The Know it Alls

 

By David Shamah, The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 18, 2005

 

It seems to be a principle in life: You have to go through extraneous stuff to get to the good stuff. Life is like an orange; you've got to peel through the tough, orangey interior, working and sweating and peeling, but finally you get to the sweet, sweet inside. Speaking of oranges, did I ever tell you that I used to work in an orange juice factory, until I got canned? Yeah, they put the squeeze on me, said I couldn't concentrate. You know, same old boring rind over and over again.

 

See what I mean? You open up the paper and expect to read about some edifying computer thing, but instead you have to get through some ancient jokes that went out with vaudeville. Well, that's life; vaudeville's coming back, and I intend to be ready. Watch this space for more spiffy one liners!

 

Anyway, back to getting to the juicy inside of things; as we mentioned last week, proper Googling (now a real word, according to http://www.wordspy.com/words/google.asp) can help you get to the nuggets of data you seek while cutting through the extraneous dross.

 

Ah, but not all of us are so focused. Some of us wander off topic when we see an interesting idea or term on a Web site, wanting to know more about whatever is piquing our interest. Like when I was writing my orange routine – I finally found out what that tea my great grandpappy used to mix up in the still (he was from Arkanas) – it was Orange Milkweed, which I further researched and discovered is a perennial that is used in folk medicine. And speaking of the hill folks, you know what a "mouse pad" is? Hippie talk for a rat's nest!

 

I gotta stop this, but I can't, because I'm having too much fun finding new jokes – and information – using the now-free Answers.com 1-Click Answers toolbar. The truth of the matter is that 1-Click Answers was designed – and can certainly be used – to get quick and easy definitions on specific terms, ideas and people. But if you have a creative mind and like to wander around the Web, 1-Click Answers, which will lead you to pages collated by the Answers.com Web site, will keep you busy for hours, too.

 

The 1-Click Answers toolbar, when installed, remains available in all applications, so you can check information no matter what you are doing (you can also install it as a toolbar in IE or Firefox). In addition, you can also highlight terms in any document and click on a key/mouse combination (like alt + left mouse click); in any case, searching from the toolbar will open an Answers.com Web page (http://www.answers.com) with information about your subject from as many as 100-some sources, including several on-line dictionaries, biography and investment sites, almanacs, image databases, and the ever-growing Wikipedia, an encyclopedia built on user definitions and contributions. The answers you get are contextual, as well; alt-clicking or searching the name of many cities will get you weather reports, links to maps, links to Web pages of companies located in the city, etc.

 

So, just what is 1-Click Answers/Answers.com? It's not a dictionary or encyclopedia or atlas or Web search engine; it's a little bit of all those. In essence, it's a human-edited guide; the people behind the system are people, not automatic link spiders combing the Web for data, and they make sure the links presented by the system are classified and organized in ways that make sense to users searching for information. If you're looking for specific facts, such as the date of a certain event or biographical information about historical figures, the 1-Click Answers/Answers.com system will make your life easier than a Google search, even using all the fancy search tools we mentioned last week (a full list of 1-Click search techniques can be seen at http://www.answers.com/main/howdoi.jsp).; instead of being presented with millions of Web pages to choose from, you'll get the essential information on a single Web page, which will give you link options to other Answer.com or external pages that will supply you with more or alternate information.

 

If Google is a search from the bottom up –where you are presented with all the options that might interest you on individual Web pages – Answers.com is a top-down system, where you are provided with the concise data you're most likely looking for on a single page; and your page has links which will send you on to other sites with more complete information, should you need it. The benefit here is obvious; instead of slogging through information peripheral to your search – which you can't avoid on the vast majority of Web pages – the data you need is laid out right in front of you on a single page.

 

That top-down search system is what makes Answers.com more fun than Google, as well; you get the info you're looking for, but you can drift more deeply onto the same topic or a related one by clicking the definition page's links. I not only found out about oranges in my search for orange jokes, but also links to about a dozen places name Orange, William of Orange, orange aromatherapy, orange blossom honey, and of course the aforementioned orange milkweed.

 

There's more fun to be had with the 1-Click Toolbar; you can have it send you a daily info popup with today's historical events, anniversaries, birthdays, and the top definitions other Toolbar users have been alt + left clicking, as well. And you can also access the system's database without searching at http://www.answers.com/main/what_content.jsp.

 

Faced with an information powerhouse like this, one tends to think of comparisons to other information powerhouses – like Google itself – and rate the two. The more imaginative –or bloodthirsty - among us might think that there was some kind of information supplier war coming up between Answers.com and Google. Which, normally, we Average Joe Web researchers wouldn’t care about. But the prospect of a drop down drag out fight between powerhouses appeals to the savage that lurks in all of us – besides holding the promise of material benefits. Maybe one or the other will give us goodies if we use their system!

 

Fugeddaboutit (a term listed on Answers.com, by the way); while pundits, plebes and pishers may be licking their chops over the potential digital bloodshed, Gurunet (the sponsors of Answers.com) and Google are already friends. If you do a search for a term on Google, you will see a link for "definition" (it's usually on the very top of the page) – which will lead you to the Answers.com information page about the subject! The two systems truly work not in competition, but in tandem, with both having different strengths (what each cannot do as well as the other is not a 'weakness,' because they both have different approaches to organizing information). Google does much better in searches for multi-word concepts, ideas, and terms not usually associated with each other. For example, I did a search on both for "mouseover text" +create; I found what I needed on the first Google page, while Answers.com politely told me that I was looking in the wrong place. On the other hand, if you don't know what a mouseover is in the first place, you'll find exactly what you need at Answers.com (or, as mentioned, by clicking the 'definition' button on the top of your Google search page with results for the term, which will lead you right to Answers.com), while Google's Web page results will probably only confuse you even more.

 

Answers.com and Google are alike in another important aspect – the way they support themselves. Google has been using "sponsored links," called AdWords (http://www.google.com/ads) next to your actual search results for several years; advertisers pay big bucks to have those sponsored links listed on the top page of results (do a search for "Vioxx lawsuit" at Google.com and see what shows up on the right side of the page). Answer.com's pages have the same structure, but so far have fewer sponsored links, probably because the service has only recently become advertising sponsored (it was a pay service until the end of last year). Hopefully, they'll be able to keep up being supported by ads, because it's not every day these days that someone comes up with a freebie this good.

 

All in all, if you’re looking for quick, clean data that brings you the facts front and center, Answers.com is the way to go. Like for my comedy career – my 1-Click search told me there was actually a knock-knock joke featuring the word "orange," which I will be incorporating in my act. I won't put that one on paper here, though; if you want to hear it, you'll have to pay to see my upcoming vaudeville debut (I'll be channeling the ghost of Molly Picon to help me out at the show, too).

 

Download 1 Click Toolbar free from http://www.answers.com. Requires Windows 98 or Mac OSX 10.2.8 or better.

 

 

ds@newzgeek.com