Q&A ... Who will lead?

More and more ink is being spilled these days on the war over who will ultimately control Q&A online. This week, it was reported that Amazon is beefing up its service, Askville in an attempt to compete with the many competitors, including Answers.com, reports an AP story.

Another battle brewed online after ABC added a (sic) to a quote referring to the afterlife.

"You were one of my best friends and I'll never forget you. All my prayers go to your family and I'll see you again." (sic)

Conservative media watchdog, NewsBusters first defined ‘sic’ by calling upon Answers.com and then went on to blast the network for implying that religious belief is so erroneous that it warrant a ‘sic’ label. Bloggers helped fan the fire, until an ABC News executive later stated that the ‘sic’ referred to a misspelling of “I’ll” (ill) in the original post.

Why does winter make us crave comfort foods? Even though it’s a balmy 60 degrees in New York, a reporter in Vermont was waxing poetic about her morning bowl of oatmeal. While some may not savor a steaming bowl of oats, there are plenty of people starting their day with a bowl of cereal — which according to Answers.com is the third most popular supermarket item after carbonated beverages and bread.

Board member Ed Sims was in the news this week in one of those start-of-year articles that predicts what’s in store for 2007. This particular story from Palto Alto Daily News focused on the transformation TV Advertisers will make in order to reach their audiences in the age of TiVo. Sims credentials as an authority on this topic included being a venture capitalist, a blogger and a board member of Answers.com.

Speaking of start-of-year articles, there are also the end-of-year articles that pop up ‘round this time. Answers.com’s released its own “2006 From A to Z” topic page, which had at least one blogger, ResourceShelf, link to it.

Elsewhere in the blog-o-sphere at the start of this year, a pet enthusiast, Scatchings-and-Sniffings was sharing his 2007 New Year Resolution: to do more research on obscure breeds. Out of the gate, one of the first sites he stumbled across while doing due diligence on the Afghan breed was Answers.com, which told him the dog is one of the 14 ancient breeds.

blufr

This week, a video showed up on You Tube to disprove the validity of blufs on blufr. By Friday afternoon, the video had been seen by 2,225 on YouTube, and was found linked to an NYC comedy blog called The Apiary. The post on Apiary didn’t go unnoticed. Another blog, Mo! took the opportunity to sound off about the pros and cons of YouTube vs. stand-up when it comes to “alternative comedy.”