Yahoo! India Answers blog

You could call it one of the most colourful festivals from the South of India. And the most fun. It certainly is the biggest festival in the state of Kerala.

Onam marks the homecoming of the legendary King Mahabali beloved of all his subjects.

In pre-historic times, it is said that Mahabali was such an excellent ruler that the Gods in the Indian pantheon particularly King Indra felt insecure about his rising popularity and prosperity. The Gods begged Lord Vishnu to kill Mahabali who appeared in his Brahmin dwarf  (the Vamana) avatar and begged for alms from this great king and tricked him to the underworld.

Photo courtesy: Shantih on Flickr.

But the Lord Vishnu also blessed Mahabali as he was one of Vishnu’s greatest devotees. Hence Mahabali is allowed to visit his people in Kerala on an annual basis.

The festival lasts for ten days.

Characteristic Onam celebrations include the traditional pookolams (intricate flower carpets), the Onam sadya (an elaborate banquet lunch), Vallamkali (snake boat races) and kaikottikkali (dances that women of the house-hold indulge in) during the ten day festival.

Photo courtesy: George Augustin e on Flickr.

Photo courtesy: Arun Kumar Sinha on Flickr.

What makes this festival truly unique is how it brings about secular sentiments within the state. Although the festival of Onam originated as a Hindu festival, all communities in Kerala including Muslims and Christians celebrate Onam with equal fervour.

Needless to say, we couldn’t let this festival pass by without any comment. I’m sure most Indians have a favourite memory associated with this festival.

What is your most favourite Onam memory?

Answer us or leave us a comment here.

Photo courtesy: Raj_nair81 on Flickr

And of course, Happy Onam!

Bhumika Anand

- Community Manager

To continue improving your Yahoo! Answers experience we are introducing a few small changes this week…

Changing time to choose a Best Answer

Based on your feedback to be able to resolve a question quicker, we have now reduced the wait time to choose a best answer from 4 hours to 1 hour.  If you now receive multiple responses within an hour you can select one of those as your Best Answer, or choose to put the question to vote at this earlier stage.

The full lifecycle of a question won’t change – questions will still be open for 4 days and up to maximum of 8 days if you extend the expiration.  This change gives you the option to resolve earlier or put to vote earlier.   If you take no action to resolve or extend the question, the question will automatically go to vote for the Best Answer.

Optional Preview screen when answering questions

Many of you have commented that to you’d prefer an answering experience without having to see your response on the Preview page first.

If you are signed-in with your Answers account and have answered at least one question before then when submitting your answer you can choose to Submit your response immediately without going to the Preview page first.  We’ve kept the Preview page too, so you can still see how your response will look before publishing it.

What makes Yahoo! Answers unique is the avid involvement of the community it is YOU that provides the content so continue to ask, answer and vote!

Have something to say about the changes, leave us a comment.

It’s August and whether you are planning a holiday to some great, exotic locale or are just back from one, Answers is the place to celebrate your vacation! This August we are doing a special initiative in the Travel category where we invite you to share your fondest memories of landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, and skyscapes through your travel stories and anecdotes.

Spread over four weeks, with each week catering to one particular theme, this initiative will showcase the best holiday destinations and the most awesome travel stories that come from you! So start working on that travelogue of yours and include details like places to stay, things to see, best shopping deals and the like. And don’t forget to tell us why it is among your favourite holiday destinations! We’ll be awarding 50 bonus points for the best story each week.

Not only that, we invite you to share your favourite photograph of the vacation on one of these Flickr groups:

-         Landscape group  http://www.flickr.com/groups/100naturallandscapes/

-          Cityscape group  http://www.flickr.com/groups/26328425@N00/

-          Seascape group  http://www.flickr.com/groups/seascape/

-          Skyscape group http://www.flickr.com/groups/98509261@N00/

Photographs courtesy Anbujawahar

Once you post your picture there, remember to leave us a comment with the Flickr link on the blog, or add the link in your answer. At the end of four weeks, your story and photograph could be featured on our blog or as part of an exclusive article on Yahoo!

And here are 5 steps to ensure your Flickr photo makes it to the contest:

1. Log in to http://www.flickr.com/
2. Sign up for Flickr with your Yahoo! id if you don’t have a Flickr account already
3. Join the Groups (whose links are mentioned above)
4. Upload your Travel photos there
5. Copy the link of your photo and use that in your answer!

This week’s question is about dreamy landscapes. Meadows full of flowers and green grass, a winding river, a roaring waterfall, awe-inspiring mountains, or endless deserts – what landscape inspired you the most and made for an unforgettable holiday? What was your most picturesque and idyllic holiday on land?

Share your story and get featured on Yahoo!

Since we first made changes to the Search experience on Answers in March we have received extensive 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!

Starting today, 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<http://feedback.help.yahoo.com/feedback.php?.src=ANSWERS&.done=http://answers.yahoo.com>” on the Forum or leave your comments here, on the blog.

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!

(Photo Courtesy: dbdbrobot/Francis on Flickr)

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 in Mexico or Germany? 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 y_answrs_india@yahoo.co.in

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:

1. • 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 Terms Of Service.  We reserve the right to translate and make editorial changes to your blog if selected.

We look forward to hearing from you – y_answrs_india@yahoo.co.in

The good thing about being part of a large community like Answers is that you can always find an answer to any problem that may vex you.

For us, in India, the latest problem is that of summer. The sun is shining upon us mercilessly. Every day is hotter than the previous one and there’s no rain in sight. So we decided to speak to the community and get Answerers to tell us what they eat and what they wear to beat the heat in summer.

Summer recipes help you stay fit and cool. Be it a fruit-salad, a glass of cool fruit or vegetable juice, or just a casserole of some sort – we are sure the recipes here will let you stay as cool as a cucumber this summer! Diet tips like drinking lots of water, eating many fresh fruits and avoiding cola and fatty food, is another easy way to beat the heat this summer. You got any diet tip of your own? What is your diet tip to beat the heat this summer?

Beating the heat is also a matter of wearing the right clothes and carrying the right accessories. But being fashionable in summer is a difficult task. What do you wear and how do you dress so you stay trendy but still keep cool? What accessories do you use? Answerers come to the rescue again. What’s your advice? Share it with us. How can we stay trendy and still be cool this summer?

Would you like to add to these tips? Answer away or simply leave us a comment.

And of course, stay cool!
Bhumika Anand
Community Manager

Following our previous blog post “March food celebration on Answers!”, our experts in the Food & Drink category revealed their talent and best recipes on our open questions.

Before to reveal our Menu and the winners, we want to thank you all for your participation and great answers posted during the last week. You’ve been really respectful of the community guidelines but in the same time creative with original recipes. It was a real pleasure to discover your ideas.

But let’s check right now who are our winners and the recipes they manage to share with us.

STARTER [BEST ANSWER and other good answers selected by the CM]

Best Answer: Baby Potato Fry from Rashmee
First Good Answer: Manchow soup and corn cheese balls from KPJ
Second Good Answer: Sweetcorn Soup from Asari
Third Good Answer: Goat’s cheese salad with jamon, persimon and mint from ramashka_ramesh

MAIN COURSE [BEST ANSWER and other good answers selected by the CM]
Best Answer: Chicken Tetrazzini and Indian Chicken with Yogurt Sauce from The One
First Good Answer: Indian Coconut Rice from Twinkle S
Second Good Answer: Tripe with onions, lemon and parsley from Dune
Third Good Answer: Easy Chicken and Rice Casserole from Courtney

DESSERT [BEST ANSWER and other good answers selected by the CM]
Best Answer: Apple Dumpling from Nana
First Good Answer: Fruit Crumble from Dune
Second Good Answer: Strawberry Pretzel and Surprise Meringues from Smaira J
Third Good Answer: Banana Chocolate Sauce Ice-cream from Rashmee

One more time, we want to congratulate our head-cooks on this operation:

The best answers will receive 200 extra points for their appetizing recipes whereas the other participants will get 100 points for their good answers. Congratulations, Answerers.

Remember that the Food & Drink category is full of great recipes from the community. We’re pretty sure you’ll able to find what you’re looking for in the existing questions or discover new culinary experience as we did during this operation. Enjoy the many recipes on Food & Drink. It’s not for nothing Indians are accused of being foodies!

And what is your favourite starter, main course or dessert? Do you know how to cook it? Do share your favourite recipes in this blog post or ask a question about it.

Again, many thanks for all your contributions! And now of course, bon appetite!

- Bhumika Anand
Community Manager

Over the past few weeks we’ve made several exciting new changes to the overall Answers experience including changes to the look and feel of the site, as well as a new search experience for Yahoo! Answers.

While these changes have taken place, many of you have had questions about where we have relocated your favorite features, and what changes lie ahead. Below you’ll find some of the most commonly asked questions and their answers.

Q: Previously, I could click on “My Profile” to go straight to my profile page. This link is gone—how do I get to this page now?

A: To easily access your profile page, you can either click on your name next to the “Hello” message, or, click on the “My Activity” tab to jump straight to your profile.

Q: Below my name there’s now an “invite your friends” link—what does this do?”

A: Clicking on the “Invite your friends” link allows you to easily invite any of your friends to join you on Yahoo! Answers. From this page, you can easily enter in the email addresses of your family and friend and encourage them to join you on Answers—that way if you’ve recently asked a question on Answers and think your Aunt Sally may know the Answer but know she’s not on Answers, you can easily get her on board, and, get her to answer your question!

Please note that if you’re a Level 1 member, instead of seeing “invite your friends” you’ll instead see a link reading, “What are points and levels?,” encouraging you to learn more about Answers. For members who are level 2 and higher, you’ll be seeing this link added in under the “About” tab in the near future.

Q: How do I see my suggested questions?

A: If you have suggested questions, they’ll show up on your homepage as they did before. Currently, we don’t have a message in place that tells you “there are no suggested questions available at this time” but we’re looking to add this back in the near future.

Q: How do I see my recent activity details?

A: To see your recent activity details, just click on the “My Activity” tab—from here, you can see your activity summary, your activity details, as well as your questions, answers, starred questions and your watchlist.

Also from this page, you can easily click on the “Edit My Preferences” link to edit the content found within your Answers profile, or, if you’re elsewhere on the Answers site, just hover back on the “My Activity” tab and click on the “Edit My Preferences” link to be taken to the same edit screen.

Q: Now that you’ve changed the look and feel of Answers, what’s next?

A: We always have a few tricks up our sleeve, so be on the lookout for new things heading your way. In the meantime, we still love hearing your thoughts about the new homepage and the changes to search, so please keep the constructive feedback coming!

If you have additional “how-to” questions about the new homepage or search, or, just want to tell us what you think, please leave a comment below!