Facebook has redesigned its Questions feature, in what seems to be an admission that the original version wasn’t getting much traction. The new version launched today, and will gradually be introduced to all users over the next few months. The original feature tried to connect people by letting them ask questions with any Facebook user — even a complete stranger — who shared an interest in the topic. The redesign takes the complete opposite approach and is aimed at making it easy for friends to answer questions. The move seems designed in part to set the Facebook feature apart from a number of popular Q&A services such as Quora.

The original version of Questions was rolled out to a small group of users last year — Facebook project manager Adrian Graham wouldn’t say exactly how many, but said that it was a fairly small percentage of the social network’s user base. Those beta testers will be the first to get the upgrade, although others will be able to opt-in to the new version through the Facebook Questions page, and anyone who answers a question posted by a friend will also be invited to join the new service.

Graham said that when Questions first launched, the focus was “on connecting you to people you didn’t know” who might share an interest in the topic of the question. So if you asked about hotels in San Francisco, the site would show the question to users who had expressed an interest in that by including travel or hotels or San Francisco on their profiles, favorites and fan pages. That made it seem pretty similar to what was being offered by sites like Quora — which was founded by former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo — and, at one point, there appeared to be some bad blood between the two sites.

Graham says the new version of Questions takes “the complete opposite” approach, and tries to make it easy for friends to answer questions from other friends, regardless of whether they have already expressed an interest in that topic. In addition to posting a simple answer, Facebook shows what other people in a person’s social network have answered, and allows users to simply pick one of those responses and add their vote to it.

The new version of Questions is also designed to take advantage of the viral nature of the giant social network by making it easier for users to share questions and answers with their social graph — something that the original iteration didn’t do, Graham admitted. “This version is much more similar to the way questions commonly get answered,” he said. “You ask a friend and then they say ‘Oh, I know someone who knows the answer to that’ and they pass it on.” There’s also a poll-style function that lets you ask a question and provide some sample answers for people to vote on.

The changes appear to be designed in part to set Facebook’s feature apart from Quora, but also from Twitter — which many people use as a source of answers to common questions about where to eat or what to buy. “There are lots of places on the Internet where you can get answers from people you don’t know,” said Graham, “but there aren’t many places where you can quickly get answers from your friends.”

If anything, the changes make it obvious that the focus of the original version of Questions was a mistake, because it didn’t take advantage of the single most powerful thing that Facebook has going for it: an intimate connection to your entire social graph.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Colin Kinner

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

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To all of you WoW players out there, we have something in store for you. This article is about The Brian Kopp Guide that will help you level up. World of Warcraft, or WoW, now includes another expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King. Players now have the opportunity to experience game play from levels 1 to 80 with new content, new quests and new raids available. The expansion introduces a new class – the fearsome Death Knight.

The author of the Brian Kopp Guide, Brian Kopp has updated his popular leveling guide to incorporate this new content and make your leveling process much easier. Now you can reach the new levels fast and experience the newest content WoW has to offer. With this expert advice, gaining levels will no longer be a grind!

The Alliance Wrath of the Lich King leveling guide (1-80) also offers a map add-on for use in game. This is an invaluable resource for leveling your WoW character even faster. With this tool reaching new levels couldn’t be easier to help you get the level you want!

Brian is a very experienced World of Warcraft player who was involved in the beta release of Wrath of the Lich King. With this he has more hours of game play under his belt and is extremely well qualified and experienced in the game.

The leveling guide comes from one of WOTLK’s beta-testers and a very experienced World of Warcraft player. Brian’s guide lets you benefit from his experience and many hours of play to really capitalize on your game play experience.

All areas of leveling in Warcraft are considered in this e-book and it is presented in a simple and easy to use manner. Thottbot need no longer be your go-to resource for information on the game, everything you need to know is included in the guide, saving you time thumbing through web pages.

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Cast your memory back to late March of this year and you may recall news of an on-demand, internet-based gaming service called OnLive (here’s the original post). Think of it like GameTap (remember GameTap?) except that nothing actually gets installed on your computer. All the games can apparently be streamed at up to 720p resolution over a 5Mbps connection, or standard definition over a 1.5Mbps connection.

Well the service has entered the public beta phase. I just signed up now so I’ll have to wait patiently, but it’ll roll out to anyone who had signed up a long, long time ago when the program was first announced. According to a company blog post:

“When you sign up for OnLive Beta, you tell us some general information about your ISP, your computer configuration and your location. We use this information to organize Beta testers into test groups so that our engineering team can focus at different times on testing different situations. If you are a potential fit for a particular test group, we’ll send you an invitation email, asking you to run a detailed Performance Test on your network connection and your computer configuration. The results of the Performance Test will then feed back up to OnLive, and if you are a fit for a test group at some point during Beta, we’ll let you install the OnLive plug-in into your browser. Then, we’ll ask you to spend some time playing…um, I mean…testing games OnLive.”

So it looks like it’ll be browser-based at first, but remember that there will eventually be this hardware controller and magic streaming box, called the MicroConsole, too. It’ll have HDMI output and be used with your TV, taking your computer out of the equation.

OnLive Opens the Beta Program [OnLive Blog via Kotaku]

Advanced Video Communications may have a winner on its hands with the internet-connected LiveLine video camera. Simple setup, a low $10-per-month access fee, and a fairly straightforward user experience make the LiveLine worth a closer look.

Early beta testers got a free camera, which AVC claims to be a $299 value. And while the company has sold out of all its initial freebies, it’s currently restocking its inventory. The actual selling price of the system once it’s out of beta will likely dictate the overall popularity of the product.

If the actual camera itself costs $299 on top of a $10 monthly service fee, it’s not going to do well. There are plenty of IP cameras with similar features available for well under $300 that don’t carry monthly charges. So let’s keep in mind that this thing hasn’t really been priced yet. If it stays at “free camera plus $10 per month,” it’ll be compelling.

As for features, the camera uses a wired or wireless internet connection and the pan, tilt, and zoom functions can be controlled remotely through most web browsers. The system can also be set up to record video files any time it senses motion. Those files are then made available with time and date stamps and playable inside your browser (they’re Flash video files).

Setup is pretty easy. You have to first connect the camera to your router with an Ethernet cable. Then you go on LiveLine’s website and enter the camera’s MAC address as part of your account setup. Once that’s done, you can type in your router’s wireless network name and from that point on, the camera will use its built-in wireless antenna.

As far as controlling the camera remotely, take this test account for a spin. It’ll give you a good idea of what to expect.  The interface is pretty ho hum right now and the overall motion and video quality is a bit choppy, but it gets the job done. There are other relatively inexpensive IP cameras on the market, however, that promise 30 frames-per-second video. This one does not do fluid video — at least it didn’t in my tests, and I have a Comcastic 30Mbps down/7Mbps up internet connection.

Here’s an actual still from the camera. The resolution is only 320×240.

And here’s a clip of actual footage (3MB AVI) to give you an idea of the framerate and whatnot.

Apparently the camera’s capable of recording audio, but I was never able to hear any during my testing. Everything’s still in beta, though, so that functionality may not be enabled yet.

AVC also touts the ability to view your camera from your phone’s mobile web browser. You lose all of the camera controls and access to recorded clips, though. Right now it’s little more than a static still image with a refresh link underneath it. That’s fine for older phones, but it’d be nice to see a more robust offering for newer mobile browsers.

Overall, it’s a pretty solid effort from AVC so far, provided they keep the price low. If the camera stays at free or maybe $50 plus the $10 monthly fee, it’d be a much easier purchase for most people to justify.

It might also be a good idea for AVC to drop the monthly fee altogether. There’s a link on the company’s site for advertisers, which leads me to believe the camera pages may someday contain ads. In that case, AVC might consider trying to make a few bucks off of camera sales while keeping the web access free.

Product Page: LiveLine.net

By Andrew Liszewski

If you thought you had problems storing all the RAW files from your digital SLR camera, imagine having to deal with the stream of data coming from a digital motion picture camera capturing footage at 24 frames per second or higher. That’s why researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany have developed the FlashBox which docks to a digital film camera, like the ARRI D21 or the Sony F35, and stores up to 500GB of footage on a couple of swappable SSDs.

At just 5.1 x 3.1 x 2.8 inches in size and 3.3 pounds the FlashBox is remarkably light and compact, but it can capture and store Bayer raw sensor data in resolutions up to 2048×1000 pixels, or compressed using the JPEG2000 codec. A built-in LCD also allows the footage to be played back as soon as it’s captured, and a “multi-level prompting process” ensures recorded scenes don’t get accidentally overwritten which is one of the few times when nagging software is a definite plus.

The FlashBox will be available to select beta testers sometime in the Spring of 2010, but a prototype will be exhibited at the IBC (International Broadcast Convention) show in Amsterdam starting on September 11.

[ Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft - The little giant of storage for the big screen ]

If you’re anything like me whenever you pop up from the subway or metro you’re always lost. No matter where I am I can simply stick my head up like a grotesque and hairless badger and find myself in a brave new world, completely unsure of next steps.

Luckily, if you live in New York you can use the AcrossAir Nearest Subway App for the iPhone 3GS. This app overlays nearest subway stops on the live image in front of you. That’s right: this is a HUD for straphangers and it works amazingly.

You can hold the iPhone flat to see arrows pointing you to various subway stops or hold it up to see signs and distances for nearby stations.

The app isn’t available yet, sadly, but they’re working on versions for London and Barcelona and are searching for beta testers for other cities. Presumably this works best on the iPhone 3GS. This reminds me of… well, I’ll just let Charlie Sorrel say it:

Oh, and I almost forgot the obligatory mention of Minority Report. There. Done.

via TheCharlieSorrelWebsite