We’ve made a few minor changes and bug fixes this week to both the desktop and mobile versions of Answers which we wanted to let you know about.

Here’s a rundown of the changes:

Mobile

Our new mobile experience has proven extremely popular with you all so far and many of you have given us feedback on what you’d like to see. Taking this into account we’ve made a few tweaks:

• You can now star questions from the question page on mobile
• We’ve now enabled `Show me another` on iPhone and Android. You can see further questions now by scrolling horizontally on each question page.

For those of you who use Android we want to let you know we’ve just created an Answers Android App! This is free to download and works on Android phones version 2.0 or above. Try it out by searching for “Yahoo! Answers” at the Android marketplace and let us know what you think of it!

Desktop

We’ve made a few cosmetic changes that you may see depending if you’re signed-in or signed-out of Answers. Let’s explain how these affect each page on the Answers site:

Choose Best Answer, Edit Answer & Additional details pages

We’ve updated these pages to our new look and feel that you see when asking or answering.  By improving the code behind these pages too this should resolve some of the issues that occasionally occurred with special characters and text wrapping.

Question Page changes

Last month we made a change which moved edited answers to the bottom of the list. Due to your overwhelming response against this change we have reversed it. Now, when you edit an answer, we will display an edit time stamp but won’t move it to the bottom of the answer list. We feel this shows that the answer has been edited from the original submission without discouraging those who want to make genuine edits.

Thumbs: We’ve had extensive feedback around thumbs and this month we made the first of several changes to the rating system. Further changes will come in the following months.

• Thumbs up and Thumbs down will now only show when you are signed in to Answers. When signed-out you will not see the Thumbs down icon but will see any positive ratings that have occurred. This is how the signed out experience will look:
• We’ve moved the Report Abuse away from the thumbs on all answers whether you are signed in or out. We hope this will stop you accidentally hitting the thumbs buttons when you mean to report abuse
• Also when signed out and visiting a voting page, we now display a sign in to vote button at the top of the page to make it clearer on how to vote for your preferred answer.

My Activity Page

We’ve made a small cosmetic change to the My Activity page and made some technical improvements to improve performance on this page.

• Your identity information has now been modified slightly. We’ve moved your stats information to the right and now your contact information, nickname and start date to the central column.
• We now collapse “About Me” on your private view of My Activity. This means your content is higher on the page than before.
• There should now be no delay with your avatar appearing on the My Activity page after you’ve updated it. Previously there was a delay of up to 10 minutes of avatars updating on the My Activity page, this will now be instant.
• We’ve heard from those of you with lots of answers, activity or contacts that retrieving this information in the new My Activity page can be problematic. We’ve made some tweaks here so should you should notice this is all displayed much smoother now.
• On rare occasions your nickname or avatar on the question page wasn’t taking you to My Activity page but to the public view. This is now fixed and you’ll no longer be taken to the public view of My Activity.

As always we’d love to hear your feedback on these changes and what you’d like to see on Answers.

Edit My Preferences page

To keep public information and your personal settings separate we’ve made further changes on the `Edit my preferences` pages.  

As with the previous preference page you can still add your photo or avatar from here or change your screen name which will both be used across your Yahoo! experience.  We’ve made this page a little lighter to view by splitting out how you will be seen on Answers from your personal preferences on Privacy and Communications.  

The Privacy and Communications tab gives you control to receive specific notifications such as when `someone becomes your fan` or when `there are new questions for My Saved Searches` – and whether you allow fans at all. 

Hiding your profile

You may notice there is no longer the option to choose whether you `Show link to my Profile Page`.  This previously controlled whether you linked directly to your Pulse profile on Yahoo! 

This setting is now controlled across all Yahoo! properties from the `Privacy` settings on the Settings page on Pulse http://pulse.yahoo.com/y/settings

From the small beginnings when we received our first answer from the public back in December 2005 we have now become the largest and most popular global Q&A site on the internet, available in 9 languages across 21 countries.

The volume of contributions we receive from the Answers community on a daily basis is mindboggling.  Yahoo! Answers currently receives:

823,966 questions and answers per day…
that works out to 34,331 per hour or 572 per minute
which is 10 questions and answers posted EVERY second!

The first answer on Answers

It’s difficult to pinpoint the first answer to the first question once Answers was opened to the public, but one of the first-ever answers came to this question -“Why are yawns contagious?”

This was one of many questions you’ve always wanted to know the answer to, but didn’t know how to find – until Yahoo! Answers came along.

The most answered questions of all time…

Through the years, we have had numerous celebrities and leading political figures appear on Yahoo! Answers.  Their questions have proven to be overwhelmingly popular with the community due to the large numbers of answers received.

Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest:

• The most popular question ever was from Hilary Clinton who received over 38,000 answers to her question: “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?”.
• For the Singapore, the most popular question was asked by one of the editors of Yahoo!, about the controversial film-maker and entertainer, Jack Neo.  The question is “Will you still go and see Jack’s movies? And what do you make of his wife’s reaction and Jack’s mistress?” and it received almost 2,000 answers.
• The most popular question asked in Yahoo! Answers Singapore by a celebrity was from Mr. Bean actor, Rowan Atkinson.  He asked “How would you go about squeezing the most number of people into Mr Bean’s Mini Cooper?” and it received almost 600 answers.
• As part of the ONE campaign to Make Poverty History, Bono took the time to select David C’s response as the best answer to his question, What can we do to make poverty history?, from the 29,458 received.

The quirkiest questions of all time…

The following are some of the most interesting and original questions that our Answers community has asked:

• What numbers and letters do you key on you keyboard to make a heart symbol?
• Is eating the inside of an orange peel good for you?
• How far east can you go before you’re heading west?
• Why do the Chinese believe red is a lucky colour?

Drum roll…

The honour of providing the 1 BILLIONTH answer on Yahoo! Answers goes to cgramer2 for his excellent response to this question: What laptop part can I replace to speed up my pc?

Thank you cgramer2 and THANK YOU Answers Community.  It is you all who have made this site such a phenomenal place where information can be exchanged and opinions heard.  Thanks to our amazing community for making this milestone happen!

So, if you ever have a question?  Yahoo! has an answer… over one billion of them!

We’ve taken the feedback you’ve provided and have incorporated your comments to improve the current search experience. Through the new search experience, you’ll notice a new, re-designed layout on your search results page, making it easier to refine your search without having to leave the page.

1- We’ve taken all of the options which were previously available in Advanced Search and moved them to the left-hand-side of this page to make it easier to customize your search queries.

2 – The category dropdown has been re-structured to fit this new design.

3- For those of you who perform the same search regularly, we’ve also thought of you: we’ve replaced the `Make this my default search option` with the `My Saved Search` feature. `My Saved Search` allows you to save your favourite search so you can easily access the results from anywhere on Yahoo! Answers. By checking this box Answers will store your most frequent searches. You can then click on the `My Saved Search` link next to the `Search Answers` button to access your saved search from wherever you are on the site.

You can find out more about making the most of `My Saved Search` by checking out this help article: http://help.yahoo.com/l/sg/yahoo/answers/overview/overview-7163233.html

As with all of the changes we’re making at the moment we’d love to hear your feedback. Leave us a comment here on the blog or on the feedback thread on the Suggestion board

Hiya folks ~

As you can guess, I’m the new Yahoo! Community Manager for Singapore and Malaysia. Having been a fan of Yahoo! and its many products for nearly a decade, it’s so exciting to finally be a part of Yahoo! Woot!

I’ve always been curious about anything and everything. A friend of mine was even annoyed enough to warn me one day that “curiosity killed the cat”. But how did curiosity kill the cat? How did this phrase even come to be? Why…? I think he must have regretted even telling me that, lol! (And guess what? This is what some of us said in reply to Mustang Sally’s “Why did curiosity kill the cat?“)

Well, I always believed that humans are innately curious. And with questions, come answers, which in turn changes to knowledge. And what do people say about knowledge? Yep, it’s power! Muahaha! Time to take over the world! Just kidding. But isn’t it a pleasure to share what we know with each other? It’s like a Q&A Wikipedia

So let’s make this community vibrant and fun together! Leave me a comment or email me if you have any feedback, suggestions, or just general opinions. I don’t bite. Really. (Not unless you’re a gingerbread man or chocolate. Heh.)

Till the next post!

(Flickr photo by kalleboo)

There are always plenty of avid answerers just itching to tackle the new questions that are asked every minute of every hour of every day on Answers. It never ceases to amaze me how people are so willing to lend their time, knowledge and experience to help out their fellow man. And I’m impressed by the thoroughness that some members of the community put into their answers.

I also notice that some folks fire and forget. They are doing something online, then a thought strikes them and they log into Answers to post a question. The helpful answerers pounce all over it and in short order, the question has a stack of answers. But where did the asker go? Yes, it’s true, sometimes all the answers are equally good and the asker needs help from the community to choose the best and thus, the asker puts the question to a vote. Other times, the asker has simply forgotten to check back and select the best answer. That’s tough on the answerers who invested their time helping out.

Remember, dear asker, to stand by and check back in a day because when you ask, you will receive an answer. Probably several. Maybe even a dozen. And not only will you get the advice or answer you seek, choosing the best answer gives you back three points. Plus (and here’s the big plus), you make someone’s day when you personally select the answer that helped you the most as the best answer.

So go ahead, make someone’s day.

Not any longer. From today, you’ll have your own blog to keep you informed of the latest happenings here on Yahoo! Singapore Answers. Expect to hear about folks from your community who have been contributing well to Answers, about community events and other exciting things that we have in store for you.

But that’s not the only change we have for you. I’m sure you’ve noticed that the question page has gone wide screen. Yes, we hear that a wider page means we can fit more on the page and that’s exactly what we’ve delivered. The category links remain on the right-hand side, leaving even more room for the detailed answers you continue to amaze us with.

We’re always listening to the needs and wants of you, the Answers’ community, so we hope you enjoy this page and we look forward to unveiling future developments across all areas of Answers, including enhancements to the ask/answer and reporting process.

In the meantime, keep on enjoying Answers and helping out your fellow Singaporeans. Remember, you make the world a smarter place through Answers.

It’s Earth Day, 2008. What have you done in the past year to help reverse the environmental damage that we’re inflicting on our home, planet earth? Have you reduced the number of times you order take away because of the number of bags and plastic containers they give you? Have you stopped taking long showers to try and save water? Have you starting bringing your own shopping bag to the supermarket? Have you stopped printing every single email or document but considered carefully if you really need a hard copy? Have you changed your incandescent bulbs for more energy-efficient compact florescent bulbs?

Well, if you haven’t changed your bulbs, you’re in luck. For those of you in Singapore, here’s your chance to change all the incandescent light bulbs in your house for energy-saving bulbs. For free. That’s right, you read correctly–for free.

It’s the Great Light Bulb Exchange. Bring us one of your incandescent light bulbs (working or broken) and we’ll give you a new energy-saving compact florescent light (CFL). No strings attached. (Well, just tell us how much you love Yahoo! Answers.) If you bring two old light bulbs, we’ll give you two CFLs. No gimmicks, no sales pitch, nothing. It’s just our way of getting the community to go green. And hey, you’ll be saving money on your electricity bill too.

Here are the details:

Venue: Newton Hawker Center Public Carpark
Date: 22nd April 2008
Time: 5pm

The Yahoo! crew will be there for one hour to exchange bulbs with you. Plus, the first 1,000 folks will also get some Yahoo! goodies. For more information, see the Green Movement 2008 group on Flickr.

So make green your favourite colour and come get your new CFLs.

Looking forward to seeing you,

Answers will be down on Monday 14 April, from 1:00 p.m. for scheduled maintenance. We anticipate the work will take a few hours, and Answers will be unavailable during that time. If there is any change to the schedule, we will inform you here with updates.

We hope to be back up as soon as possible. In the mean time, scribble your questions on a Post-it and be ready to post when we are up and running again.

Thanks for your patience.

It’s here. The updated Answers plug-in for Yahoo! Messenger. What is that you ask? Well, it’s a nifty little application that lets you get access to the rich information on Yahoo! Answers right from your Messenger client, all without having to open a browser window.

We released a first version some time back that was worked with Singapore Answers. Our new version lets you set your country preference and you can pull Q&A from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. Talk about multi-lingual.

Now you can have those smart-aleck moments when you’re talking to your friends. Suppose you’re chatting with your friend and she wants to have coffee in the vicinity of Ayala Boulevard. You can type right into the Answers plug-in search box: “Where can I get the best coffee on Ayala Boulevard?” and hit Search. The slider will slide out and presto, you have your answer. How impressed will she be?

Download the plug-in today and start searching and browsing Answers right within Messenger. Of course, if you need to check back into Answers or want to post a new question, there are links inside the plug-in that will bring up your browser. Let us know how you like it!

Download the Answers plug-in now.

Your friendly neigbhourhood smart aleck,