Recently there were some news about Eduardo Manchón, the co-founder of Panoramio, leaving Google and the Panoramio team. After four and a half year he wants to address to his new task at Askaro. He stated in this blog post at Panaramio:
Panoramio is the coolest thing I have ever done. I went through the greatest adventure of my life with this project. However for some reasons I can’t really explain I like changes and challenges, so it is time to move on to a new project.
I’d like to make a short introduction about Askaro and give you an idea what it is all about:
What is it?
The founders call Askaro a hyperlocal site to exchange information where it matters the most: our neighborhoods, our places or work, etc. It can be used to ask a question which is realted to a specifc area of place. People who live there or live near by, are locale experts and can simply answer your question. Basically it is a system about georeferenced questions and answers.
There are many possibilities to use this site, for example as tourist guid, resteraut review site or event planner. The founder see the site as experiments and are looking forward for feedback to improve the service and make it user driven.
The name “Askaro” comes from “Ask around”.
How does Askaro work?
Askaro combines geolocation, question and answer model and reputation, as basis of its inner workings. Questions are asked, or placed, in a specific area of a city, in order to reach out to the people who live or intimately know the area and are capable of answering them. An analogy would be to stick a flyer at your local grocery store to reach out only to passersby, or people in your neighborhood.
Answers can be voted once as “Good” or “Bad” by anyone, which have the effect of moving them up or down.The question’s author can also designate a specific answer as the “Best answer” if he or she considers it the most useful or appropriate one. Best answers turn green and move to the top.
The number of votes and the answers marked as “best answer” are used to calculate the reputation score of a person, which is a measure of how valuable is someone’s contribution and how useful and trustworthy are his answers. The users with the best reputation in a city can be found in the “Local Heroes” page.
Technology used
Askaro server side code is written in python, and runs in the app engine, google’s cloud computing offering. Client side javascript relies on jquery.
(information from askaro “about” page)
