They called it Project Snuggie. The goal: Dispatch an army of interns to contact 40,000 businesses. And so the interns went forth, sitting in cubicles, dialing many numbers and sending many emails. And as they feverishly phoned and typed, they evolved into Team Snuggie, “because we wanted to have full coverage,” says design manager Mike Hunigan, whose goal was to boost offerings for Coupons by Answers from 3,000 retailers to tens of thousands. So at the end of the fall 2011 semester, after the team had prevailed, the interns were rewarded with Snuggies.They were blue Snuggies, to be exact.
Learning Goals for Comparing & Scaling Rates. Distance have to be considered in answering Questions C and D. Each has to cover 28 miles in 84 minutes. Unit Test Review - Comparing and Scaling. Short Answer. The local Farm Market sells peppers at five for $2.25. Complete the rate table.
Specifically, Answers Blue—a sort of friendly, Cookie Monster hue used for the logo at. It’s a Q&A site that draws 10 million visits a day, more than The New York Times. The company has satellite offices in New York, California, and Beijing, but it’s based in University City.At the local office, Hunigan stands in a huge, sunlit room full of desks. It’s quiet, the only sounds typing and mouse-clicking. It feels ministerial, the digital version of hyperfocused 13th-century monks illuminating manuscripts. Hunigan points out tiny rooms equipped with just a desk and phone, where people can make personal calls without disturbing the hush of the main room.Yet the environment is anything but all-work-and-no-play. Elsewhere in the office are foosball and ping-pong tables; a Segway; a gorilla suit with a horned Brunhilde helmet; a Lego room with an Answers.com logo made of Legos on one wall; and the newest acquisition, a full-size, blindingly chrome Terminator statue (a T-800 endoskeleton, that is).“We act like big kids,” Hunigan says.
“It’s like a San Francisco office was transplanted here in St. Louis.”So how did this little piece of Silicon Valley land in St. Louis?Answer: David Karandish, the company’s 29-year-old CEO. A Maplewood native and Washington University grad, he was the youngest contestant to appear on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, at age 21.“I finished my last exam, which was in competitive strategy, and then jumped on a plane and did the TV show,” Karandish recalls. “I would have liked to have won the show, but right afterwards was when I helped to incubate this business. I think everything ended up working out for the best.”In fact, the domain has existed since the ’90s.
A search on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at archive.org, a digital library of Internet sites, reveals answers.com’s various iterations during the past 15 years. In 1997, it tried a model similar to the now-defunct Google Answers, where users paid a small fee to have a question answered. By 1999, it was a long, micro-fonted list of questions in various categories. (For instance, the question “How many wings does a flea have?” was under the category “Interesting.”) It was then sold to Jerusalem-based GuruNet. By 2004, Answers Blue had made its appearance in the logo; the site had billed itself as “The Answer Engine” and assumed a Google-like minimalism.
By February 2011, when the domain was acquired by AFCV Holdings, founded by Karandish and business partner Chris Sims, it had become a sprawling Q&A site with a robust community of users.Today, Answers claims to draw visitors am-
ounting to about a third of all U.S. Web users every month and boasts 200 million registered users, says Karandish. Questions on the site are broken into categories: Entertainment, Technology, Animals, Sports They range from technical inquiries about Excel spreadsheets to offbeat queries like “How do you know if your parrot is pregnant?” To a casual visitor, it might seem like the point is just questions and answers—but as Team Snuggie demonstrated, the site’s willing to expand its mission.“One thing we focus on is how to make a product viable—we use this philosophy called MVP, which stands for minimum viable product. Whenever we create a product, we don’t want to spend months and months building this spaceship,” Hunigan says.
“We build the framework with the simplest implementation of it, then take those metrics back and find out what we’ve learned: Are people interested in the content? Do people use it? Is it a great way to grow our traffic?”In the case of coupons, Answers got its answer: Yes. The Coupons by Answers subsite went from approximately a thousand visitors a day to a quarter million a day from Black Friday to Cyber Monday alone, Hunigan says.Part of Karandish’s approach has been not just embracing the Q&A format, but also making an entire mental shift, from old-fashioned, declarative mission statements (“If you build it, they will come”) to questions (“If we build it, will they come?
And if not, what do we build next?”).“Ultimately, we had people who were looking for products or local shopping services online, and we wanted to create a content type that would add value to our user, our brands, and search engines,” Karandish says of the site’s overall approach. “We think questions and answers provides a triumvirate of values between those three: The consumer comes out with an answer to their question; the brand gets a more informed consumer, who is more likely to make a purchase; and the search engines get unique content to rank.”The company’s vision for the future goes beyond online coupons, though.
“We want to take Answers and migrate it from being a website to a platform. We’ve already started doing that,” Karandish says. “Fast-forward a couple of years from now.
Whenever you are at one of the major branded sites, if you have a question—and you should be able to answer it right then and there—that experience will be powered by answers.com.”If it sounds like Karandish has his eye on World Wide Web domination—or at least turning Answers into its own sort of ubiquitous Googlenaut—well, that could be.“David’s very competitive,” Hunigan grins, adding that he’s seen his boss play basketball during employee get-togethers during the summer.So here’s another question: Will Answers keep its headquarters in St. Louis, regardless of how successful it becomes?For the foreseeable future, yes, Karandish re-
plies: “We like to take a Midwestern approach to building an Internet company.”“People here are really open and friendly,” says content manager Nicole Wilson, who was recruited here from San Diego. “That helps when you are working with someone on projects—you want to help out your teammate, to figure out a solution.”Though the bulk of the team works here, there is a large group in California. The teams communicate regularly via videophone. “Every conference room has videophones: There’s a camera in this boardroom, a camera over there,” Hunigan says.
“We get a chance to work with people on a face-to-face basis, whether they’re in the next building or in California or in New York.”That sometimes manifests as real face-to-face time. The company recently held an internal programming contest dubbed “The Apprentice,” playing off of Karandish’s TV appearance, in which all employees flew to St. Louis, then broke into teams and created Facebook apps that were judged by the company’s executive team.“We didn’t necessarily launch all of the apps that we created during that time,” Hunigan says, “but a lot of those ideas were implemented in some fashion.”Late last year, Answers mounted a sign—in Answers Blue, of course—on the exterior of its tucked-away Delmar Boulevard headquarters. Perhaps it was a concrete signal that the company is staying in St.
Louis?There’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur here, says Karandish. Louis is filled with talented developers and IT gurus, and the cost of living is lower than in Silicon Valley.
Square co-founder Jim McKelvey, for instance, has remained in St. Louis and helped launch Arch Grants, a nonprofit luring startups here.
Other initiatives, such as Cultivation Capital, a St. Louis–based venture-capital firm, are also encouraging local entrepreneurship.“I think St. Louis is really turning a corner,” Karandish says. “There is an entrepreneurial ecosystem that is being built up right now that didn’t exist 10 years ago. I would love to continue to help that ecosystem change.” Tags.
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as. as. as. as. asEpisode chronology← Previous'Next →'A Is for Answers' is the twenty-fourth episode of the fourth season and the ninety-fifth episode of the. The episode, serving as the fourth-season finale and the winter finale, was broadcast on March 18, 2014.
It was directed and written by.In the episode, the girls finally meet up with in Philadelphia and learn from her about everything that happened the night she disappeared. Meanwhile, the girls’ parents are scrambling to find them and the police bring Spencer's family in for questioning, thinking that she may have killed the girl in Alison's grave.' A is for Answers' premiered to an audience of 3.12 million viewers, up from the previous episode, and garnered a 1.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic. It also generated over 1.45 million tweets during its broadcast, becoming the most-tweeted episode of 2014 and the four most tweeted broadcast in television history. The episode received a general positive response from, with calling it a 'satisfying and surprising finale.' Some critics, however, were dismayed by the questions surrounding the series' main plotline not being answered.
Contents.Plot Present day , , , and are led to a hiding place by , where they meet. Alison recounts the night she disappeared and reveals that she had been confronting all of her “A” suspects that night. Meanwhile, Noel gives her a plane ticket and money for her to flee town.
Alison also recounts her first time meeting and confirms to the girls that Spencer did not hurt her. After telling them about what happened that night, all the girls are attacked by what appears to be 'A' and they run up to the roof. comes up just as “A” reaches them and claims to know who “A” is but “A” does not seem to care. He and “A” struggle for the gun, which is dropped in the struggle. Hanna picks it up and threatens the masked person at gunpoint to take off the mask.
“A” pretends to reach for the mask, then jumps over to the next building and leaves through a door. The horrified girls then find that “A” managed to shoot Ezra in the stomach during the struggle and they call out for help.Back at Rosewoodis detained by Detective Holbrook and questioned about Wilden's murder. She confesses that she knows who killed the Jane Doe in Alison's grave and that Alison is still alive.
The police are then sent to the Hastings residence to gather clues for their investigation. Meanwhileis on the phone with and trying to find out where the girls went to. Officer Holbrook brings Veronica and , who just came back from London after told her about Spencer's relapse, to the precinct where he questions the family, including , separately about Spencer's addiction during the summer Alison disappeared. is brought in to the precinct for more information on Alison's whereabouts while being approached by Peter about an arrangement they have. Melissa and Peter later discuss the investigation, during which Melissa reveals that she knows who killed the girl in Alison's grave.
Later that night, Jessica is buried in the Hastings' backyard by '.Two years earlier In 2009, Alison hides out in Ian's hotel room at Hilton Head, listening in on and Melissa fighting. After hearing that she meant nothing to him, she goes into his computer and copies his videos onto a flash drive.
Armed with new evidence, Alison visits and blackmails her with the video of her and Toby, thinking she might be 'A'. When she receives another text from 'A', she decides to make a plan to expose 'A'. Before leaving for the party, she takes some pills from her mother's purse. She meets the girls at Spencer's barn and slips the drugs into their cups, as a way of eliminating more suspects.
She then meets with Toby, who wanted to thank her for freeing him from Jenna's blackmail. Afterwards, Ezra pulls up to her place to confront her about her lies.
She leaves him with a kiss and sets out to meet Ian at the Kissing Rock. There, she threatens him with the videos from his computer and is warned that the videos could bring everyone down.She returns to the barn to find an angry Spencer waiting for her.
Alison tells Spencer not to saying anything about it but Spencer won't listen and remains on guard. During the confrontation, Spencer drops her pills, which Alison discovers to be '. Alison discovers Spencer's drug habit and after hearing Spencer's pleas, promises to keep her secret. She tells Spencer to go back to the barn and sleep. After meeting with about his affair with, she returned to the barn and received no text messages.Alison then returns home to find her mother looking through the window right before getting hit from behind. Hours later she wakes up to her mother burying her in the backyard. She's pulled out by and taken to the hospital, but runs away out of fear.
She is discovered by walking through the streets covered in dirt and blood. Mona takes her to the Lost Woods Resort motel, where she cleans Alison up and gives her the idea to fake her death and leave Rosewood. After putting Alison to sleep, Mona goes to her 'A' lair and plays with her dolls. The following morning, Alison thanks her by giving her the name of her stylist, telling “You don’t have to be a loser”.
She leaves the motel in the morning and later finds out she had been played.Production 'A is for Answers' was written and directed by, serving as her fourth writing credit and second directing credit for the season. The episode also serves as King's third directing credit for the overall series. The table read for the episode began on October 21, 2013.
Filming for the episode commenced the next day, October 22, and concluded on November 2, 2013. On October 23, 2013, who portrays Spencer's sister, confirmed her appearance on the episode on., who portrays Melissa's deceased husband, appears in the episode, marking his first since the season two episode '.' Other actors recurring in this episode include as, as Detective Gabe Holbrook, as, as, as, Andrea Parker as, as, and as Barry Maple.Reception Ratings 'A is for Answers' premiered on on March 18, 2014.
It was watched by 3.12 million viewers and acquired a 1.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic. It was the most watched episode since the season four episode ' and the highest rated episode since the season four episode '.
The episode was the 95th consecutive number one telecast for the series in the Females 12-34 demographic with a 4.0 rating (translating to 1.8 million viewers), as well as the 50th number one telecast in the Women 18-49 demographic with a 2.3 rating (2.3 million viewers). The episode also generated over 1.45 million tweets, becoming the most tweeted telecast in 2014, the second most-tweeted episode of the series, behind the summer finale ' and the fourth most tweeted telecast in television history. Reviews Autumne Montague of TVOvermind gave a positive review of the episode, calling it a 'satisfying and surprising finale' and was pleased that the episode gave a timeline of the events of the night that Alison disappeared. Montague also lauded Pieterse's character for her self-awareness in having admitted to not be a good friend, calling it 'refreshing from a girl who in flashbacks seemed simply self-absorbed.' She also highlighted how she helped Spencer come to terms with what happened that night despite their relationship. Steve Helmer of gave a positive review of the episode, writing 'I was somewhat disappointed when that mask wasn't removed. But, the episode did a good job of answering just enough questions to bring some closure to old storylines while, at the same time, creating new questions to keep things interesting.
In other words, it was a pretty decent season finale.' Jessica Goldstein of gave the episode 4 out of 5 stars.Caroline Preece of wrote a mixed review for the episode, highlighting the flashbacks as a 'decent recap of everything we’ve previously learnt about that night' but ultimately deemed the finale as 'finished off season four on a frustrating note.' Preece added 'Disregarding the backpedalling that has gone on since the EzrA reveal, the second half of the season was stronger than the show has been in a while but, with promises not delivered on and satisfying answers dropped in as red herrings with alarming frequency, it’s hard not to assume that the writers are just making it up as they go along at this point.'
Of gave it a negative review, saying 'It was disappointing to see such a weak ending to an episode that was essentially created for fan service. I know a lot of people will feel cheated because A wasn't unmasked, but the episode was truly dedicated to providing clarification, if not answers, to many a question. At the very least, it cleared up the timeline and helped narrow down the field as to who A is.
The problem with a show like this is that there's a general impatience with knowing the answers, and that frustration often gets conflated with a malaise concerning the show in general. Pretty Little Liars isn't perfect. God help us, we can enumerate the actual problems with the series for hours. But how it reveals the core tenet of the show isn't one of them.
Someday, Pretty Little Liars will get to the point like Bones or Chuck did, where the main serial conceit will wear itself out so much that A will have to be unmasked because that premise gets old. But not just yet'. References. (October 21, 2013).
Retrieved 15 May 2014. Cite web requires website=. (November 2, 2013). Retrieved 15 May 2014. Cite web requires website=.
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(October 23, 2013). Retrieved 15 May 2014. Cite web requires website=. (October 25, 2013). Retrieved 15 May 2014. Cite web requires website=.
(October 23, 2013). Retrieved 15 May 2014. Cite web requires website=. Bibel, Sara (March 19, 2014). Retrieved March 24, 2014. Cite web requires website=. ^ Bibel, Sara (March 20, 2014).
Retrieved March 24, 2014. Cite web requires website=. Montague, Autumne (March 19, 2014). Archived from on May 17, 2014. Retrieved May 14, 2014. Cite uses deprecated parameter deadurl=. Helmer, Steve (March 21, 2014).
Archived from on 2014-07-28. Retrieved May 14, 2014. Cite uses deprecated parameter dead-url=. Goldstein, Jessica (March 19, 2014). New York Media, LLC. Retrieved May 14, 2014.
Preece, Caroline (March 19, 2014). Den of Geek. Retrieved May 14, 2014. Campbell, Nick (March 19, 2014). Retrieved 10 May 2014.External links. on.
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