The Web is arguably the best way to get your burning questions answered quickly. But finding online resources beyond search sites such as Google and Bing that will help you do that can be difficult.
Which services can you trust? Which will get you the best information? I've sifted through several question-and-answer Web sites, trying to find the most reliable services. Let's take a look.
Get your Q&A on
Ask Me Help Desk Ask Me Help Desk has an extremely active community that seems constantly willing to answer your questions.
When you get to Ask Me Help Desk, you'll need to first click on the category that best matches your query. So if you want to ask a question about business or technology, you'll have to click on either option. From there, you can ask any question that might be related to a particular topic on the site.
Since the site's community is so active, it's likely that you'll find a question that someone has already posed that's either exactly the same as yours or quite close. If you still want to ask your question, you can, but I found in my queries that finding the right answer was made easy by quickly searching the site.
I asked several questions to see how the site performed on different topics. I asked how many dog breeds there were (about 400, according to the top answer), looked to see if anyone knew what HTTP stood for (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), and more. In almost every case, except for a medical question for which I'm still awaiting an answer, the question was already asked, and the answer was available on the site.
Ask Me Help Desk is a great service that will let you access answers for free. I just wish registration wasn't required to ask a question.
Ask Me Help Desk will answer just about any question you have.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Askville Amazon's Askville is another take on the many question-and-answer sites on the Web. But unlike most of the other services, which allow you only to ask a question, Askville, which is free to use, will let you input details about your question to get a more desired response.
I found that when I used the detail option in my queries, I received the best response. I was able to ask the community a better question. For example, instead of asking how many dog breeds there were, I used the detail option to also ask Askville users how many terrier breeds are currently recognized by the American Kennel Club. It worked: there are 27 terrier breeds recognized by the AKC.
Askville's biggest issue is its design. It doesn't have a simple, easily navigable menu system like many of its competitors. Unfortunately, the site's front page is dominated by an enormous logo, a huge search box, and random questions that most people probably won't care about. A sleeker navigation pane would have been preferable. Besides that, I like Askville. The answers I got were generally informative. And thanks to such a large community, many of the questions you might ask are already on the site.
Askville features a little too much empty space.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
Crowd-sourced decision-making helper Hunch.com is out of private beta today. The site helps people make decisions based on how they answer questions from user-created quizzes (See our hands-on from April). Anyone can create these, however the strength of the site is that they can be linked to credible, outside sources to back up any advice or claims. There's also an algorithm that learns more about you as you use the site. The more it knows, the less of the quiz questions you have to answer to get valid recommendations.
Hunch says you only need to answer 10 sample questions for it to start delivering customized recommendations. However, for some topics, such as personal health or survival situations, it's worth going through the motions of answering each individual question. The efficacy of that depends on how well the quiz was put together though. The way Hunch handles that is to put newly-created quizzes into a holding tank called "the Workshop" where other users can bang on it, and provide feedback or fixes. If enough people like it, it graduates to being a part of the site. Otherwise it gets put into the "scrap heap" where you can see the titles and creators, but not the quizzes themselves.
Certain parts of Hunch--like medical advice, or troubleshooting guides like this bear attack defense one--are one of the service's strong points.
(Credit: CNET)Sites like Hunch get a great deal of traffic from search engines, which is where it may have a leg up on the competition. Since each quiz is made up of multiple questions, there is a higher potential of it showing up in searches that go outside of the main question. Hunch can then drive people to single topics, or topic pages where the site can sell targeted ad units. As it stands, the site makes most of its money off of referrals to commerce sites like Amazon, and sponsored links on result pages.
I'm still not sold on Hunch. For some things, like troubleshooting, or medical advice there's real potential for a system that can weed out irrelevant suggestions based on how you answer questions. However, others like "whether or not you should quit your job," or "what should I eat for lunch?" should be something people figure out on their own, or with the help of friends who don't need to use an algorithm.
Hunch helps you make decisions. For quandaries ranging from "Where should I live?" to "Which blog should I read?" the system plays a question-and-answer game with you, to home in on an answer.
To improve your results, you can also teach the system about yourself by taking a quiz that asks questions like "Would you rather lead or be led?" and "Which 'Sesame Street' character appeals to you?" As you answer these questions, Hunch's algorithm is cataloging your answers and learning more about you.
I started using Hunch after taking the quiz. I asked it which blogs I should read, and whether or not I should switch to a Mac. I'm still not fully sold on Hunch yet, but its results meshed well with decisions I have already made.
For example, I tried the "Should I switch to a Mac" topic to find out if it would tell me to switch to a Mac, three years after I made the decision to do so. Hitch started out asking if my job required me to use Outlook. After answering "no", it asked me if I'm willing to spend more than $1,000 on a computer. I clicked "yes" and then it asked if I would want to engage in computer gaming. I said "no." I answered "no" to the question of whether or not I'm in the design field. It then asked if I make heavy use of Microsoft Excel. I don't, so I clicked "no."
Hunch's design is simple and elegant.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)After telling the system that I'm comfortable "going under the hood" to change the computer's components, I answered that I would want a portable computer. Next, I was brought to the best question of them all: "Who do you prefer?" The answers were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Linus Torvalds, or no preference. After saying that I had no preference, Hunch's decision-making algorithm, which analyzes answers, returned my result: I had a 99 percent fit with a Mac. I should switch from a PC.
On more serious topics like "Which camera should I buy?" I found Hunch to be helpful. It asked thoughtful questions about what I'd like in a camera. It even asked what I'd do with it. After answering the questions, it found that the Nikon D80 was the camera for me. I researched its specs and I have to agree--it's ideal for what I'm looking for in a D-SLR.
I also found the "Which credit card should I get" topic useful. Based on my answers, it returned a card containing much of what I'm looking for: a low interest rate and the option to redeem points from a reputable bank.
Creation
All of Hunch's topics come from users. The site allows you to create topics, provide multiple choice answers, and based on those answers, determine results.
When you create a topic, the service finds images from across the Web to add art to it. That saves some time, but the amount of time you spend adding questions and determining results is ridiculous. And if you create a sophisticated topic with many questions, you'll need to run through answers one-by-one to link them to the topic's results. A topic can take up to an hour to create.
Creating a topic takes too long.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)The design
Hunch looks good. The most popular and newest topics are there for you to check out on the main page. If you want to find other people on the site and see what they're up to, the "Community" tab has that information. But more importantly, Hunch's simple design makes the site easy to use. You won't have trouble finding desired topics.
Should I use Hunch?
Hunch is fun. At first, you'll probably enjoy browsing through the various topics and maybe even creating some of your own. But after a while, if you're anything like me, you'll gravitate to the more serious topics to help you make decisions. And although there aren't many topics on the site yet, I found that many were relevant to my life. More importantly, they helped me make smarter decisions on important issues, like finances and purchases.
Hunch provides a unique alternative to answers services from Yahoo or Mahalo. And although it's not perfect and it has some growing up to do, it has promise. It could become the "go-to" answer service on the Web with more user involvement.
By now, many prospective college students have received responses from all the colleges to which they've applied. But now comes the hard part: deciding where to go.
Luckily, there are some sites that help them in that endeavor and provide them with valid insight before they make their final decisions. Even better, these sites can also help those who haven't applied yet and are starting their initial research.
For the high school junior who is considering applying to different colleges or the high school senior who needs to make a decision, these sites are outstanding resources.
BeRecruited: BeRecruited is designed specifically for the high school athlete. Instead of waiting for a team to find the student, BeRecruited gives them an opportunity to find colleges across the United States that have the kind of athletic program for which they're looking. They can then upload information about themselves and their high school athletic performance to attract the attention of team recruiters.
CampusExplorer has a lot of great information.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)CampusExplorer: CampusExplorer allows students to search more than 6,000 colleges in the United States to find which campus is right for them. They can search by area, curriculum, or type of school. The site provides information on the size of the school, what it offers to students, and the attendance cost. It even has advice on getting into the school from students who have asked questions about the college on Yahoo Answers.
Cappex: Cappex requires students to sign up and create a personal profile that includes grades, extracurricular activities, and SAT/ACT scores. Once that profile is completed, they can search for colleges, learn about the schools in which they're interested, and use a handy tool called "What are my chances?" to help them determine if they really have a chance at being admitted to a particular school.
CollegeAnswer: Owned by college financial-aid company SallieMae, CollegeAnswer provides students with information about all facets of college admittance. From basic research on schools to information on paying for a college education, the site has it all. It provides in-depth information about colleges, including their demographics and attendance costs. But where it really shines is in its information about college life in general. It's an outstanding resource for prospective and current students.
... Read more
Publishing giant Hearst Magazines announced on Wednesday plans to acquire Answerology, a New York-based start-up that offers a question-and-answer service for relationship advice. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but PaidContent reported that it was in the seven figures.
Matthew Milner, Answerology's founder, will be brought on board Hearst as vice president of community and social media in the conglomerate's Hearst Magazines Digital Media unit.
Answerology's schtick is that it allows users to ask anonymous questions about family, marriage, dating, and other heated subjects pertaining to relationships, and those questions can be targeted toward select age groups, genders, geographic regions, and personality types (i.e. "thinker" or "intellectual.")
Most of the questions on Answerology, which seems to have an admirably active core community, pertain directly to relationships, like this one: "By 39 years of age, is it a little weird if a man is still single, no solid career path, not close with his family, and only a select few close friends?" (Answer: Yes, but things will get better if you take away his Xbox.)
Other subjects of discussion fall more into a general "lifestyle" niche, for example, "When do you think you'll be able to retire?" (Answer: Never! Ever!)
Hearst hasn't been quite as avid in the Web acquisition space as some of its publishing brethren, but it has made a few notable buys: for one, social-shopping site Kaboodle, which it purchased last year.
Even though question-and-answer sites are a dime a dozen, the lifestyle- and relationship-oriented Answerology seems like a good fit for a magazine publisher--indeed, Hearst plans to work it into the Web properties for its 15 magazine titles.
And it had a funny publishing-industry connection to begin with: founder Milner originally conceived of Answerology as a tie-in for a "romantic-comedy novel" he wrote, Guy Critical.
Just how much does Ask.com own the word "Ask?" Enough to have a problem with a question-and-answer site called "Askpedia," apparently. Representatives from the start-up Askpedia.com told CNET News.com that the search engine's parent company, InterActiveCorp, sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this month, citing intellectual property violations in the name "Askpedia."
"(This) is likely to cause consumer confusion, particularly inasmuch as Askpedia purports to provide online informational services that are substantially similar to those provided by Ask," the letter dated March 13 reads. "In using and incorporating Ask's intellectual property in this manner, Askpedia is falsely suggesting a connection between Ask and Askpedia, and thereby misappropriating the substantial good will associated with Ask's trademarks."
IAC representatives were contacted to verify the contents of the cease-and-desist letter, but were not immediately available for comment.
Ask.com's trademark on the name was first filed April 28, 1999, when the company was still known as Ask Jeeves and had not yet been acquired by the Barry Diller-helmed IAC in 2005. These days, the search engine has been undergoing a restructuring process in order to handle its tepid market share.
The letter, signed by Edward T. Ferguson, IAC senior vice president and general counsel, and provided to CNET News.com by Askpedia representatives, goes on to request that Askpedia "cease and desist from all use of Ask's trademarks and other intellectual property, including without limitation in the name 'Askpedia' or any similar formation using the word 'ask,'" and agree not to do so in the future.
A deadline of 10 days was provided, meaning that IAC would presumably seek legal action after Sunday, March 23.
Yong Su Kim, CEO of Askpedia, which describes itself as "a knowledge marketplace for questions and answers" and awards cash prizes to the best answers, said that his small start-up has about 100,000 registered users. He sent an e-mail to CNET News.com in which he speculated that "our guess is that their lawyers have nothing better to do."
Kim continued, "Either that or they're working on a Wikipedia-like service and want the domain name and trademark."
A few months back my roommate's rare house plant was dying. In a last ditch effort to bring it back to life, he enlisted my help. We scoured various message boards and Q&A sites with little success to get help identifying the plant (he got it as a gift).
The plant ended up going to that big greenhouse in the sky. The experience made me realize there's a pretty basic need for sites, such as PicAnswers, which lets anyone upload a picture and ask a question about it. Interestingly, the amount of high profile Q&A services that don't let users do this is surprising. One of the few to allow it is the AOL-owned Yedda, while sites such as Yahoo Answers, Microsoft's QnA Live, and Amazon.com's Askville are limited to text.
This looks like a toy gun but it's actually cable tie gun, which was correctly ID'd by the Q&A community at PicAnswers.com
(Credit: CNET Networks)Like Amazon's Mechanical Turk project, PicAnswers is driven by humans. People upload their photos, and other users chime in if they can answer the query. A lot of the questions posed on the site range from simple identification issues like "what the heck is this?" to advice about what to do about a problem posted in the picture.
Here are a couple of my favorites so far:
Toothpick or food skewer?
My chili is yellow
Is there any Chinese poison in this toy?
Despite its simplicity, PicAnswers is missing two very helpful components: a way to vote on other user's answers to help filter down the best responses, and a karma system that makes it worthwhile to answer other people's questions. As it stands, you're left to sort through the answers yourself and answer out of the goodness of your heart. I'm hoping the site's creators add these soon. In the meantime, it's definitely worth bookmarking for the next time you unearth something that needs photo identification.
Time Warner unit AOL announced early Monday morning that it has acquired Yedda, a question-and-answer start-up that was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2006. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition, according to a release from AOL, was all about Yedda's code: the patent-pending semantic technology "automatically matches questions to other related questions and topics, while selecting the best available users to answer the question." Yedda-powered features are set to begin appearing on AOL's sites over the next few months.
AOL makes plenty of acquisitions, but most of the recent ones have been directly related to its renewed role as an advertising-focused media company. Last week, the company, which recently decided to move its headquarters to New York, purchased advertising-technology company Quigo, and in the spring, it acquired cell phone advertising firm Third Screen Media.
Questions spotted on Yedda, for the record, range from the practical to the bizarre--from "What was the name of the woman (model?) in the '80s video 'I Got My Mind Set On You" by George Harrison?" to "How can I install Boot Camp on an external drive?" to "How to build a barn owl cage?"
I came across an interesting site a few minutes ago from a BACN message from Myles Weissleder, creator of the SF New Tech Meetup group. One of the presenters, Mosio, will be showing off its site at next week's meetup. The company specializes in mobile Q&A, letting anyone with a phone ask a question via SMS or e-mail and get public replies back from other Mosio members. The site launched at the beginning of August and has since answered a good number of questions.
Like some other Q&A services, to ask and answer a question you've got to be a registered user, which Mosio calls "QnAgents." Unlike some expert-driven sites such as Citizendium, there are no prerequisites for being a Mosio agent, just the hope that you know the answers to the questions you're answering, or will go through the effort to research them. To ask a question, just write it as a text message and send it to ask@mosio.com. If anyone answers, you'll get a text back with his or her response. You can also check on Mosio's Web site for any replies. When you first ask a question, the system will automatically create a username and password for Mosio's site, so you can join up later to start befriending other Mosio users to track their responses.
In addition to simple Q&A, Mosio also offers a host of "apps," which are free, subscription-based text services that range from birthday reminders to content feeds from news providers. Like Twitter's tracking feature, you can turn them off and on, either by Web or through your phone. There's even a random Chuck Norris fact generator that admittedly is pretty useless, but free nonetheless.
I have to be honest, the look and feel of Mosio doesn't have anything on my other favorite Q&A site Fluther (review), but I'm really digging the mobile angle. Having just recently pulled the trigger on data for my phone after being on a barebones voice-only plan for the better part of a decade, I know there's a lot to be said for a site that lets you handle your business via SMS.
There is one big thing Mosio seems to be missing: a way to search through prior questions and answers. I suppose Mosio assumes that if you're visiting the site from your browser, you're on the Internet anyway, and can find the information elsewhere. Considering what Fluther and other Q&A repositories have done, though, a search with answers from humans might save you a question in the first place.
Related: Download.com's directory listing for Mosio
Ask a question. Get a response. At least that's the hope at Mosio, which is a questions-and-answers service with a mobile focus.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Fluther is a social question and answer site. Like similar services, it gives people a place to ask and answer questions amid a community of users. Fluther has taken this idea and given it an interesting twist, in adding a built-in tracking service. This service keeps track of your activity on the site and will let you monitor questions you've asked or answered in real time. The service also promises to direct questions toward so-called experts once they've successfully answered several questions in a certain topic or area of interest.
Oh, and if you're wondering what that name means, it's the technical term for a group of jellyfish. And for the pronunciation aficionados out there, it rhymes with "brother."
One of the more interesting tools on Fluther is the question browser, which displays question topics in a large tag cloud. Users enter these topics when adding their questions, and the larger tags indicate more questions in that topic. When viewing a question, you can also see related questions, which Fluther calls "siblings."
Fluther users can ask questions that can get answered by others in the Fluther community. The answers are displayed chronologically.
(Credit: CNET Networks)To maintain a community feel, Fluther has implemented a fairly straightforward prestige system. You get points for continuing to use the site, as well as for the way others value your questions and answers. You can rank a question or answer, and if you come across one you feel is inaccurate or off-topic, you can also flag it. All of this gets displayed in your profile, and as a star rating under your name.
Fluther joins several other Q&A sites out there. Three of the more popular ones are Yahoo Answers, Microsoft's QnA, and Ask Metafilter. All three keep track of user interaction and participation, although Fluther's intimate feel is what attracted me to it in the first place.
The one thing that irks me about these services is that as they grow, questions and answers often get lost in the shuffle. Likewise, you're bound to see duplicates, spam, and a lack of educated answers. While the prestige system can help users self-enforce this, ultimately it's up to the creators to moderate and create tools that can empower responsible and trustworthy users.
[via Biz Stone:Genius]
