Tired of Sex? Read a Good Book

Algorithms are all very nice, but you can’t tell them what you don’t like and they don’t expand your horizons. Worst of all, they have no clue what you feel like reading right now. I’ve confused Amazon to the point of it’s being useless because I buy all kinds of books, some of them for work, pleasure, friends, some of them for my friends kids. If anyone even thinks that I should spend time teaching Amazon what I like then let me say that you haven’t tried it or you have too much time on your hands.

Helping You Find the Right Book at the Right Time

The Stranger has one of the best book editors around. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of books. Here’s what you do: tell him what you feel like reading next, tell him what you like and what you dislike and tell him if you want to read something in a different genre or format. He recommended I read a graphic novel that was in the style of the things I liked. It was great.

Tired of Sex?

Most “advice columns” are focused on manners, relationships and sex. At last there’s one that focuses on more intellectual pursuits. Reading through his past recommendations is a treat in itself, no need to even ask a question, you’ll get all kinds of ideas of what to read. And if you’re not tired of sex, then go read Savage Love. You won’t have to go far, it’s in the same place.

Veni, Vidi, (Ad)Vici

We’ve all got problems. Some of us pay shrinks to work them out. If you can’t afford that you can always bore your friends over a beer or cocktail. Worst case, the cocktail will help. But for many people the best solution is the anonymous interaction with an expert.

Relationships Suck

It won’t come as a shock that relationship advice is what most people are craving from advice columnists. Why? Because that’s the stuff that’s hardest to talk about. You want to be able to spill your guts, make yourself look stupid, reveal your innermost secrets and if all else fails blame others.

For some outrageous sum you could build up that kind of trust in your shrink. Maybe. But instead you can just write a letter or email to your favorite sex/love/relationship columnist and get the clear cut answer in a few paragraphs. You can be anonymous, so that’s easy. And it’s free! It’s probably not the equivalent of 5 years of analysis, but hey, who want to end up like Woody Allen?

Veni, Vidi… nihil, nuttin’, nada

I came. I saw. What the heck? I had to email someone, fill out some form, or god forbid write a letter with some object that was probably in use in ancient Egypt. Then I had to send it by pony express and check the paper every day? You have got to be kidding me. That thing needs fixing.

Veni, Vidi… Advici (that’s Latin for Kick-ass Advice)

What to do?

First, obviously put it online.

Second, is email really the state of the art? Come on. Let people just ask a question, like they would in any Q&A.

Third, instead of picking questions out of a hat, why not let the other people vote on the one they most want answered? Stop the guessing game, give the audience what it wants.

Fourth, you can’t answer all the questions. So let the readers pitch in and give it their best shot. Worst case it’s bad advice. But if experience is any guide, someone will have had and resolved that very problem. The sum of the readers is better than any single advice columnist.

Advice is For-Profit

Sure you want to help people. That’s great. So do shrinks and they get paid. Why shouldn’t you? Advice has always been a for-profit business. You even have to pay for the beer if it’s your friend.

So skip the email, the silly forms, the exclusivity of answers, the wizard hat for choosing the best question. Put it all out there. Let people ask, vote, answer, contribute, help. And hey, when someone’s question get answered why not send the the answer in an email?

Drive traffic to your site. Yes, advice shouldn’t be a column in the 21st century, it should be a site. You could even invite guest experts with specialties outside of yours. More traffic. More content. And expert advice is good content. People even want to advertise on expert advice.

Beyond Relationships

Some people don’t want to talk about their relationships. These people are known as men. They want advice on how to fix their car, replace a plumbing fixture (when they get around to it), fix up their home theater so it looks and sounds like a real movie theater. And hey, they don’t want to screw up on valentines day, and they definitely want to know what to do if they forgot their anniversary, and they may have the odd sex question or two. So there’s room to cater to them in that domain too.

There’s a Forum For That

Before everyone starts sounding like an iPhone commercial. Yes, there is a forum for that. There are 100,000+ forums. Some of them are the best places to find out about anything. But let’s face it. When it comes to finding them and navigating your way through them. Good luck. That’s why we never get to that plumbing fixture.

The only thing older then the agony aunt (as the Brits call them) are forums. It’s time for an update. Come out of the dark. Welcome to the world of expert Q&A. The sun never sets, the SEO is beautiful, and you can even broadcast everything in Twitter and Facebook.

The problem is agonizing enough, don’t torture us with a bad UI.

The Mayor answering questions (pic)

Check out his answers here…

Check out his answers here…

Q&A and Politics: McGinn taking questions on Questionland…

Warning: This post may be offensive to Republicans. I risk being accused of encouraging the terrorists and being against freedom. Ironic given that my liberal friends would rather be shot then be grouped with me and conservatives would rather shoot me then include me. Oh, and just so I don’t leave anyone out, I consider most people who call themselves Libertarians to be Republicans who were embarrassed by that label post-Bush II.

democracy: “I vill be bahk”

There was a day when democrat (small ‘d’) was used in contrast to aristocrat. Eventually that word went out of style to be replaced by Democratic (big ‘D’), the party in opposition to the Republicans. The idea of democracy seems to have gone out of style along with the word.

The good news is that it’s making a come-back in form and function. Bush II started using ‘democracy’ to represent the role of the US in exporting freedom to countries like Iraq. In Bush’s eloquent way it sounded pretty much like it did in the hands of the East German DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, a Soviet puppet regime).

Recently it seems like democracy may be undergoing a true revival. There is the scary side of it in the form of gun toting protesters at health care rallies (say what?) and “tea party” people (not sure what they want). There is also the encouraging side of it: Obama showing up at a meeting of Republican and taking questions and televised debates where the real people get to ask questions via YouTube ( though “curated” by the media).

Mayor McGinn: A Democrat and a democrat.

The new Mayor of Seattle, Mike McGinn, was a populist candidate. He was elected by the little guys and their small donations to his campaign. He went to all the town hall meetings. He appeared on The Stranger as a candidate and took questions directly from the people with no meddling or curating

.

Now he’s Mayor and he’s coming back to The Stranger to take questions on his performance to-date. There are 46 questions so far. He won’t get to all of them, but based on his previous performance he’ll get to a lot of them. More importantly he’ll go on the record and be held to his answers.

Q&A Does Not a Democracy Make

A Q&A with the people will not make a true democracy, but it’s a start, and these things have to start somewhere. McGinn is a true democrat, he’s willing and wants to talk to the people. Go hold up your end, ask him a question, comment on his answers and vote your approval or disapproval of his approach.

Amazon FAIL, Match Book FTW

Book Recommendations

You know the books you love. Don’t you wish you had another one of those? One of those books you savor and just can’t wait to get back to. They are a rare find despite, or perhaps because of,  the zillions of books in the world. Amazon pioneered book recommendations on a large scale, and it’s really not that bad (damned with faint praise). But it just doesn’t do the trick.

People are Plasma Bags of Contradictions

Some of my favorite things to read are true stories of submarine patrols, short poetry, Raymond Chandler, mysteries that take place in Nordic countries. I’d like more of these, but also I’d like to branch out bit. Amazon is stumped by this. Throw in the fact that I buy children’s books for friends, Google Analytics and that ilk for work, and toy helicopters for the fun of it; Amazon is understandably confused.

What Do All These Books Have in Common?

From looking at the list you, if you are well read, you might be able to discern that I like books that are relatively fast paced, have a definite plot but put a great emphasis on the mood and setting. Ideally they are clever and have a dry sense of humor. If you can’t figure it out, the good news is that I could just tell you. If you let me. Amazon doesn’t.

What’s the Right Recommendation?

The good news is that there are tons of “right” recommendations. The bad news is that Amazon couldn’t come close to suggesting something really new to me. If it did, it would be accidental. It can tell me other submarine books, it could tell me other Raymond Chandler books, at it’s best it could figure out the if I like Per Wahloo I’d probably also like Henning Mankell (I don’t). It’s helpful, but closed-minded.

The perfect recommendation, or one of them, would be: Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir Series. Why? Because it takes place in Germany in the years before and after the war. It is based mostly in Berlin, which is not lacking in mood. The main character is a detective in the spirit of Chandler. It’s not outside the box, but it combines everything inside. To get outside the box, you need a human who is so well read it almost defies the imagination.

Problem solved. Match Book: Books in your inbox.

Match Book is a relatively new offering of The Stranger. Paul Constant, the Book Editor, had worked in bookstores earlier in his career and one if his favorite things to do was recommend books to people. He is now doing that for people on Questionland. You tell him what you like, don’t like, and he’ll tell you what to read next. The cool thing is that you ask the question on Questionland and your answer is delivered via email.

He is prolific and fast. His knowledge of books in encyclopedic. At this point he’s answered about 100 requests typically within 1-24 hours of being asked. His answers are nothing short of brilliant. He can keep you in the genre you like, but will also help you explore entirely new categories.

An Augmented Paul Constant

Paul does not exist in a vacuum, his questions are asked and answered on Questionland in the context of The Stranger community. When Paul answers a question, others can comment and jump in with their own recommendations. These often turn out to be people who have similar predilections and have a lot to add.

Is Paul Constant Scalable?

Despite the fact that he won the local spring roll eating contest, he is probably not scalable in and of himself. But what about Match Book? Well, yes, of course it is. At the moment all you can do is search for books you like and you’ll potentially get an answer that fits. Once the content has built up, which at his current pace won’t take long, the next evolution will be a simple matching algorithm based on the book lists. You’ll just jump from list to list discovering new treasure.

Personally, I can’t wait. If you can’t wait, you don’t have to, just go ask him a question.

UPDATE:

You would have thought I’d have asked the book question before the post. But I asked it after. And I got the answer in my inbox this morning. So here’s what Paul suggested:

Real-time answers from doctors… for a price.

Q&A is, has been and will be, one of the main forms of communication on the Internet. I’ve been harping on this for a long time. Big surprise. I believe in what I do for a (meager) living. I was reading the New York Times this evening (Friday night) and there were two stories about novel approaches to Q&A: There was a story about Aardvark (yes, another one) and one that was new to new me.

It was a story about a new service in which “people” (I’ll come back to that) can text doctors questions and get back answers virtually immediately (for a doctor I “real-time” means within 24 hours). In fact they can text groups of doctors and get back a host of answers. Cool. Almost too good to be true. And yes, it is true, sort of. The company is, after all, called Truth On Call.

Think of the possibilities, people in under-developed countries with inadequate medical expertise can text the people at the center of the best health care system in the world (tongue in cheek) and get answers to problems that stump them. Doctors who have particularly perplexing cases can get consults. Patients can get help – right from their cell phone, while they are driving preferably. And (penny drops) pharma companies can do quick “surveys” to see the impact or potential for a drug, advertisement or adverse reaction.

So back to the “people” part. Who is this service designed for? Which people do they have in mind? Well, it costs $50 per question, not that bad really, but… well I’ll just take this paragraph right out of the NYT:

“The fees for asking questions can quickly add up. Texting 100 doctors with a 24-hour response time costs $5,000, covering the doctors’ $10 fees plus text-messaging fees and payment to Truth On Call.”

I think it’s safe to say that “people” still can’t just ask questions of doctors. Too bad. How much is Aardvark? Free. How much are the many Q&A sites catering to medical questions. It varies, but mostly, free. So when it comes to Truth On Call, I’m feeling a little sick.

Ask Dan Savage a question…

Dan Savage of Savage Love is answering questions on The Stranger. Go ask him a question or check out his answers. He’s the #1 sex, relationship, love advice columnist in the USA. Normally he answers questions on his syndicated Savage Love column, but today he’s taking all comers (no pun intended) at Questionland at The Stranger.

Update: Looks like he’s done answering, so you can read his answers. Enlightening and entertaining.

Or you can still ask The Mayor Of Seattle questions. He’ll be answering them on Feb 11th, but gets your questions in early so they can get votes.

Skip the media middleman…you interview the Mayor

Mike McGinn, the Mayor of Seattle, will be answering questions from The Stranger readers on Questionland. He’s done this before as a candidate and some of his answers have put him on the record on important issues such as the legalization of marijuana. He has stood by his answers.

People are already asking and voting on the best questions. It’s amazing how many he can answer in an hour. Last time he liked it so much he wanted to keep going. There’s nothing quite like the real voice of the people and the Mayor.

As usual, The Stranger continues to break new ground in the way media works and in redefining the role of the newspaper and it’s relationship to the community.

Q&A in Journalism

Having tooted our own horn in the last post, I thought should mention a couple of other interesting experiments in journalistic Q&A. Here are two interesting ones:

ReportingOn

ReportingOn helps journalists of all stripes find peers with experience dealing with a particular topic, story, or source. So, it’s a Q&A site by and for journalists. If you need help with a story then you can go ask other journalists. For example. here a question from the site: I am writing an article on “Gang initiation week” does it actually exist? (apparently its on the 21st) I would like some info on what gangs do it, what they usually do, etc.“. It has no answers yet.

ReportingOn still needs to attract a big enough audience to get their questions answered in a timely fashion and by the right people, but the concept is good and Ryan Sholin (founder of this site, works at Publish2 and highly experienced) will often answer questions which is great.

ExplainThis.org

ExplainThis is designed to get community questions and have them answered by journalists. Their criteria for questions is that they should be questions that can’t be answered by Google or Wikipedia or by asking someone you know. These should be tough questions that require the kind of skills that journalists have – research, original sources, distilling complex issues, etc.

It’s in its very early stages but eventually their (founded by Jay Rosen) idea is for this to be a source for journalists to discover the things people really want to know (by ranking etc) and then do the original journalism necessary to answer them. At the moment it is a work in progress (which they are very up-front about) and has all kinds of Q&A which doesn’t necessarily fit their final model.

The idea that journalists will have a more concrete sense of what people want to know, rather than trying to guess at it, is a really good idea. I think it would fit best inside an existing media company and they have stated that they might implement it that way.

Experiments

It’s great to see people going beyond opining and whining about the state of journalism and its dismal/hopeful future and really trying out new things. It’s not surprising that these experiments are coming from Ryan Sholin and Jay Rosen – they are two of the bright lights in what often seems like a smoggy sky.

If you know of other ones, please let me know.

Expert Q&A – Is It The New Blog?

For those of you who want to cut to the chase, here is an article in The Stranger which incorporates journalism, an expert source and Q&A. The result is a new kind of journalism where the audience/membership gets to interact with the source directly (no media middleman) and get the information that they personally want, or they can ask the journalist questions too. The result is a good article and a kind of expert blog on the subject (attached to the experts profile). Go have a look (scroll to the bottom of the article for Q&A).

Blogging vs. Q&A: The Rant

Blogging is a discipline. It takes time and effort and practice. It’s the kind of thing that many people with expertise in a given area would like to do (hence it’s success) but for most it’s just not realistic to build it into their day.

The biggest problem with blogging, for many of us, is that you need to anticipate what kind of information your readers would be interested in. I know, some of you are thinking that that is only true for crass marketers who are trying to get attention for themselves, their products or their services. True, pure-hearted blogging  is just expressing what your thoughts and interests are. Mea culpa a bit on that score, but BS. Writers want to be read and so they need to understand their audience/membership.

Q&A may well be a great solution (mea culpa, again) because one thing that experts are good at is answering questions. They even like it! Because they get to help people, share their knowledge and (yes) establish a reputation. Questions take away the guesswork of what people want to know.

But the interesting outcome of answering a lot of questions on your subject of expertise and aggregating them in your profile is that it becomes a sort of Blog where each answer is effectively a post. Unlike blogging, their is no guesswork and much less discipline – because it is a responsive “blog” rather than a “soapbox”.

The idea has a long way to go but it’s nice to see it starting to happen in the world of journalism. The Stranger is a great innovator and they may well have invented a new model: a model that is  community-oriented, involves professional journalism, expert contributions, community contributions and is of exceptional quality. A bit of a holy grail, especially since it is so scalable.