Posts Tagged ‘AQA’

AQA is now cheaper than an Irish Guinness

Friday, November 14th, 2008

I had a note in from Paul over at AQA, the question answer service, to let me know that they have reduced the cost of their Irish service. Here are a series of things you never knew about Ireland, courtesy of AQA (as well as details on their new pricing):

- – - – -

Q. How much does it cost to text AQA 57275 in Ireland?
A. AQA’s just dropped its price from €2 to €1.50. It’s now cheaper than a glass of Guinness, the same as a single on LUAS, and just slightly less than 4 days Irish TV.

Q. How many apples needed to give everyone in cork a slice of apple pie?
A. If you were to make a delicious apple pie for the 123,062 people living in Cork, you would need 184,593 apples. This is a generous 1.5 apples each.

Q. What’s the watery part of blood called?
A. The watery part of blood is called plasma. It makes up 55% of human blood. Coconut water is so similar to human plasma, it can be used as a substitute.

Q. What is the longest running TV chat show in the world?
A. The world’s longest running chat show is RTE’s Late Late Show, presented by Pat Kenny. It first aired on Friday 6 July 1952 and has had 3 hosts.

Q. Are there mosquito’s in Malahide, co. Dublin
A. Mosquitoes were introduced to Ireland by Lord Talbot and have been resident in Malahide for over a century. Any outside of Malahide are often
from abroad.

Q. Do people in england drink warm beer?
A. People in England don’t drink warm beer if they can avoid it. However, the Englishman’s love of beer sometimes necessitates the imbibing of warm ale.

Q. When was the earliest recorded existence or use of tea and coffee in Ireland?
A. Tea was first imported to Ireland in 1835. Coffee houses appeared after 1652. Average Irish daily consumption is 6 cups a tea, the highest in the
world.

Q. What did Mary Ward do in Offaly in Ireland, in 1869?
A. Mary Ward was the 1st fatal motor accident victim. In 1869 in Offaly, she was thrown from a steam car as it turned a corner & was crushed by its wheels.

Q. Name the highest mountains in ireland in order?
A. Highest mountains in Ireland: Carauntoohil 1038m; Beenkeragh 1010m; Caher 1001m; Mount Brandon 951m; Lugnaquilla 924m; Galtymore 917m; Baurtregaum
851m.

Q. How many diamonds are in a deck of cards?
A. There are 113 diamonds in a deck of cards, including 1 in each corner. Without the corner decorations, there are 61. The King of Diamonds is in
profile.

Q. Which is further north,dublin or toronto?
A. Dublin, Ireland (53.35 N) is considerably further north than Toronto, Canada (43.65 N). Toronto is roughly as northerly as Florence, Nice and
Split.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

AQA hits 15m question-mark; 2m customers

Monday, October 6th, 2008

I got this in from Paul Cockerton of AQA. It’s out first non-press release, news item, ever. I think it works quite well. Instead of sending me a press release, Paul’s knocked me over this letter. Good man!

- – - – -

Hi Ewan,

Just to let you know we passed 15 million questions – from 2 million customers, this morning.

It helped over the weekend by Graham Norton texting us ‘are baboons evil?’ live on his show. Which of course resulted in thousands of other people texting us at once.

If you’re interested the 15 millionth question was:

“After the 8:06 to Brighton from London Victoria, what time is the next train and what time does it arrive?”

AQA 63336 texted back with:

“AQA: The next train after the 08.06 from London Victoria to Brighton departs at 08.20. It arrives in Brighton at 09.22. The next train after that is at 08.36.”

As an aside Graham isn’t the first one to have caused peaks in the service, if you recall Paul O’Grady did something similar last year, as have Jo Whiley, Stephen Fry, Chris Moyles, Chris Evans. Celebrities certainly help to promote a service!

Regards,

Paul
AQA

- – - – -

Thanks for that Paul. Congratulations to everyone at AQA. I’d be keen to find out what AQA’s answer to Graham’s ‘Are Baboons Evil’ question was!

By the way, check out AQA on video here:

AQA tip apparently yields one punter £33,000

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

I was just talking to question answering service, AQA and apparently — I haven’t managed to confirm this — one of the betting tips that they suggested has yielded one lucky punter a £33,000 win.

Nice.

Not a bad return for a premium rate text message eh?

I will hopefully get some more details soon.

The AQA Summer Party – and the podcast

Monday, August 4th, 2008

I was joined at the AQA summer party on Friday by regular contributors, Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley. It was held on the Queen Mary, a steamer ship, moored on The Thames just nearby Embankment tube — an excellent spot for admiring much of London.

Based on the success of the trial video we did last week, we decided to take the camera with us to the party and see how we got on creating another video podcast. We took the opportunity to point the camera in the direction of Paul Cockerton, Marketing Director of AQA. Plus, we’ve got things of the week and the usual hot discussion points. James Whatley also shows off his phone ’skillz’ by walking round the party identifying the mobile phone model number of almost every guest handset on display.

My favourite new section is our Sony Ericsson news segment in the video. I think we’ll definitely keep that in for future editions.

By far the most popular element of the video last week was the footage of everyone screwing up. So we’ve stuck in some more bloopers from this week for your viewing pleasure.

We’ll have the video up shortly.


Powered by Interactive Energy | Sign up to The Application Review newsletter