Have you guys seen Aardvark? Aardvark sends questions to friends and friends-of-friends via IM and/or email. If HN readers all linked together as friends or friends-of-friends, then your questions would be routed to the appropriate people based on interests. And if no HN people are available to answer your questions, they get routed off to the rest of the Aardvark network.
Even if people don't like this idea, it wouldn't hurt to look at how their UI and features are set up, since they're one of the pioneers in doing exactly the same kind of thing the "HN Office Hours" app is trying to do.
You can link to me here: http://vark.com/s/UR0C -- everyone who links to me will be a friend-of-a-friend and will be auto-networked by Aardvark, assuming they all use an IM program compatible with Google Chat or Yahoo IM. Or if someone else wants to volunteer to be the "hub" of HN users, feel free to post your link here.
But then you have to deal with the annoyance that is aardvark. I turned that stuff off when I got five questions in a row that literally were first page google results.
IRC room with a site mapping persons profile to their nick would be less bothersome, however then you have the distraction of yet another conversation in the background....
Aardvark has an auto-response for questions you can Google:
google
Which sends them a summary of the first Google hit for their question. See: http://vark.com/commands
I get an occasional question you could Google, but it's been rare. You can also just pass. And you can tell Aardvark how often you want to be contacted.
IRC or other chat room software would be too noisy for me--I wouldn't ever want it to be trying to get my attention.
Even if people don't like this idea, it wouldn't hurt to look at how their UI and features are set up, since they're one of the pioneers in doing exactly the same kind of thing the "HN Office Hours" app is trying to do.
You can link to me here: http://vark.com/s/UR0C -- everyone who links to me will be a friend-of-a-friend and will be auto-networked by Aardvark, assuming they all use an IM program compatible with Google Chat or Yahoo IM. Or if someone else wants to volunteer to be the "hub" of HN users, feel free to post your link here.
Just a thought. :)