Yahoo! Philippines Answers blog

Since we first made changes to the Search experience on Answers in March we have received extensive feedback from the Answers community.  We’re pleased to say we’ve been incorporating this feedback in developing some exciting new changes to how Search works – with some cool new functions to help you get the best out of this feature which we will be unveiling later this week.

However, before you can see the future of Search on Answers, we need to take you back to the past… just for a few days!  For Technical reasons we have to rollback to an older version of the Search page before we can add code to introduce new features – it’s a bit like when the Yamster’s wheel gets stuck.  We have to roll it back a little before it can go forward again!

As from Monday we’ll be using the old URL structure on Search pages.

Here are the impacts and how you can work around this until we get the new page live:

1) If you’ve bookmarked your Searches you will get the error page as the URL will no longer be valid. In the interim you will need to go to the Search page and enter your search again.  This will return you the full set of results.

2) If you currently edit the Search URL to use &orderby=+date (to sort by most recent) and &orderby=-date (to sort by oldest) you will need to use the previous parameters.  These are:

• Instead of &orderby=+date use &s=+date
• Instead of &orderby=-date use &s=-date

We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause, but we can assure you it will be very temporary and that you will really value the new Search functions we’re launching in a few days!

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What would YOU ask David Beckham?

David Beckham needs no introduction.  He is one of the most iconic athletes and decorated football players of all-time. He is the second most capped England player in history, scoring in three FIFA World Cups.  However, David’s name now stretches beyond just football –in recent years, his name has also become synonymous with style, fashion, and recently, through his work as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, he has become known as a key advocate of charity work.

Here at Yahoo! we are honoured to have David as our Global Ambassador working with Yahoo! Sport to interact with as many fans as possible and sharing his thoughts on subjects ranging from his favourite World Cup player to his preparation for the big day – with much more inbetween!  If you haven’t checked this out already, take a look at David’s coverage on Yahoo! Sport.

Here’s a taste of one his interviews:

The World Interviews David Beckham

Following the World Cup, we’ll be conducting one more interview with David and like everything else in his career, it’s going to be BIG!

We will be hosting The World Interviews David Beckham LIVE and exclusive on Yahoo!.  Not everyone can be there but imagine if you were conducting the interview, if there is one question you can ask David Beckham, what will it be and why?  Well, you can share your thoughts by answering this question we have for you:

If you could ask David Beckham one question, what will you ask him and why?

Maybe you want to ask about how his career took off? His future ambitions beyond football?  Or even find out what it is really like to walk out onto the pitch with 100,000 fans cheering your name?

Whatever your question, come up with the most original, interesting, topical or relevant question and if your answer gets chosen as best answer, you will be rewarded with a football signed by David Beckham!

Remember that your answer MUST follow all the Community Guidelines and Terms of Service. If you do not follow these guidelines your question will NOT be considered.

By answering the question you will be accepting our Competition Terms and Conditions.  The competition is only open to residents of the Philippines.

The Winner

We’ll be announcing the Best Answer and competition winner on August and will contact the winner through the email address associated with the Yahoo! Answers account .

The winning question will be announced on this blog and on our Facebook and Twitter pages.   Follow us on Twitter or ‘Like’ us on Facebook and you’ll get the updates immediately.

Happy answering!

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Following our cool new Yahoo! Answers feature that will allow you to share your Answers content with your Facebook friends, it was only logical to continue collaborating in other social media sites and share the best of the best of Answers.  Check out how you can follow, like and continue connecting with us through Facebook and Twitter!

FACEBOOK

Be a fan of our official Facebook fan page!  To join our friends on Facebook, you just need to follow these steps:

1. Log in or sign up on Facebook.
2. Go on our Facebook fan page.
3. Once you’re on the official fan page, just click on the button “I like” available at the top to become one of our fans
4. Well done, you’re now one of our Facebook friends!

Another way of adding us is to look for “Yahoo! Philippines Answers” in the search bar, then click on the link to go directly to our fan page.

We look forward to sharing great content and chatting with you in the fan page.  Watch out for the latest blog updates, open and resolved questions from the team, partners and even some from the community.  Check out the page regularly because we have some really cool surprises that we’ll be announcing in the fan page so watch out for it!

TWITTER

Aside from Facebook, if you’re a Tweep then you definitely have to follow us on Twitter!  Our Twitter account is http://twitter.com/YahooAnswersPH.

We tweet a lot of the good stuff you find on Answers (blog updates, cool, quirky and always interesting questions and answers) and we encourage you to retweet any of our tweets that you think your followers would like to know as well.

Once you’ve followed, liked and connected with us in Facebook and Twitter, please feel free to tell your friends about it.  And don’t forget to share your thoughts about it below in the comments.  Thanks!

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Our latest release has unfortunately released a few bugs into the system which we are working to fix as soon as possible.

So what’s not working?

• Extending questions: When you extend a question the updated number of days until expiry is not reflected on your question.  It remains at the same number of days.  Don’t worry, the question has been extended and will stay open for the extended duration…. it just doesn’t show the correct number on the question page.  As an impact of this, you may see open questions which say `Question period ended`.  This is purely where the number of days counter has hit zero but the question has been extended.
• Mails are not being sent when you receive a new answer to your question.  You will still receive other emails, such as when your contacts ask questions.
• Our External API is not currently working.  If you make use of this tool on your website you may want to join this Yahoo! Developer Group to keep up with the latest information on this:  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ydn-answers/

We’re working hard to get these outstanding issues resolved and will update this post when we iron out the bugs…

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Starting today (Thursday), you will notice a cool new Yahoo! Answers feature that will allow you to share your Answers content with your Facebook friends! This means your friends on Facebook can now help you answer your questions if you choose to share them. Your Facebook friends can also join Yahoo! Answers and connect with our amazing community to have the many questions they have answered.

What are the benefits?

One of the many advantages of social networking sites is having the ability to connect with thousands of people.   Linking your Answers account with your Facebook account increases the number of people that can answer your questions!  Some of the benefits are:

1. Make it easier for your non-Answers friends to answer your questions if you choose to share them beyond Answers.

2. If you choose to share your great answers with your Facebook friends too then they will see your answers right at the top of the list when coming to Answers from Facebook.

Control options:

On the `Preview` page you’ll see the check-boxes for where you want to share your questions and answers to.  The setting you choose here will be the default for all of your content but you have the option to change this with every posting.  This gives you full control over which info you want to share with your friends and those questions you want to ask only to the Answers community.

Things to keep in mind:

If you do decide to share your Answers activity with your friends on Facebook, keep in mind that your Answers screen name will be visible.  Your Answers activity will be associated with your Facebook identity and vice versa, which means your Facebook friends will be able to see all your Answers activity (including past activity).   If your friends on Facebook ‘like’ your question, their contacts will be able to see this activity too.

Remember, more visibility to your questions means more answers from a wider range of contacts so we hope you will find the new Facebook integration a useful addition to your Answers experience!

Once you have started sharing your Answers and Facebook accounts, “tell us what you think” on the Forum or leave your comments here, on the blog.

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At this very moment, the best football players from all over the world are making their way to sunny South Africa to compete for the prize of all prizes. All eyes will turn to the Rainbow Nation to see if the numerous critics and doubters were right after all: They don’t believe the country is ready to host the greatest show on earth. Well, the time for words and debate is over, let the action begin and we’ll find out for ourselves!

Behind all the exciting games and magnificent stadia we will be seeing on our screens and the long hours we will be spending encouraging our team on to at least one more win, there is a fascinating country extending well beyond what will be shown.

Don’t worry, this is not a history class, nor a geography test about South Africa.  It is just a quick introduction to some facts you may find interesting (like the fact that Kruger National Park is almost the same size as Holland). Hopefully what follows will help add context and flavour to a whole month of football and activities that will happen in Answers.

The Rainbow Nation

South Africans often describe themselves as the Rainbow Nation due to their wide ranging diversity in people and cultural groups. South Africa has a population of 45 million people speaking 11 official languages, with Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans being the most common home languages (English is the fifth most common home language, but is understood by most people as, primarily for economic and political reasons, it is the lingua franca).

The best known and biggest cultural group in South Africa is the Zulus. They proudly defend and practice their own traditions, and became a very important force against the British army in the late 19th Century.

Unusually, the country has three capital cities: Cape Town (Legislative), Pretoria (Administrative), and Bloemfontein (Judicial).

The South African flag as we know it today was adopted on Liberty Day, April 27th 1994 (during the first democratic elections after the abolishment of apartheid.

Sports

Sport in South Africa is almost a national religion! Children actively engage in all types of sport from a very young age and inevitably dream of emulating their heroes in football, rugby, cricket and just about every other sport you can think of.

Since the first democratic elections were celebrated in 1994, South Africa has hosted a variety of international sporting tournaments: The Rugby World cup in 1995 (which they won), Football’s African Cup of Nations in 1996 (which they won), and the Cricket World Cup in 2003. The country has also hosted auto racing’s A1 Grand Prix since 2006.

South Africa has always been a formidable competitor in Rugby Union. The national team, the Springboks, have won the Rugby World Cup on two occasions: 1995 and 2007.

Bafana Bafana (as the South African football team are known, meaning “The Boys”) have the hopes of a nation riding on their shoulders. The South African Football Association (SAFA) was banned from all international football events from 1974 till 1992, so winning the African Cup of Nations in 1996 was a significant triumph. Since then Bafana Bafana have proven somewhat inconsistent, slaying giants one moment and losing dismally to underdogs the next. So anything could happen in June/July 2010!

Famous South Africans

You may know of several other famous South Africans, but here we offer a small list of some of the names that have conquered the world, and you may be surprised by some of them:

J.R.R. Tolkien, writer and author of “Lord of the Rings”.

J.M. Coetzee, writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nelson Mandela, revolutionary leader, first black president and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Charlize Theron, the first South African actress to win an Oscar.

Christian Barnard, the doctor who realised the first ever heart transplant.

Jody Sheckter, Formula 1 champion in 1979.

Gary Player, World Golf Hall of Famer and winner of 9 major tournaments.

Desmond Tutu, Archbishop and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Hugh Masekela, Grammy Award nominated musician best known as a trumpeter.

As we mentioned, this is just a small introduction to South Africa, and the beginning of a whole month of activities that we have prepared for the Answers Community around the FIFA World Cup.  Stay tuned, and you will find yourself in the middle of a number of contests, activities and rewards that we’ve set up for you along the way.

“May the best team win!”

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Currently we offer the option to share your question or answer with your wider Yahoo! contacts through Yahoo! Updates on the `Preview your question/answer` pages.  In relation to this feature we have some good news and some bad news…

The Good News

Over the next week we’re going to be improving the visual presentation of the Updates feature and giving you easier control over what you share and where.

This is how it will look once the Yamster has finished his polishing:

With this lighter design, the change will make it easier to see whether you are currently sharing and let you update this quickly and more simply on a question-by-question or answer-by-answer basis.  You can also quickly choose whether to share with everyone or your contacts only by using the arrow to the right of the tickbox.

Don’t worry about questions showing up against your wishes – if you’ve switched sharing off in the past, it will continue to be switched off.  Otherwise you can choose your setting when you ask  or answer for the first time after we’ve launched this version of Y! updates.

The Bad News

The bad news is that to do this work we need to switch off Updates for the next few days.  This means your questions or answers won’t be shared as Updates to your Yahoo! contacts, and you will not see the Yahoo! Updates box on the Preview your Question page.

We know it’s just a small change but it is one we anticipate will simplify when and how you share your Answers knowledge… and watch this space for more developments around sharing your knowledge!

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We receive emails regularly from many of you expressing your interest in writing a blog post on the Answers blog.

As much of our success is down to our amazing community members, we want to extend an offer to all you – the opportunity to volunteer a blog post and have it published on the Answers blog!

Have you ever fancied being famous among online Pinoys?  Then this is your chance!  If your blog hits the spot we may even feature it on our sister-blogs in one of the 21 countries where we blog and translate it into some of the 9 languages we operate in.  This is your chance to have your voice heard, and have millions of people read your words!

If that isn’t incentive enough, how about an extra 50 points for each post we publish?

How do I become a guest blogger?

Simple – come up with a suggestion or a full blog post and email it to jonasdelosreyes [at] ymail [dot] com.

However, there are a few tips and rules we’d like you to follow:

1. What should you write about?

Focus on what would interest the Answers Community.  We are open to any subject area, even if only slightly related to Answers. This could include educational, instructional or informative topics.  Some examples are as follows:

• Subjects that you may have professional or personal experience in, for example if you have recently planned a wedding, you may want to pitch a topic on “How to organize a wedding?”
• Or you could pitch ideas based on your personal experience on Answers, such as tips on getting the most out of Answers, things that could be improved, and anything that you would like to share with the Answers community.

2. Use correct spelling and grammar.  The more understandable your suggestion is, the higher the chance it has to be used or chosen as a possible blog topic.
3. If you use any Answers content in your blog posts, it should adhere to the Community Guidelines.

Finally, the legal bit – your blog will be featured on the site in accordance with our TOS.  We reserve the right to translate and make editorial changes to your blog if selected.
We look forward to hearing from you – jonasdelosreyes [at] ymail [dot] com.

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Here’s something that I’m sure you’ll find interesting and challenging.  We are introducing a brand-new quiz that will test your community guidelines knowledge! Do you know the difference between chatting and point gaming? Have you committed a violation without understanding what you did wrong? Test your understanding: it’s fun, and if you pass, you will earn 20 points!

Why are Community Guidelines important?

Our site continues to grow at an incredible speed and we have thousands of new people signing up every week. To keep our Answers community a fun and informative place it is important to understand our community guidelines.

What improves our site’s content is understanding how to ask questions and how to write a great answer. Like any other community, members must follow a set of principles in order to keep our site a safe, fun and positive. As members of our community, we want you to understand the following:

Test your knowledge!

We encourage new members of the community to read the community guidelines so that our community can continue to be a helpful place for you. By following, the above points our site will continue to be a place where members can find answers to questions that you were always curious about.

Take the community guidelines quiz to test your knowledge, earn points and let us know what you think!

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Filipinos received a “front-row seat” last Sunday evening, May 16, 2010 to a common and yet always awesome sight – the “evening star” visibly sitting on top of a crescent moon.  People were abuzz both offline and online as people took photos of this astrological occurrence and posted it on social media sites.

The “evening star” is, as many may know already, the planet Venus.  As community member Wiser explains in a question, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after Moon so people thought in the early days (before we has astronomy) it was a star.

Actually, when Venus is seen in the easter sky before the sunrise it is referred to as a “morning star” and when it is seen in the evening in the west after sunset (similar to what just happened last night) it’s called an “evening star.”

How does this happen, that Venus appears as a star?  Nuscorpi223 explained that it’s because Venus’ orbit lies inside Earth’s orbit around the Sun.  When the orbit of Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun, it also reflects the light of the Sun to earth so that when it moves from the evening to the morning sky, it becomes very visible to us and appears as a “star”.

To people who have just seen this, one question that may be on your mind is if there’s any significance to the crescent moon and Venus being so close together.  Don’t worry, this natural phenomenon has no effect on Earth.  Community member podi shared that planetary alignments have been happening for the longest time and there’s never been a documented effect to our planet.

But have you ever wondered why the crescent moon and star has come to symbolize Islam?  This was asked by bettycatmouse and Schneb gave the best answer.  He said the crescent moon and star symbol actually pre-dates Islam by several thousand years. Most sources say that these ancient celestial symbols were in use by the peoples of Central Asia and Siberia in their worship of the sun, moon and sky gods.  In this Wikipedia article, it says that possibly the symbol became associated with the Muslim faith when the Ottoman Empire became affiliated with the Muslim world.

If you missed seeing the crescent moon and “evening star” last night, don’t worry.  Just click here and check out the different photos submitted in Flickr.

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