no.stupid.answers

Ever wonder if you’re doing it all wrong? No, no, not your school work or your marriage or attempting to potty train your dog. I mean… pronouncing the word ‘wiki.’

How do you pronounce ‘wiki’?

After all, it’s originally a Hawaiian word, and as proven by the spelling of ‘Hawaiian,’ this is clearly a word not pronounced how it would seem obvious.

Is it weeki? Whickey? Weki? Wikee? Weekee?

Well, first of all, the word from which it is derived is wiki-wiki, which means ‘quick’ in Hawaiian. It seems to be that the Hawaiian pronunciation is ‘weekee’ or ‘veekee’ but the pronunciation associated with the website technology (like WikiAnswers or Wikipedia) is whickey.

Matt Sevits of Web100.com made this observation yesterday:”When most people hear “wiki,” the first thing that comes to mind is probably Wikipedia.” I do find that to be the case as well… but I also agree that “all that is about to change.” The site (wisely!) included WikiAnswers.com in his list of sites that go “beyond Wikipedia: 7 wikis for everything from “Lost” to lyrics.”

Says Matt:

WikiAnswers takes a collaborative approach to knowledge, giving you the chance to ask questions and use your knowledge to answer the questions submitted by others. If search engines can’t answer your question, someone on WikiAnswers probably can.

Exactly what I was thinking.

WikiAnswers now supports the Universal Edit Button (or UEB). It is a powerful Firefox add-on, displaying a special icon in the address bar when content on the page you’re viewing is editable. It functions much like those ubiquitous orange RSS icons that signal syndicated content (popularly known as RSS feeds) is available on the website you’re viewing.

Here’s how it looks in your browser:

The UEB enables Wikiholics to more easily edit answers on WikiAnswers as well as unearth new opportunities to contribute to wiki pages around the web. With other popular wikis – including Wikipedia – enabling this capability on their websites, the UEB may even become a standard feature of browsers in the future… which is why if you don’t already use the Firefox browser, you may want to start now!

Long live wikis!

Hat tip to Brave3 for sharing!

Ever feel like sitting around and remembering the good ole days? How about the good new days? WikiAnswers now has it’s own space on WikiTree, which is:

a tool for families to organize and share their family tree, memories, photos, etc.

an historical resource — an international “wiki” for life stories and family histories.

And… it’s also a website created by Chris Whitten, founder of the original WikiAnswers, known then as FAQ Farm. This new venture is a wiki meant for collaboration in coming up with information to add to the family trees and personal profile pages.

You can check out the WikiAnswers WikiTree space and read through a growing timeline of the Q&A site’s history, started by a few of the original WikiAnswerers, including Chris himself. Feel free to sign up and create your own family tree or check out the WikiAnswers page and watch it grow!

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…

This is just way too cool. Check out this process, as described by The McMommy Chronicles blogger, as to how she discovered (and got addicted to) WikiAnswers:

“I found something today called WikiAnswers. I found it because someone came to my blog by googling “Kate Gosselin’s sister blog” And it got me wondering…kate gosselin has a sister and she blogs?? So when I googled it, it brought me to Wiki Answers. Holy Addictive-ness! You should see all the questions people ask about kate gosselin! If you don’t believe me, click here to see for yourself. You can even find out if Kate has ever been in jail. You CAN!” (source)

You just gotta love the inner workings of the wonderful interwebs. I wonder what McMommy is working on over at WikiAnswers right now… Let’s hope she’s having a wonderful WikiExperience!