Google moderator is another useful tool that makes its way out of Google Internal Offices into the public domain. Nicknamed internally as Dory, the tool now called Google moderator will make the most useful and top-voted questions get answered at conferences and forums.
How it works is quite simple – It would allow anyone attending a tech talk to submit a question and then give other participants a way to vote on whether or not that question should be asked. This way, the most popular and relevant questions would rise to the top so that the presenter or the moderator of an event could run the discussion more efficiently and in a transparent manner.
Get started by visiting moderator.appspot.com, sign in to your Google Account and now ask a world leader any question, suggest an android application or ask a Google Engineer a question (seems to be the most popular as 820 people have submitted 209 questions and cast 7,235 votes already). Google Moderator is released on Google App Engine, which enables you to build and run web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications.
Obviously the most wanted questions will rise to the top as the public votes in. It’s an interesting concept and I am sure the next tech conferences will have this in place for the audience. Try out Google Moderator now as it is free to use.
It’s interesting how Google Engineers release their internal tools to the public so that all can enjoy their utility. Remember how the internal Google code-checking tool Mondrian was released as a new app called Code Review.