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QuNu – Finding Answers with People Tags
by Andrew McCaskey
Slashdot Review Podcast
I had a chance to try out the service at QuNu.com today.
You may remember a mention of QuNu a few weeks ago. QuNu is a site that launched about two months ago, in their words “Qunu is a next-generation expertise matching service that uses instant messaging to connect — in real time — people who have software or tech-related questions with experts who are passionate and willing to help.”
It’s a really simple interface: a search box to type in your query that seems to be backed up with some keyword extraction logic that links to tags. Only these tags are not attached to articles or postings – these tags are attached to people. People who are online and have agreed to offer their knowledge and expertise in a “pay it forward” mode. My query on WordPress fetched up several online experts at mid-day. Maybe I should say one expert and several users. Someone who logs on to Qunu sets the tags for their expertise, and then adds their self assessment of expertise.
Murray had clicked “expert” in the WordPress field – and a quick click on the bubble almost immediately opened a Jabber client and we were off on a chase through his experience, WordPress documentation, several threaded discussions. I have to admit we didn’t have much luck on the issue- but I had the assurance that someone with a lot more experience than I ended up stumped as well. It’s just the sort of encouragement that you need after a few hours of head scratching.
The next time you are in a bind – and your first half hour wading through Google searches leaves you , You can push it a bit past the obvious open source subjects of Ubuntu, Apache, Python, or Perl. I’ve found help offered in MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint, Matlab, PIC microcontroller, Molecular Modeling, and Photoshop.
If you’re an expert in something and want to provide help to others, Qunu requests come in through your existing IM client software so there’s no need to monitor forums or websites anymore. And, you can choose to answer up or not, depending on your regular day job duties or mood at the time.
Next time you could use some help from a human, give Qunu.com a try. And if you think you are pretty smart on a particular subject or application join up and get tagged.
QuNu.com has an interesting domain name story on the site – The domain they originally wanted was taken – and only after they were up a running did they find out that QuNu is the birthplace of Nelson Mandela. There is nothing like starting up a new venture with a healthy dose of good karma.
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