonder if ‘awesome’ is a flavor.

Note: here are other places where the news has been mentioned:

paidContent.org

Washington Post

CNN Money

Triangle Business Journal

Barron’s Tech Trader Daily

Globes

Venture Beat

Red Herring

Market Watch