Description
Aardvark is Social Q&A: Get a live answer to any question from someone in your social network!
"You'll find it indispensable for answering those questions that only your fellow humans can answer." --Time.com, 50 best websites 2009.
→ Ask your question in plain English, like you would to a friend.
→ Aardvark discovers someone who's online now and can give you an answer right away.
→ Answers from people you trust: your friends (and their friends), classmates and coworkers.
→ Connect to people in your network by answering their questions -- just tell Aardvark what topics you'd like to help friends with!
NOTE:
Aardvark is a 3.0-only application (it uses PUSH notifications).
EXAMPLES:
✓ Neighborhood places - "What fun bars downtown have outdoor seating?"
✓ Travel tips - "I'm going to Berlin for two weeks; what are some day trips to places that aren't too touristy?"
✓ Entertainment - "Any recommendations for live music (indie rock, world music, whatever!) to check out tonight?"
✓ Gift ideas - "I want to give my friend a great graduation present, but she already got jewelry! Any other suggestions?"
✓ App recommendations - "What's the best strategy game for my iPhone? Something less than $10"
✓ Or anything else!
FEATURES:
• Language engine analyzes your question to find key topics
• Automatically detects your location
• Get notified of new answers right away
• Seamlessly connect to Facebook
• Invite friends by email
• Smooth polished interface!
What Others Are Saying
"A new, better way to harness the Net for answers." -- David Pogue, NewYorkTimes
"That's the new revolution that's going on, a new type of search engine that effectively indexes the knowledge of those you know." -- Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineLand
"I've spoken with a handful of people who have been using the product for the last month or more; every one of them is wildly enthusiastic about it." -- Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
"My spidey senses go off about once every year or two. They are off the chart on this company." -- John Battelle
What's New in Version 2.0
We're excited about v2.0 of Aardvark Mobile!
Based on extremely helpful feedback from our users, we've made these updates...
- easier-to-use Answer tab -- just swipe to see more questions!
- a new Welcome Tutorial shows new users how Aardvark works
- over 45 bug fixes and feature changes based on user feedback (including problems with deleting conversations, and application exit at startup)
Thanks to all of our users for giving us such great feedback. Keep it coming...
Onwards & Varkwards!
Customer Reviews
Let's Be Honest Here
For now, 2 stars because Aardvark is an app in it's infancy. You are simply NOT likely to get the experience the 5-star, hyper-enthusiastic reviews here report (So you can read 1 or 2 of them and pretty much quit, as they appear to be rating to either the CONCEPT or a non-app version. Read the more down to earth reviews.)
Aardvark via Apple iPhone is NOT the be-all, end-all in your quest for answers. It does NOT trump Yahoo! Answers or render Google useless. Not that Aardvark can't be great; it's just too early.
It is true of any Q&A forum that its usefulness depends on its users. Aardvark is still mining its resource base. You are asked to bring your Facebook network with you (a creepy symbiosis) or add people from your personal email or messenger lists. It relies upon you bringing your 400 Facebook friends (well..your 9 anyway, and your 391 collected pets) to increase its resource base of potential answerers. Thus, it will take time before EVERY Aardvark user gets an answer "lightning fast" (right now, non-Facebookers would do well to get one in the same hour). This app does not appear to build any kind of network for you itself (If you answer somone or someone answers you, that is not automatically a contact made and saved.)
As with invasive Facebook, Aardvark also wants your legal first and full last name at registration. The more invasive a registration process is, the more likely it is that your info will serve multiple uses.
My initial Aardvark APP experience: 3 fairly basic Q's asked, 1 A received. I've answered a couple of Q's (and I'm eager to contribute, since that's how it works), been stumped on about 5 Q's and read 2 from guys seeking dates (inevitable). I found no way to clear old questions or answers in the app (nor on vark.com). Push notifications don't work for me (it seeks me via IM although I'm logged into Aardvark).
I'm not a beta tester, gushing blogger, or fascinated reviewer from a tech site. I'm just a person reviewing the app, NOT its potential. (Oddly, Ive seen this review disappear and reappear on my iPhone, so I hope that you get to read this input.)
Try it for yourself while it's free. It should get better as it matures. I'll hang and see if it improves.
The Smart Lazyweb for the iPhone.
The lazyweb concept is associated with status message questions (eg twitter, facebook) - where you effectively spam all your friends with a question. Aardvark is like a very smart filter which will only contact the people who it thinks might be able to answer the question. It bases this off of some statistical text based analyses of the question, tag and interest-topics that users sign up with (or allow to be gathered from Facebook).
As an early adopter, I am of course biased towards Aardvark in general. However, I'm really writing this review because the iPhone App takes Aardvark ease of use to a whole new level, that frankly I didn't think was possible. What used to be clunky, hard to use typed in commands, are now shiny easy to use push buttons, following question threads is so much easier, and you don't need IM running all the time. A really nice feature I like is with the refer command, where because of the interface you can just scroll thru your friends, see if they are on-line and pick one. Before it was really random if you refered someone, as whether or not they were online. Kudos to our developers.
Aardvark is the coolest thing ever.
Aardvark combines the knowledge of all your best friends - and friends you are yet to meet - in one place so you can ask their advice on anything - from the silly to the serious. It turns 'searching the internet' for something into 'asking an expert' about something. What could be better??!!
- Category: Social Networking
- Updated Feb 09, 2010
- Current Version: 2.0
- 1.7 MB
- Languages: English
- Seller: The Mechanical Zoo
- © 2009-2010 Aardvark
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.
