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)
Now here's one you don't see every day: Wordnik, which launched out of private beta on Monday and states its mission as "discovering all the words and everything about them." Taking the basic premise of a dictionary, Wordnik supplements each entry with Web 2.0's tastiest treats--relevant Flickr images, Twitter search matches, user-contributed tags and comments--and then invites users to add their own words, too.
Calling itself a "project" rather than a company, Wordnik's origins are sort of like a dot-com fairy tale. CEO Erin McKean, then serving as editor-in-chief of Oxford University Press' American dictionaries, was giving a talk at the elite TED conference when she raised an issue for lexicographers--dictionary scientists--that, in her opinion, the digital age hadn't solved yet.
"There are so many more words than dictionaries can handle," McKean said to CNET News about the issue she raised at TED. "There's no program for anyone to go out and try to find all the words. People have been conditioned to be more or less content with what they've got." She has a point: many online dictionary sites are little more than digital replicas of their print predecessors.
As is often the case with TED, some pretty important people were listening in, including Silicon Valley venture capitalist Roger McNamee--now one of the investors in Wordnik, which McKean promptly co-founded with two lexicographers and an engineer. Now the Bay Area-based company has six full-time employees, and is launching with 1.7 million words in its directory.
McKean says she isn't too concerned yet about dealing with the pranksters and vandals who give Wikipedia its more-than-occasional headaches ("people have tended to be well behaved with us, and we're not sure how long that's going to last") and says that copyright issues shouldn't be too much of a problem ("there's about 400 years of precedent in terms of fair use in a dictionary"). Right now the priority is expansion. On the way, McKean said, are smartphone apps, a developer API, and a cleaned-up version of Wordnik for kids to use.
The site's design and depth of information leave a little bit to be desired (it lacks the smooth, words-meet-visuals feel of something like news aggregator Daylife), and McKean said that bringing more interesting and unexpected information to Wordnik is also on the agenda.
But Wordnik faces one of the same concerns that pretty much any information- or search-focused start-up does: what if the likes of Google create a competing product? McKean said that Wordnik's advantage is its team's dedication. "Nobody's going to have as much money as Google," she said, "but nobody's going to be as interested in this as I am and my lexicographer colleagues are."
Now check it out and go look up "bacon."
Few topics interest me more than space. Though I'll admit that I don't know nearly as much as I would like, it has always been my goal to learn about the universe. I bet I'm not alone. That's why I'm sharing this list of 18 space sites. They all offer something neat. And they're all informative.
Space sites
Amazing Space Though the site is designed for students, Amazing Space is a fantastic resource for anyone who wants to learn something about space. If you want basic information on topics such as gravity and black holes, the site offers it. If you want to gain some knowledge about Earth and how it was formed, you can learn that too. It's not as in-depth as some sites in this roundup, but it's not meant to be. Amazing Space is for the beginner.
Astroengine Each day, Astroengine sifts through studies and documents released by scientists around the world and publishes those that don't get noticed. For example, Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, might have a liquid ocean, according to a study published by scientists. Astroengine has a nice discussion on that. Few major sources do.
Astronomy Picture of the Day If you just want pictures of what's going on in space, look no further than NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Each day, the site is updated with one picture of space. Underneath the picture is an informative description of the image's significance. I go there every day to see what they'll display next. You should too.
Chandra The Chandra X-Ray Observatory from Harvard University continuously takes pictures of space phenomenon thousands of light years away. You can view all those pictures on the site. I'm amazed at the quality of the photos. If you want to see space outside of the solar system, this is the destination for you.
Daily Galaxy Daily Galaxy provides news and information about galactic events. There are also some videos that help you gain a better understanding of space. Daily Galaxy doesn't often stray beyond the Galaxy (thus its name), but you'll still find a wealth of information on the site. Check it out.
Hubble Site As you might expect, Hubble Site takes an in-depth look at the Hubble Telescope. From news to its latest image captures, the site has it all. You can even learn about how it works and how it helps scientists learn about space. The best part of the site is its galleries section. I literally spent over an hour last night looking through the beautiful images. The Hubble Site is fantastic. It's a must-see.
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's site is filled with space news. It also has updates on missions. But if you want to be entertained, you can spend hours perusing the site's images and videos depicting different solar systems and star clusters around the universe. NASA.gov even has interactive features that let you see objects in Space in 3D. You'll be blown away by NASA's resources.
... Read moreIt's a fun time for sports fans. There's the Super Bowl extravaganza on Sunday, and a few days after that, Major League Baseball's spring training starts up. March Madness is right around the corner and in a couple of months, all our favorite sporting pastimes will be in full swing.
Because of that, I've found four relatively unknown sports statistics sites that will provide you with all the sports research you need to make more informed decisions in your fantasy baseball league or make you look smarter with your friends.
Sports Data Hub isn't just a statistical hub for those who want information about a football player's performance over the past year; it provides users with an incredibly useful stack of information that narrows basic statistics down to its most detailed level.
Do you want to know how Peyton Manning (quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts) has performed in outdoor stadiums on Sunday afternoons during the month of November for the past four years? Sports Data Hub will provide that information.
That said, the site isn't just a directory of stats. Sports Data Hub also lets users share insight with others through the site's blog and forums.
The only problem with Sports Data Hub is that it currently only offers statistics for the NFL, and it has not indicated whether or not stats for other sports organizations will be coming soon. But since it's free with registration, it's definitely worth using if you want to find out which players will give you the best shot of winning each week in your fantasy football league.
SportsGenie, much like Sports Data Hub, tries its best to provide users with the opportunity to make more informed decisions in their fantasy leagues. But unlike its competitors, SportsGenie employs calculations using formulas and algorithms to make predictions on a player's future performance.
Once you sign up for SportsGenie, you're allowed to run scenarios on player performance and team variables to determine if you should start a player or bench him for someone else.
SportsGenie is updated daily with player statistics to help you make the most informed decision. In fact, the company claims that it currently has a database of more than 750,000 games that it uses as a frame of reference.
Unfortunately, SportsGenie isn't free. Upon registration, you only have access to one prediction. Subsequent to that, the company charges $20 per week for its service.
Sports Reference provides the most comprehensive statistical data I've ever seen. Ranging from baseball to football to hockey, the site caters to just about every sports fan and allows you to find information about any team, person, or coach for free.
To give you an idea of the scope of information Sports Reference currently provides, you need not look further than its Baseball page. The company's baseball statistics date back to 1871 for major league players, teams, and leagues. Minor league stats are available for 1992 to the present and minor league box scores are available back to 1952.
But Sports Reference doesn't just cater to baseball fans. The company's football page features every statistic and game result ever recorded in the NFL, including Pro Bowl selections and draft picks. Its Olympics page contains data for "every year, every athlete, every sport, every country, and every event." It's filled with more than 150,000 pages of statistics.
Sports Reference is easily one of the best places to perform exhaustive research on sports figures. It's huge, it's useful, and it's free. It's a winner.
Although it originally started as a college basketball site where users could find any statistic they wanted on hoops players, StatSheet has quickly grown into a hub for those who are looking for statistics on the NBA, NFL, and even high school basketball.
But the main issue facing StatSheet is that much of its data is still incomplete. If you're looking for college basketball statistics, StatSheet is an ideal destination. But so far, its NFL statistics leave much to be desired. In fact, its NFL page is populated mostly by 2008 data and little else.
Regardless, StatSheet provides exhaustive data on the world of basketball. Whether you're looking for scores, player statistics, or coach information, the site has it all. It even boasts a chart builder so you can compare multiple data points, and gives users the option of embedding the site's widget, which contains statistical information, into their own sites.
StatSheet still has some growing to do and right now, it's not ideal for those who want information outside of basketball. But if you're looking for basketball information, StatSheet is a great source. And it's free, so that makes it worth trying.
Can't get enough of sports? Good! Coming Thursday and Friday, we're going to take a look at how to stay updated on the Super Bowl without actually watching it--and we'll find other related online activities aside from the big game.
Google Maps and Google Earth are the centerpiece of NYCGo, a new information and reference project launched by the New York City government to provide resources to both visitors and locals. Wednesday's launch announced the debut of NYCGo.com, a Google Maps-fueled local search and reference site, as well as the unveiling of the renovated New York City Information Center a few blocks north of the tourist-heavy Times Square district.
NYCGo.com contains not just Google map and search data, but also travel deals from Travelocity and local content from what-to-do powerhouse Time Out New York, nightlife culture magazine Paper, the New York Observer, and eco-living guide Greenopia.
The information center, located on Seventh Avenue between 52nd and 53rd streets, is equally Googly. The city's technocratic mayor, Michael Bloomberg, even contributed a guest post to the official Google blog to announce it: "The Information Center features interactive map tables, powered by the Google Maps API for Flash, that let you navigate venues and attractions as well as create personalized itineraries, which can be printed, emailed or sent to mobile devices," the blog post explained. "Additionally, there's a gigantic video wall that utilizes Google Earth to display a 3D model of New York City on which you can map out personalized itineraries."
Bloomberg has been aggressive about promoting tech initiatives during his time in office, from a wind power plan (part of the much bigger "GreeNYC" project) and a city-run venture firm. Under his watch, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Google opened its New York satellite office, taking over several floors of the historic former Port Authority building downtown.
A side note: the video provided by Google shows the "interactive map tables" in the new information center, and they look a whole lot like Microsoft Surface units. But they aren't, a representative from NYCGo tells us. They're custom-made.
User-generated business reviews site Yelp has officially launched a U.K. edition, meaning that no business in England, Scotland, or Wales is safe any longer from the wrath of notoriously opinionated Yelpers.
Yelp had already gained a following in the U.K., the company said, because travelers bound for the U.S. use it to look up hotels, restaurants, bars, and the like. More than 100,000 of its visitors in the past month came from the U.K.
San Francisco-based Yelp, which accepts reviews of any business in the U.S. but also clusters businesses into subdirectories by city, quietly expanded to Canada several months ago. The company raised a fresh $15 million in funding early last year.
But the site's free-for-all, say-what-you-want nature may be under scrutiny: a Yelp reviewer was recently sued over a negative review of a chiropractor. If the lawsuit is successful, Yelp may have to crack down on particularly colorful reviews -- the content that has made it stand out from other business reviews sites.
Khosla Ventures, the venture capital firm launched in 2004 by Sun Microsystems founder Vinod Khosla, has led a $3 million Series A round for ZocDoc, a service for locating and booking doctors' appointments online.
ZocDoc is sort of like a cross between Yelp and Lifebooker--but with its focus on physicals, not facials. Members can search for nearby doctors, filter by insurance plan matches, find out what other members have had to say about them, and book the appointments through the site. Currently, it only serves the New York boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, but has plans to expand nationwide--that's what the funding is for.
"ZocDoc is addressing a real need in health care," Khosla said in a release Monday. He won't be joining the start-up's board of directors, but his partner David Weiden will. "The Internet has the potential to fundamentally improve access to care, and the company has gained initial traction towards this long-term vision," he said in the statement.
Plenty of much bigger names have been getting on the online health care bandwagon, but most of them have been focusing on medical records, not appointment booking.
(Credit:
Google Operating System blog)
Google Maps is starting to roll out a beta of walking directions in addition to driving directions, the Google Operating System fan blog noticed on Monday.
It looks like it's available to select users in select locations for the time being, and indeed, I can't access it from my Google account yet. It's also unclear whether this will get expanded to the mobile version of Google Maps, where the availability of walking directions would certainly help.
This sort of feature can be very useful in cities with lots of one-way streets, like New York, or with parks and thoroughfares that accommodate pedestrians but not cars. Currently, Google Maps directions may suggest an extremely roundabout route when a much more direct one is possible by walking or biking.
Google Maps, which recently expanded its partnership with mapping company Tele Atlas, notes to "use caution when walking in unfamiliar areas," which is Googlespeak for "don't blame Larry and Sergey if you get mugged."
Microsoft may be interested in acquiring Yell Group, the British-based parent company of directories like the U.K.'s Yellow Pages and the United States' Yellow Book, Reuters reported Tuesday. Yell isn't commenting, but shares of the company stock rose up to 5.4 percent amid the speculation.
Yell's properties do not include the U.S.-based Yellow Pages, which is operated by AT&T. Yell came to fruition with the debut of the British Yellow Pages in 1966, and expanded to the U.S. when it acquired Yellow Book USA for $665 million.
Yelp, the business reviews site famed for a vociferous user base willing to be brutally honest about the quality of their local restaurants, bars, bookstores, dog groomers, adult gift shops, and what-have-you, has launched a new service for those business owners to interact with the site's users.
Called "Yelp for Business Owners," the section of the site lets business owners register for special Yelp accounts, which they then need to verify by phone. Once registered, they have access to some analytics (namely to see how many people have been viewing their business page), receive e-mail alerts when they have new reviews, update public data like their hours of operation or contact information, and message the users who have already reviewed their business.
While Yelp will not charge for business owner accounts, it's a way for the company to get more eyes on its ad-supported site.
The service will likely have its biggest splash in San Francisco, where the start-up is based and where "Yelper" has become a mild pejorative among some restaurant and cafe owners.
Elsewhere, it might not have quite the effect. I live in New York, where the food and hospitality industries seem to have a bigger problem with influential food bloggers rather than reviews sites, and the IAC-owned Citysearch is still the online directory of choice for many.
