DialaBrain - another fad?

[CereBr0]

Sorry for the late reply; Rupe's moving between houses at the moment. Also, I work for DIALaBRAIN as well.

I haven't looked at DaB to see exactly how it works (I'd like Rupe to reply if the mods will allow it) but I often thought that something a bit like StackOverflow but paid would be useful. Not exactly like SO, but often you want a sample "how do I use this API" or "what is a formula to do X" or "I don't really understand this concept, one hour to speak/IM someone to explain it in a tutoring setup would be nice"

£50 for an hour of someone's time to walk me through something could be well worth it rather than trawling tutorials or trying to piece together different bits of the puzzle from the official docs.

You raise a good point. SO is a good platform that allows users to get answers for generic and specific questions easily. However, text, IMs, non-interactive tutorials, and such only go so far.

while SO is genuinely brilliant, any question that can't be given a definite answer is deleted. There is no place for discussion or "what ways could I do X?" only "how should I do X?"

Part of the rationale for our business came from the difficulty of finding specific answers and getting a response to any follow up questions raised in a timely fashion. We feel that real-time interaction is the critical missing component.

I hope this answers your question whilst adhering to this forum's T&Cs