Questional.com - Where were these guys when I was 16??!!!

The Internet continues to amaze me and yet at the same time, it keeps evolving in ways that address our perceived needs.

I remember vividly my teenage years, wanting to know so many things, and being so frustrated by the lack of a resource. From simple debates with friends and family as to whether the actor in the movie we’d just watched was the same actor we’d known from a TV show years earlier. There was just no way to solve the debates. No library resource could help. I was perceiving the NEED even then.

But I was no computer boffin – I couldn’t even figure out the Commodore 64 game my Dad has just bought, and the computer class that had just been introduced alongside typing was my most dreaded course. The flashing square on the black screen, with the robotic font and all that basic programming language was the farthest thing from a usable tool. I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined what the Internet would become. I realize these comments risk me dating myself horribly...

Today I look to the Internet for almost everything! I pull out my iphone around the table at a restaurant with friends and log in to the Web to answer the question everyone is hotly debating. It is so gratifying! This is what I wanted at 16!
(This statement is REALLY going to date me>>> The kids today are amazing. Their imaginations are in tune with what the Internet has become and what it can become.

They have been creating it, masters of it’s evolution… and some of them have become millionaires for their vision and their dedication to making those changes. Look at the history of Google, or Skype or even Napster. All of them have one thing in common – kids with a vision and the guts to introduce it to the world, with the result of changing our lives through the Internet.

My son has always been a dreamer, a creative soul. He is also an Internet baby. He can talk your ear off about Web 2.0 (those of you ‘aged’ like me may not know that Web 2.0 is the next phase of the evolution of the Internet). It is what is happening now. Web communities are developing and providing forums for people on every subject, every interest you could imagine, and many you couldn’t.

If you ask him about his friends, he might give you a list of people from around the globe, most of whom he’s never physically met. They are people he’s ‘met’ on the Internet. Yes all the parental red flags go off as we’ve all been brain-washed into believing the Internet is full of pedophiles posing as nice kids… but he’s proven me wrong.

In fact, he has teamed up with some of the kids that are making the changes to the Internet that make the news and enhance our lives in the end. These guys have worked day and night for over 6months on a new website that is a new concept for the Web 2.0 generation. He’s now involved with them on the design of the site and he’s having Skype meetings weekly. My son, ‘working’ at 16!

Questional.com is the site and it’s the brainchild of Robert Newcomb aka ‘Bobbo’, a 21 year old from Philadelphia who has been doing web design since early 2003. He realized that there was something missing in the traditional search engines, in that they are simply designed in an ‘ask a question, get an answer’ format. He decided he wanted to build the frontier website about questions and answers. He created a clean layout (only showing you things you need), easy to use by anyone with an Internet connection, and ensured there was zero spam. He approached his friends with the idea in October 2008. They are now a team of five.

After working 14-hour days, he released the site in February this year to a tremendous reception. The site is called Questional.com. Questional.com has the strength, motive, and the dedication behind it to produce something that will, in time, become the leading source for answers on the web. Despite the site still being early in its expansion, I can see the potential it has.

Questional.com is not a search engine, but provides a community, giving you real contact with real people who are willing to answer your questions and give their views. The Googles of the world can look through something that's already been written, but an entire community, devoted to organizing their thoughts one subject at a time, is truly amazing.

Instead of searching all over the web for your information, you can directly ask your questions on the site and get direct answers by other members. When you’re not asking questions, you can then browse around and answer questions that you have certain expertise in. With enough growth, you have a powerful machine at your disposal. Where were these guys when I was 16?!!!!

The site has a true sense of community, and quite a number of regulars.

The team is working round the clock with new upgrades and they are coming out with a tagging system to increase the organization of the questions, and to allow members to be fully enveloped in subject matters that interest them.

To go the way of Google and the others that mushroomed to success, they need some financial backing and some exposure - and what better place to find exposure than the World Wide Web!

I think it’s amazing and I’m proud to have anything to do with it – even if it is living vicariously through my son’s involvement. Go guys!!!



You can find Questional.com on:
Twitter page
Facebook Fan Page
Facebook Group

And of course, Questional.com

Sweet 16

Today my baby turns 16. I got up early with him this morning and hugged him as he was gathering his things at the door. I watched him walk away, out the gate and pictured him on his way to school. He's nearing 6 feet tall and his voice is getting low and he corrects me on so many things these days, but he is still my baby.

There was a time when he and I made up a family on our own, and despite the many changes that have happened, siblings that have come and gone and relationships, spouses and various others who have touched our lives, some days I still feel that special bond between us - the feeling that it's us two against the world.

He has always made a great companion. From the time he was born he observed so much around him and had a sense of calm that comforted me. He has always been comfortable in his skin and I admire that. Now, in the middle of adolescence, when kids struggle with identity, he knows exactly what he likes and what he doesn't and he has his own moral code which no one can compromise. All very admirable to me.

There comes a time in kids' lives when they finally see their parents as human beings, with faults and weaknesses, and can admire them for their true talents instead of the blind love that a child gives. They also say that parents will always see their child with the eyes of blind and unconditional love.

Between my son and I, I believe we've always seen each other clearly - faults, weaknesses, strengths - everything. And maybe because of this, I feel we share a love that is honest and open and real.

I am so proud of him.

He's been 'into' graphic design in a way that I could only imagine passion, dedication and patience in myself. He can put in 10 straight hours on an art piece - forget to eat or drink or speak. He thinks this is what he wants to pursue and judging by his talent and enthusiasm, I think he's on the right track. I'm still amazed though. Who knows at 16 what they want to be when they grow up?! Hell, I still don't know what I wanna be...

I've decided to share here one of his recent 'pieces' - he used two stock photos (below):





And came up with this:



Excellent if I do say so myself. Happy birthday Q!!! Love you.

It won't always be okay...

I’ve always been a rebel mom. I was pregnant at 22, and though I thought myself quite the mature adult, in retrospect I realize I was quite young. I don’t regret the path I took though, being a mother at 23 was amazing. I gave him a middle name Mompati – from Botswana, meaning ‘my companion’. I looked down at my little helpless baby and vowed never to be a ‘typical mom’ - whatever that was.

It turns out I have fulfilled that vow – having first orchestrated a stint owning my own petrol station during my son’s second year of life, managing seven staff, mostly illegal immigrants, on 24/7 shifts, and filling in myself even during the nights when staff couldn’t make it. Luckily I was young and energetic enough to juggle the baby at home and lucky to have an excellent babysitter and support of my family. I did all of this to give my boy and I a chance to move on, move up, move out. Discover the world or at least another corner of it.

When I announced to my family that I was moving to Africa with my son just before his fourth birthday, everyone reacted – mostly with astonishment and outrage. I took it all in stride, still believing I was the atypical mom, heading out on an adventure that would give my son a more well rounded world view and prepare him for life in the world, not just the suburb he was born in.

Our first years in Ghana were at times brutal, at times wonderful, but at all times atypical. We were given a large closet called the ‘boy’s quarters’ in a rich Ghanaian family’s home to live in. My son and I cuddled in our little space and decided together we’d give Ghana a chance. There were oodles of children who wanted to be his friend. They touched his hair and sang in unison and he looked up at me with his big shy pools for eyes, so trusting. “Is it okay Mom?” he said without speaking. And I assured him it was.

We enrolled him in the local school and had his uniform sewed by a tailor down the road. And when he headed off to school the first morning with the children fussing around him, all holding hands, I stood at the broken gate, and tears fell heavy down my cheeks. Is it ok Mom? I believed it was.

He learned to eat local food and speak in the sing song local speech, regurgitating the alphabet like his teacher asked. He fit in perfectly and they sent home his ruled workbooks with positive remarks, “Quinci is a good boy and listens well. He completes his exercises correctly and neatly”.

We both counted the days to the first Christmas back home. He missed the cold weather and chocolate bars that weren’t melted… I missed my family and just needed a break. The holiday was wonderful and my mother wept when we left. As we made it through security at the airport he looked up at me and saw my huge tears welling up – “It’s alright Mom” he promised and pulled me down to him for a big tight hug. And I believed it was.

The next years marked our full integration into Ghana. I met a man and we moved in to his family home of 54… We joined the ranks and my son had even more children to play with… At Christmas I couldn’t afford to spoil him in a home with over 30 poor children, and gave him a ball – one big soccer ball and a handful of candies in a homemade stocking. He beamed. I moved between guilt and pleasure at my son’s humble happiness.

The day he came home from school and showed me a welt on his hand I nearly exploded. He explained that the teacher had threatened to beat the entire class if even one did not complete their homework. Inevitably one or more of the kids let the rest down and as promised the teacher had taken out her long reed cane and lined he kids up, whacking each one. The next morning I was by his side at the school, pushing through the crowds of children who saw me not as a student’s mother but as ‘Obruni (white person), which they chanted frantically all the way from the car to the classroom door. I laid it on the line for the teacher – You touch my child again and you will deal with me. She assured me that he had not been the problem and that she beat everyone equally, she then bemoaned the soft skin of the whites and claimed he was the only child that had physical evidence of the beating. I walked out after repeating my first statement and meaning it. He walked along side me and looked up at me. “It’ll be okay now” I assured him. And it was.

The next year his baby brother came – a little Ghanaian, born and raised. We ‘outdoored’ him in the traditional way, with the elders gathered, pouring libation to the Gods... my big son sat by my side, dressed in a gold and white printed outfit with a matching hat. As they lowered his baby brother to the ground, naked and crying, to introduce him to the world, he looked up at me with those big eyes, “Is it okay Mom?” and without words I nodded and squeezed his little hand. I believed it was.

Years later when our youngest left us, dying after a three day illness in my arms, my big boy was far away visiting our relatives back in Canada. I spoke to my mother in a haze of tears and shock and then he came on the phone. His voice, like my anchor, brought me back to reality. He saved me from the oblivion of insanity.
And today I sit here helpless. He is now 15, towering above me, his feet and hands are double the size of mine. He is no longer my baby. He is grown. And he is hurting.
He has been in love and has tasted the exhilaration of a first kiss. I have witnessed his beaming face and I have felt proud and happy and ecstatic for him. I believed he was ‘on his way’ and I believed it would be alright.

But today he is quiet and confused and deeply hurt. He sits in his room at the edge of his bed, plucking melancholic tunes on his acoustic guitar. The girl has called it off, moved on, and seemingly for no reason. This is the reality of young love. And though I remember the days in tears in my room at 16, depressed and feeling I could not go on, I cannot bear to watch him feel even a fragment of that pain.

I have always been a rebel mom, never involved in PTA, always easy going, understanding, open-minded. But today I feel protective and conservative. Akin to the psycho middle American republican over involved high strung pageant mothers who cannot stand to see their child lose out. I have visions of marching straight over to this girl’s house, kicking in the door and holding her at gunpoint for harming my child. I want to make her cower in fear and give her a swift kick in the head for good measure.

But of course this is just a fantasy. The reality is far more scary. My son will have to face the world, and his own demons and enemies along the way. I can only hope that our adventures together have prepared him for the many things ahead that I will no longer be able to assure him will be okay.