Aardvark: Answers From The Right People With The Convenience Of IM

Aardvark proposes a new way of answering your questions by using a mix of old technologies and new ideas.

Aardvark communicates with you through an instant messenger bot that is  currently compatible with Google Talk, AIM and MSN/Live! Chat. The bot approaches you in a very conversational style, using full sentences, thanking you and replying with ‘no problem’ when you decline to answer a question. It’s cute, in a Terminator-style way.

Aardvark let’s you customize your profile by adding tags, like technology or programming, and then sends you only questions that match those tags. This way, questions are routed to persons that are best suited to answer them.

Instead of posting your question on a page like Yahoo! Answers does, Aardvark checks to see if people in your network of friends have know-how in the subject you’re inquiring about. If it doesn’t find anyone, it goes on and searches for the same tag on the whole Aardvark database of users looking for people that are currently online. When it finds a person, it pops up a new IM windows with the respective question.

The user can choose to answer, pass or just ignore the question by typing ‘Busy’. If you’d like to make Aardvark leave you alone for a while, just type in ‘Away’.

If you’re not satisfied with the first answer,you can choose to resubmit the question, or if you don’t need answers anymore, cancel the search.

All the conversations are kept for later reference in the History tab on your site – and each question has its unique URL.

Aardvark, because it makes use of your network of friends and targets questions to knowledgeable people, gets absolutely fantastic answers, the best I’ve seen in a free service.

I’ve got 19 invites to give away, so if you want one, just leave a comment saying what’s your favorite Linux OS.