Play online now!

We’re very proud to announce that Answers has teamed up with The British Red Cross to bring you one of the first ever charity online Alternate Reality Game (ARG).

‘Traces of Hope’ is the story of Joseph, a sixteen-years-old boy, caught up in the aftermath of the Ugandan civil war. He’s been separated from his family, and now left alone in a camp overflowing with thousands forced to flee and, always in the look for food, Joseph is desperately seeking his mother.

But he needs your help…

Traces of Hope @ Yahoo! Video

When we told the British Red Cross we had a dedicated community of passionate experts on Answers ready to make themselves available to Joseph, they were delighted and relieved: the hunt can start!Set in Northern Uganda, Traces of Hope combines storytelling, detective work and technology in a hunt across the internet to reunite him with his mother.

“While it is involving and exciting, Traces of Hope also has a serious point; there are thousands of people like Joseph all around the world whose lives are shattered by conflict. But all around the world, wherever you find people like Joseph, you’ll also find the Red Cross, reconnecting families and rebuilding lives” (Dorothea Arndt, British Red Cross, New Media Manager).

Joseph is alone in Uganda but you have the internet and the Answers community. With this support you should be able to help Joseph, but time is running out … visit the Traces of Hope website and dive into the experience. Once signed up, the adventure will begin…

If you make any progress with the game, why not share with the community what you thought about it or any tips you might have? Leave your comments here to help others out!

With the global credit crunch everywhere in the media this week, money has never been more on our minds. The instability of the markets, the appearance of entities like “toxic” debt and complex futures has taken the specialist financial mechanisms of the stock markets and given them mainstream visibility. As the shockwaves ripple through our society, it raises questions.

Answers is a great place to satisfy your curiosity, as we have a wealth of financial experts participating on the site, from Unbiased.co.uk, to Moneyfacts and Impartial.co.uk. So while we’d never claim to being suitably knowledgeable in this field, we’re more than happy to turn our blog over to those who are. So without further ado, here are four great answers on what seems to be the root of all current evils: money.

What banks or building society’s are likely to survive the credit crunch?

Best Answer by Darren from Moneyfacts:

“All banks and building societies will survive the credit crunch. However, some are choosing to merge to put themselves in a stronger position. If in the unlikely event the worse should happen, then the Government would step in, just like they did with Northern Rock.

Turmoil in the financial markets; naturally makes consumers worry about the safety of their savings but unless they have more than £35K with a savings provider then there is no need to fret.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme, covers 100% of the first £35K, per person, per deposit taking institution. Therefore, if you ensure that you don’t have more than this limit with any one provider, if in the unlikely event the worst should happen, you will get all your money back.”

To see more on how the situation varies from institution to institution click here…

With the economic fall is now the perfect time to buy stock?

Best Answer by Unbiased.co.uk

“It is amazing how investor sentiment invariably leads people to buy when the market is high and therefore stocks are relatively expensive and sell when the news is bad and values have fallen.

September 2008 sees the FTSE 100 in the UK at the same level around 4800 as it was in April 2005 and June 2002 –with intervening highs of 6721 in Oct 2007 and a low of 3567 in Jan 2003. To view any one moment in the market as perfect is to miss the point — accepted wisdom is that timing contributes a mere 2% to the successful returns from an equity based investment portfolio whilst asset allocation contributes a massive 92%! (”Other” factors e.g global disasters etc make up the other 6% ).”

To read more on the opportunities that exist to take advantage of investing, read the rest of the answer here…

Oil is skyrocketing, therefore should green energy stocks go up or down?

Best Answer by Unbiased.co.uk

“Oil (and therefore gas) prices have been very volatile in recent months. They are a mature technology, so there is unlikely to be any ground-breaking innovation in this area. Green energy stocks on the other hand, as your long list suggests, are in many different technologies and are not fully developed.”

To find out whether there’s a correlation between oil and green stocks, read more here…

What other fees are included in a mortgage APR?

Best Answer by Impartial.co.uk

“The APR is supposed to be an accurate method of calculating the cost of borrowing including all fess and should include the following:

1. Discount Points
2. Origination Points
3. Pre-paid interest
4. Loan Processing fee
5. Underwriting fee
6. PMI
7. Application fees”

Read the full question here…

For more great answers from Impartial.co.uk, Unbiased.co.uk and Darren from Moneyfacts check their Answers profiles.

Once again, we would like to thank you for your contribution and congratulate you for the great value of the knowledge you have shared and continue to add to Answers.  

This time your contributions have been noticed by PC World who has included Yahoo! Answers in their list of the most useful and interesting sites on the net as one of their great how-to sites!

PC World acclaim Yahoo! Answers as “one of the best examples of community participation on the Net” and rate you all as “informed members of the community.”  This is something we have known for a long time and are pleased the rest of the world is coming to realise this too!

The full article is available here.

We hope you feel as proud as we do!

Late last month we offered the chance for the Answers community to win tickets to the most exciting superclub launch London has seen in quite some time, matter. One lucky winner went down to the two, yes two, inaugural nights. Here’s what happened next…

Answers in the area!

Thanks to Yahoo! Answers I managed to bag myself the hottest tickets in town last Friday and Saturday night. Simply by receiving a best answer in the music category I found myself with VIP tickets to the opening of London’s new super-club, matter. The brainchild of the people behind Fabric and situated just outside of the O2 Arena in Greenwich, matter has been the talk of the town for sometime before its doors opened!

I arrived shortly after 8pm for the live launch night on Friday. As is the case with many of London’s clubs the view from the queue outside didn’t give much away about the venue other than that we were entering a large extension to the already huge O2 Arena. Once inside though I was immediately impressed with the futuristic yet minimal décor (simple concrete pillars and ramps) and wide open spaces with lots of places to sit and make yourself comfortable around the fringes. The club is set over three levels: VIP’s at the top, a long bar area on the first floor and the main dance area/ stage on the ground floor. The subtle lighting adds to the futuristic feel of the club.

A launch of two halves…

The lineup for each night was equally complementary for the status of this new concrete scenester heaven. First up were Iglu and Hartly who managed to whip the crowd into a frenzy with their obligatory shirtless synth-punk/ hiphop crossover singalongs. Next were current indie/electro darlings Late of the Pier who added a further bounce to the scenester step. By the time they played crowd pleaser ‘Bathroom Gurgle’ the dancefloor was packed with flailing bodies. Last up and rounding off the night were the Trip Hop kings UNKLE who played a storming live set, getting back to doing what they do best: filling the floor with jumping bodies. Great work for the first night!

The next evening was the club launch night and from 10pm to 7am my fellow revellers and I were treated to some of the best DJs in clubland. The legend that is Carl Cox was the main event in the main room with Yousef in strong support. Room two was also open for this nights glamorous crowd featuring Krissy Sell Out in fine form on headlining duties. The main pull of the night for me however was the amazing lazer display in the main room. The fabric guys have certainly brought their visual wizardry south of the river in that department!

All-in-all if you’re looking for chic clubbing with a non-pretentious crowd in the capital then Matter is the place to be. Thanks to Yahoo! Answers for the experience… and the hangover!

– Yahoo! Answers’ user Christophe

When a band splits or simply stops performing live, it’s always a sad time for their fans. Although some group like The Beatles are only living on in our hearts now, others like The Police, The Sex Pistols or Smashing Pumpkins have returned to reunite for one-off concerts or new tunes production.

So would you like to win tickets to see Abba: The Show live? Read on…

When asked which band you’d love to see reunited, you guys have no shortage of suggestions, so we thought reunions might be of interest to you! But then how do you do it when original team members are no longer with us or simply do not want to reform? Well, for some people, music is what matters: the tunes can be played by a new lineup in the spirit of the band.

Just what is it about Abba that makes their music so popular 25 years after they stopped producing new songs? Angel2000 has an answer…

 ”Their music was deceptively simple in construction. However, each song was recorded about 20 times and in a myriad of different styles like pop, tango, disco, ballad, fast tempo, slow tempo etc… to choose the ‘best’ one before it was released. They also used novel approaches to recording the vocals that weren’t really known about back then.” Read more>

With all this enthusiasm about, the good news for fans is Abba is being revived thanks to Abba The Show, a formation of four singers, collectively known as Waterloo, who look, dance, and sound the almost exactly the same as Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha and Frida. Add to this an exciting production which includes a full orchestra, musicians from Abba’s original 1970’s line-up, huge video screens and hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of lighting and you’ve got an amazing live performance, as if it was the ’70s again.

When we heard the show was going to tour the UK, we thought you might want to get involved. We have one pair of tickets to give away to go and see one of Abba The Show live concert performances at the location of your choice* (UK only).

How do win tickets? To enter the competition? Follow these simple steps:

• Go to the Entertainment & Music category
• Pick a question you are definitely the expert in and give an astounding and unique answer
• Send the link to your Best Answer to y_answrs_team_uk@yahoo.co.uk before midnight on Tuesday, 7th October 2008
• We’ll pick the best answer and inform them by email. The winner will then have the opporunity to choose one pair of tickets to see Abba The Show live in the UK (from the dates below).

Abba The Show UK 2008 dates

• Tues 14th Oct           Newcastle Metro Arena
• Weds 15th Oct            Sheffield Arena
• Fri 17th Oct            Aberdeen Arena
• Sat 18th Oct            Glasgow Clyde Auditorium
• Sun 19th Oct            Liverpool Echo Arena
• Tues 21st Oct        Wembley Arena
• Weds 22nd Oct        Brighton Centre
• Thurs 23rd Oct        Birmingham NIA

NB: Full terms and conditions are here.

• Emails are now sent to your contacts when you submit a question. When you receive an email about a new answer, the text properly describes the answer.
• We have significantly enhanced the breadth of the dictionary in the spell check function when asking and answering a question.

We are committed to fixing the outstanding bugs on Answers, as well as developing other new features, but in the meantime we wanted to share this news with you and thank you all for your patience while we addressed them.

Regards,

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

As the so-called British “summer” demonstrated, water is all around us. It’s a molecule few of us think twice about, it’s that mundane and every day. It’s just O and two H’s, right?

But water, for such a simple compound, has several interesting and ultimately massively influential properties. For example, you can’t squash it. If you could, there’d be no waves in the sea nor would puddles splash. The reason is fluids don’t compress well, as Jim H explains:

“Atoms or molecules in a gas are not bound to others and are widely separated and thus can be compressed. In water, the molecules are close together and the electric fields of the electrons make it difficult to compress… Water can be compressed, but not much and not easily. Given enough pressure, however, any matter can and will compress.” More>

Another unusual property of water is that for every given molecule when it gets colder it gets larger. This is odd as heat is vibration and usually as molecules get colder they vibrate less, so are able to get closer. Yet when water freezes is turns into (solid) ice, which is less dense that (liquid) water. Mr Jeffy321 explains why…

“The reason why water expands upon freezing is due to the intermolecular forces of attraction which exist between the water molecules, in particular, hydrogen bonding. As water freezes, the molecules begin to slow down.”

“As the molecules slow down they become less and less able to break free of these attractive forces and begin to align themselves in a position which takes the least energy. Due to the geometry of the water molecule, this least energy position forms a lattice that just happens to be larger than if the molecules were in the liquid state.” More>

So this explains why ice cubes float in your drink: they’re less dense than the water they’re sitting in. Another “phenomenon” water is associated with is the Coriolis effect, where water in different hemispheres goes down a sink in opposite directions (clockwise or anti-) in different hemispheres. The thing is, turns out it’s an urban myth. Nemesis explains:

“It has always been popular myth that water flows down the plug-hole in an opposite direction to what it would do if located in the opposite hemisphere. This myth even made it into the Simpsons (Bart vs Australia).

The truth is that the direction of flow is more likely to be influenced by more immediate factors e.g. the shape of the basin.” More>

So there you have it: it gets bigger when it gets cold, it causes puddles to splash and confuses Bart and Homer. And there’s yet more. For protecting fish from lightning and the meaning of life, see our links below…

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers

Five quick water questions:

• Why don’t fish get electrocuted when lightning hits the sea?
• What are properties of water that make life possible on earth?
• Can water temperature affect how streamlined an object in water is?
• Could water be compressed so you could get an entire sea into a matchbox?
• Why does salt water have a lower freezing point than pure water?

We all enjoy connecting and communicating with friends and peers. Answers empowers you to gain experiential knowledge from the community but while it’s great for research and problem solving, sometimes when the urge to connect, chat or canvas opinion strikes, other parts of Yahoo! are a far better fit.

First there is Yahoo! Mail, which we’re all familiar with. If a person has turned on his communication settings on Answers, then you can also contact him by email. Messenger is also a great tool to connect live with your friends 24/7. There’s also Yahoo! Groups, with thousands of subject areas to choose from.

If you’re into polling there is also another Yahoo! destination site you might want to try. Bix.com is a place to “create, enter, and judge.” You’ll find contests for anything from top 10 cutest dogs to all time greatest Superhero.

The next time you want to find out what is the best sand structure or the most annoying celebrity why not check out Bix.com for yourself and put your creative skills to the test in a friendly face-off. You could even enter a sponsored contest and win prizes!

Starting today and running over the next two months or so, we’re going to be testing an exciting new feature on the UK & Ireland Answers homepage for a lucky few of you. We wanted to let you know, just in case you’d noticed some slight changes.

So who are the “lucky few?”  If you’re a UK & Ireland Answers user who’s Level 2 or above and are signed-in, you might see something different with the questions you see on the Homepage.

Don’t worry, it’s nothing drastic: you should just see the order, that some of the questions on the Homepage appear, slightly change. You might find the questions are more suited to your interests and areas of expertise, rather than those most recently posted.

We wanted to blog about this to allay any fears you might have of the new behaviour on the site and to ensure you were all aware of the feature. We hope you like it: if you see it and would like to send us some feedback, please do so to the official UK & Ireland Answers team account y_answrs_team_uk@yahoo.co.uk.

Many thanks!

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

What could be better than having them on Answers, just a couple of clicks away, answering your questions?

Why don’t you invite them to participate on Answers and join your network? It will take you just a minute and you’ll be sure all your friends, family and colleagues are there to answer your queries… and to have fun as well!

1. Log in to Answers
2. Click on My Profile
3. Click Invite contacts

4. Enter the details (name and email) of the person you want to invite. As you can see, you have room for 3 people, but you can repeat this process as many times as you want.

5. You can also modify the invite message, adding a more personal note.

6. If you want to browse the people from your address book, just click on “Find people on my Contact List”. You’ll see all the people you’ve added to your Yahoo! Address Book. Select all the contacts you want to invite.

7. When you finish, click Invite.

Enjoy!