answers

'Human-powered' search engine Mahalo is hoping capitalism can solve the spread of inaccurate information online. It's launching a new question-and-answer service where the questioner pays whoever gives the most helpful reply. Mahalo (Hawaiian for ... 'Thank you') is a search engine where all results are produced by humans (paid freelancers) rather than a computer index. While this clearly can't compete with Google's convenience and depth, the idea is to produce more credible and authoritative results for the most common topics. The new service is a take-off of sites such as Yahoo answers and Wiki ... (view more)

Last week, I wrote about a new, free service called answers.com that offers '1-click answers to 1 million topics at your fingertips.' Since the article was published, I've received a number of positive emails. Infopackets Reader Dawn B. writes: " ... Dear Dennis, Recently, my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I have been scouring the Internet for anything I could find pertaining to his illness, but was discouraged by all the irrelevant pages and 'page not found' errors. After I read your article on answers.com, I decided to give it a try. Let me tell you -- I was completely amazed! ... (view more)

Question: aside from Google, what's the coolest and the most quickest way to get definitions and explanations for over 1 million topics, including persons, places, and things? Answer: Answers.com. No kidding! Powered by GuruNet technology, ... Answers.com acts much like a hybrid Internet-based Encyclopedia and Search Engine all-in-one on steroids. As opposed to standard search engines that serve up a list of links for you to follow, Answers.com displays quick, snapshot answers with concise, reliable information and incorporates content from "over 100 authoritative encyclopedias, dictionaries ... (view more)