The Official Word of Ask.com

For an entire day last week, you could walk the halls of Ask and hear next-to-no activity—that is, until you passed the conference rooms. There, teams of six typed frantically on laptops, sketched formulas on whiteboards, talked logistics. Translated: the Ask Hackathon was in full swing.

Ask’s quarterly Hackathons are two-day events: one day to concept and one half-day to present. The goal: come up with an idea and present to a panel of judges. Our team of judges gauge ideas based on potential business impact, creativity (both in concept and in use of existing technologies), and quality of pitch. 

The winning ideas receive development resources and bragging rights. The losing ones still give our people the chance to leverage the latest technologies, try non-traditional processes, and spread their wings creating something new. 

When We Say “All-Hands”…

Perhaps more important, our Hackathons aren’t just for our engineers or product teams. We open the event up to the entire company. Members from our design, operations, and marketing teams get involved. Even our finance and legal departments pitch in to devise, package and execute ideas to create the next great company innovation.

Last quarter’s hackers were encouraged to come up with virtually any idea that would benefit the company—and they responded with two dozen presentable concepts. One of these evolved into Pollroll, the mobile app that Ask launched at this year’s SXSW conference to great acclaim. This time around, Hackathon heads Nick McCann and Alisa Barnes focused this quarter’s teams to create a new service (or use an existing or third-party service in a new way). Aside from that, the only rules were (1) be in the office, and (2) be creative. 

Teams Working: Do Not Disturb

If you knew where to look, the company was buzzing. Phrases like “social signals,” “aggregated for you,” “iPad app,” and “pulling links from I.M.” bounced through the halls. As did, for some reason, Marketing Director Robbie Waeschenfelder’s spot-on George Takei impersonation.

Mid-way through Day One, in a common area near the marketing department, six Askers leaned forward from white leatherette couches and devised ways to get celebrity gossip more conveniently. In another room, the team from the Campbell office bounced between their laptop screens and their whiteboards. Another team pitched out names for their new service, but had trouble finding an acronym that didn’t sound like “murder” (spoiler alert: they found one)

Stay Tuned…

Come by the blog on Monday for a more in-depth look at the teams and how they collaborate—plus, find out why our Hackathons are a pilot program for how we’ll approach our products and services in the future.

Then come by on Wednesday to find out what some of our top brass has to say about the Ask Hackathon, and take an in-depth look at the judging…and the winners!

In the meantime, enjoy these snapshots of day one. Have any hackathon memories from your own companies you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments section below.

—Ken Grobe, Ask.com

What better way to celebrate Pi Day than eating some good ol’ fashion pie! At exactly 3:14pm today, Ask.com employees were treated to delicious pies in honor of the mathematical constant that is the ratio of any Euclidean circle’s circumference to its diameter – approximately equal to 3.14. Hence, why Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th. Do you know how many digits of Pi are actually known? 

Sheree Polonsky, Public Relations 

As folks are packing their umbrellas for what looks to be a rainy weekend in Austin,  we wanted to tell you about a visual polling app live in the Apple iTunes store today that should prove useful – if not super entertaining —at SXSW.  No, it’s not expressly for SX, and will be integrated into the overall Ask Q&A experience after the conference, but we thought the cacophony of events, panels, brands and crowds at SX would provide a great opportunity to test it out.

So, what is “it?” Drumroll…

Pollroll is a new app brought to you by Ask that will deliver people quick answers to any question, while they’re on the go. It’s a lightweight app designed to facilitate the creation, distribution and sharing of poll questions and results. Field a poll, take a poll, or share a poll. And because Pollroll lets users include comments along with their vote, it combines the instant gratification of a poll with the answer depth and social context of Q&A. 

Why Pollroll? We saw our users leveraging the Ask Q&A community as a polling mechanism and thought, why not make it easier to set up a quick poll, survey others about anything— from favored restaurants to the best apps—and then share those results? SXSW is a great testing ground for Ask to play with this polling functionality, leveraging things like social connections and location, and we plan to use these learnings to better integrate polling into our flagship mobile app and site.

 Some of the features include:

- Visual polling:  Create a poll around a picture you just snapped, or use the in-app image search to include with your poll

- Filter responses: View responses from anyone, or filter by your friends or those in a specific location 

- Get context: See comments to understand why respondents voted the way they did

- Browse: Find, take and share more than 1,000 polls and counting. You can also browse user polls based on recency, popularity, location or social connections.

Download it now at http://www.ask.com/pollroll

See you at the Salt Lick.

TechCrunch posted an interesting article yesterday explaining a survey conducted by InMobi of 20,000 consumers. The findings show that people spent more time on the mobile web then watching TV. Essentially, people are “watching” their phones more than they are watching their television. People use their mobile devices all throughout the day, including 67% of the time lying in bed and 47% of the time waiting for something.  Do these findings relate to how you use your mobile device? 

Sheree Polonsky, Public Relations

As everyone gets ready to tune-in to the 84th Annual Academy Awards this weekend, we decided to roll out our very own red carpet predictions for the night’s winners and losers based on top questions asked on Ask.com by more than 100 million users. To help celebrate the Oscar predictions and nominees we sent some star-studded cookies to a few friends as a teaser.

The predictions envelope please…

George Clooney nabs his second career Oscar as Best Actor. 

Viola Davis edges out Meryl Streep to win her first Best Actress Academy Award. 

The Descendants takes home top prize as Best Picture.

Veteran actor Christopher Plummer will take home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Octavia Spencer earns the golden statue for Best Supporting Actress.

Michelle Williams leaves us speechless, winning best dressed of the night.

Rooney Mara’s ensemble will be a red carpet disaster. 

Charlize Theron will bring her mama as her date.

Woody Allen will be a no-show.

Biggest upset? Brad Pitt not going home a winner. 

Regardless of which stars win or lose, the Oscars are always a night full of surprises. So whether you are hosting an Oscar party or relaxing with a bag of popcorn, get ready for a night filled with the glitz and glamour only Hollywood can bring.

Oscar Treats

Brad Pitt

Rooney Mara

Michelle Williams

- Sheree Polonsky, Public Relations 

All of us at Ask.com want to wish you lovely Valentine’s Day! Lot’s of people have questions about this holiday, have you ever wondered who St. Valentine was? Or how this holiday began? Or what other countries celebrate V-Day? If so, just Ask!

How do you plan on spending Valentine’s Day this year?

Emily Kidder, Knowledge Engineer

Sunday night the biggest musical artists from all over the world came together at the Grammy Awards to celebrate the best in music, but also mourned the passing of one of music’s most legendary voices, Whitney Houston, who passed away on the eve of the Grammys at the Beverly Hilton. 

Congratulations to Adele and all the winners at the 2012 Grammy Awards!

And Whitney Houston, your awe-inspiring voice will be missed and remembered forever. Rest in peace.

-Emily Kidder, Knowledge Engineer

Valentine’s Day is only a week away and Ask users are providing answers to all sorts of Valentine’s Day related questions. Do you know what you will give your Valentine? Or how you will spend that special day? Every Day all of these answers and more are being answered by Ask users leading up to the big day. Here is a quick look at some of our top Valentine’s Day questions and answers from real people in our Ask community. What should I get my girlfriend for Valentine’s Day?  Ask users suggest flowers (specifically roses and orchids), candy, a watch, any kind of personalized gift, jewelry or a romantic letter. Ask users also recommend sending the flowers to her school or work for an even bigger impact. What should I get my boyfriend for Valentine’s Day? Users recommend buying his favorite cologne, a mug engraved, clothes, a watch or video games. Ask users also recommended baking fresh cookies. How should my significant other and I spend Valentine’s Day?  Community members agree that going to dinner at a nice restaurant is a great way to spend Valentine’s Day. However, if you are on a budget, Ask users think a home-cooked meal is a romantic and thoughtful idea. Other ideas mentioned were seeing a movie and going for a picnic.  What is a Valentine’s Day gift that I can give my best friend? Top answers from Ask users were a nice perfume or a charm bracelet. Should men receive gifts on Valentine’s Day?  83% of Ask users say yes, Valentine’s Day is a day for both men and women to feel loved.  What do you do if someone that you don’t like gives you a present on Valentine’s Day? 100% of community members agree that saying “thank you” is the best way to handle that tough situation.  Do you have Valentine’s Day advice you want to share? Let us know!

In tradition of Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney Phil the Groundhog emerged from his burrow around 7:30am ET and saw his shadow, which which means we will have six more weeks of winter.

Punxsutawney Phil is not the first Groundhog to predict the beginning of the Spring season, this tradition started among Pennsylvania German communities in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the tradition may seem silly to some, thousands of people gathered in Pennsylvania to see what Phil’s prediction would be this year. If you missed the main event, check out the live stream here.

Sheree Polonsky, Public Relations 

Hey All! We are playing with the idea of using polls on our blog to gauge how our users feel about certain topics. Check out our first poll below! What do you think? 

Hollywood is all abuzz this morning, because the nominations for film’s most prestigious awards were announced.  Martin Scorsese’s Hugo was honored with 11 nominations, and The Artist was close behind with 10.  So which nominations were a surprise, and who got snubbed this year? Many are happily surprised with the supporting nominations for popular comedy actors Melissa McCarthy and Jonah Hill, and agape at the lack of Best Actor nomination for Leonardo DiCaprio and his performance as J. Edgar Hoover. 

So who do you think will win this year’s top Oscar honors? Will the showdown between good friends George Clooney and Brad Pitt end in one taking home the coveted statue, or will newcomer to the Oscar scene Jean Dujardin best them both for his turn as a silent film actor in The Artist?  Will Meryl Streep win her third Oscar for portraying Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, or will Michelle Williams triumph for becoming Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn? Here at Ask.com, we’ll be watching the show on Sunday February 26, and updating our answers live to make sure we have the most up-to-date info possible!  And in the meantime, there are so many movies to watch!

Emily Kidder, Knowledge Engineer/Answer Geek

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” 

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

Happy New Year, Friends!

So, I was going to write a post yesterday on New Years Eve, reflecting on the year behind us, on the Firsts, the Lasts and the Never-agains…

But then I thought, we’re all inclined to look back anyway, and I’m sure you all did enough of that over the holidays. I’d rather look forward. Because this year is going to be exciting. I’ve got a feeling that we’re on the verge of something great - it’s always after a slump that people soar to new heights. 

We’ve finally made it truly into a new decade, leaving a lot of old global baggage behind. It’s a work in progress, but the page has been turned. I feel it about the world as a whole when I watch the news, and I feel it when I talk to people every day about our work at Ask.  

The oracle of popular culture herself hit the nail on the head:

“Cheers to the New Year and another chance to get it right.” - Oprah Winfrey.

Couldn’t have said it better. This is it, friends: Another chance to get it right. I don’t need a list of resolutions, my only goal is working harder to get it right. 

Here’s to a great year ahead. Thank you for being with us and let me know what you think we can do to get it right in 2012.

Much love,

Robbie Waeschenfelder, Director, Marketing

Even though the year is quickly coming to an end, we still have some fun popular questions of 2011 that want to share with you. At the beginning of the month, we released the top questions asked on Ask.com along with the top predictions of 2012 - but there were quite a few celebrity questions that were a little too juicy to share with the media! Here is a glimpse at what people were really asking us…

Is Justin Bieber gay?

Is Kim Kardashian’s butt real?

Is Lady Gaga a man?

Did Lindsay Lohan have plastic surgery?

How much does Beyonce weigh?

Will Charlie Sheen overdose?

Is Kate Middleton pregnant?

Did Ashton Kutcher get his girlfriend pregnant?

How did Amy Winehouse overdose?

Did Arnold Schwarzenegger gain weight? 

Where is the video of Ghadafi’s death?

Does Obama smoke pot?

Sheree Polonsky, Public Relations 

Christmas is almost here! Houses are aglow with lights, presents are sitting under trees waiting to be unwrapped by gleeful children (and adults!). Friends and family are gathering together. Stockings are hung by chimneys with care, and hopefully we have all of our Christmas shopping finished. There are so many interesting questions that people ask about all the traditions of Christmas..like why do we decorate trees at Christmas, how long will those trees last, and how do you make them last longer? How is Christmas celebrated in other countries? How many gifts total are in the lyrics to the 12 Days of Christmas, and how much would they all cost?  And most importantly for many young ones out there, where is Santa Claus right now???

We hope you find everything you are looking for this holiday, and Merry Christmas from all of us at Ask.com!

Emily Kidder, Knowledge Engineer/Answer Geek

Hanukkah is the Jewish festival of lights honoring the perseverance of Judaism during ancient times, and the story of how the Menorah lamp miraculously remained lit for eight days. 

But how do spell Hanukkah? Should the holiday be spelled Chanukah, Hanukkah, or Hannukah?

We have so many spellings of the Jewish holiday because it is not easily translated or transliterated into English from Hebrew. Hanukkah and Chanukah are the most widely used and accepted.

However you’d like to spell it, we’ve seen lots of questions about this festival of light. Here are a few most popular questions and answers:

How many candles are on a Menorah?

The eight candles on the menorah represent the miracle of the oil, in which one days worth of oil lasted for eight. A ninth candle is placed in the center of the menorah, and is known as the shamash and is used to light the other candles.

What is a dreidel?

The dreidel is a four-sided spinning top that is part of a traditional game played during Hanukkah.

The dreidel is usually made from wood, plastic or clay, and has the four Hebrew letters Nun, Gimmel, Hey, and Shin inscribed on each side.

What do the letters on the dreidel mean? 

The four symbols on a dreidel are the Hebrew letters Nun, Gimel, Hey and Shin, which stand for Nes Gadol Haya Sham, which means ‘A great miracle happened there’.

This refers to the miracle of the oil that Hanukkah celebrates.

If you want to know more about Hanukkah or any other holiday, just ask.

- Holly Boston, Homepage Guru

Sometimes it seems like the only thing anyone talks about anymore is mobile. And that’s for good reason – the marketing intelligence firm eMarketer recently published a remarkable statistic – people are now spending more time consuming information on their phones than from printed media like newspapers and magazines. Mobile and print were neck in neck in 2010, but mobile jumped dramatically in 2011. This isn’t a surprise at Ask.com, where we’ve seen over 1 million downloads of our iPhone app since it launched in late 2010. Our recently-released Android app is on a similar trajectory, growing users at a rate of about 45% each month.

Despite the buzz about mobile, eMarketer’s report suggests that TV is still going strong.  Adults in the US are actually watching 10 minutes more TV per day this year than they were in 2010. This is also great news for us, since we’re stepping up our TV advertising in several cities in 2012. If you live in San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia or Washington, DC  you may notice commercials for Ask.com during one of your favorite shows starting in January. Let us know if you see them! 

Click here to read more about the eMarketer study. 

Ann Semeraro, Director, Consumer and Market Insight

Getting answers to your questions is our top priority at Ask.com. Whether you’re searching for answers or asking the community, we want your experience to be a great one! We revamped the top categories in the community to better suit the topics you ask about most, like Cars & Transportation, Food & Drink, Sports & Recreation, Technology and more.

Featured in a WebProNews article today popular questions are now at the top of the page with recently asked questions displayed below. You’ll find that these category pages will be a place you’ll come back to often because you’ll always see the hottest topics first – we’re placing the most popular community Q&A front and center.

We are constantly monitoring the community and listening to our users and we know that categorizing questions has been something community members were looking for. So, we have strayed away from the auto-assigned categories and will now allow you to choose the most appropriate category for your questions. This change combined with the new category pages will help you find the types of questions you want to answer, which should increase the number of answers to questions – especially yours – in the community.

We hope that you find these changes to be as helpful and exciting as we do. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please let us know what you think by commenting here on the blog or through our Feedback link.

Payton, Director of Community Management

Eager to skip the crowds, queues, and hours logged in the car this holiday season? Well today, we’re launching a completely redesigned our shopping channel to make it easier than ever to do your holiday shopping.

Everything from UGG Boots to iPads to Fender guitars are available so you can find the best price and check that gift off your list with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Features of the new Ask.com shopping channel include:

You’ll be able to stay within your budget using the price-filtering tool:

Shop the brands you love, and leave the ones you don’t for someone else:

Have a question about product features or prices? We’ve also added some popular questions and answers from other users so you can see what other people are asking about the products you are shopping for.  This can definitely come in handy if you have some questions the Fender guitar you are eyeing.  

So, skip the stress this year and use our new shopping channel to make your holiday shopping headache and hassle free. Happy buying! 

Jonathan Chickneas, Senior Product Manager