Amazon launches Q&A website called AskVille

One of the most popular online stores in the world - Amazon - has finally launched its website related to questions & answers, which is pretty similar to Yahoo Answers and others. It is called AskVille, and while it was on beta mode since December 2006, it was only yesterday that they really launched the service so that everyone can use it.

So, what are the hot points and features available at AskVille?

• Users can gain points by participating with questions and answers, and afterwards those points are converted to Quest Gold. This kind of gold can be used at QuestVille, which is a soon-to-be-launched website by Amazon during 2008.
• In other services, users can only post answers in the form of text. At AskVille, they can use widgets that are suppose to make the quality of the answers increase.

  There are 3 main widgets: video, which lets you add content from YouTube and other video sites; Google Maps, so you can point out a specific location when providing an answer; and the most important widget is Amazon Products, which is probably one of the main reasons why AskVille was created. Users can simply add an Amazon product to their answer, a book, CD, or any other product.

Google adds new functions to GoogleChat

On the internet world of the giant Google, their chat service has seen a couple of new features, more specifically:

• Group Chat - name says it all
• New Smileys - there are 2 new types of emoticons - shaped as a square, or as a balloon.

Guest post by Tiago of Gadgetizer