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Google Delivering Factual Answers
nam37 wrote in about a Macworld article which reads: "Google
Inc. on Thursday began delivering factual answers for some queries at the
top of its results page, to save users from having to navigate over to other
sites and look for the information. For example, if a user enters the query
'Portugal population,' Google returns the answer -- 10.5 million -- along with a
link to the Web page where the information came from, which in this case is the
population page of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook. The
query 'who is Jane Fonda?' triggers the answer '... is an Academy Award winning
American actress, model, writer, producer, activist and philanthropist' and
provides the link to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia's entry for the actress.
A small percentage of queries currently trigger these factual answers, but the
service, called Google Q&A, is in its early stages, said Peter Norvig,
Google's director of search quality."
This is no doubt a good service for users, but will it attract complaints from site owners like AFP?
Personally I would rather get the answer without going into a site and read through things to find it, and if I want to, I can click on the link and find out more from the site. However the content providers will certainly want you to come to their sites as soon as possible, look around and maybe explore other sections?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Try searching for "Who was the President of the United States in 1996" and you get Pat Choate. What a joke. Try it.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1%2F0&btnG=Go ogle+SearchAnswer?
what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? although it comes from the Calculator, not from Q and A.
My query:
"Which search engine is the best?"
Google's response:
"AskJeeves."
It doesn't answer one of the most important questions of our modern times:
"What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Basic research skills
Do not trust one source of information - always corroborate it with another source.
If one website says that the population of Portugal is 10.5 Million and another one says 20.5 Million, then there is obviously an error somewhere. If the second one says 10.1 Million, then you could probably live with the difference.
Of course, how many 'average users' trust everything they read on the internet blindly and would never think to question the information?
This sig is intentionally blank
Type in "pi" and you get "pi = 3.14159265"
5 10582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706 79821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081 28481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381 96442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190 91456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412 73724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364 36
EVERYBODY knows it's 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937
I hate it when they fudge data like that.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
answer:
"First Post!" is a phenomenon of Internet discussion groups (notably Slashdot and LiveJournal), where participants strive to be the first person to add a comment ("post") to a new article or discussion thread. The phenomenon is largely confined to sites that have reached a high degree of popularity, such that users are genuinely surprised to see an article without any associated comments. There is also the necessary condition that comments are displayed in chronological order (meaning the first ...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well I guess they really are out to do no evil, as this idea is completely counter-productive to the current way they make money, which is by essentially getting people to click paid for search results. If the answer i'm looking for is told to me right at the top, random people will be less likely to click "Find more Jane Fonda at Ebay.com"
Has there ever been a slashdot thread in which a first post and goatse were on topic and insightful?
Looks like google is the one playing catch up to microsoft this time. Microsoft search has had this feature since it was in beta. And it even gets teh president in 1996 question correct.
+ united+states+in+1996&FORM=QBHP
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=president+of
How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck If a Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood?
"As much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood"
Genius!
Probably old news to many but...
If you search for a title of a recent movie, or optionally add a ZIP code it will give you the aggregate out of five "star score" and a list of theaters and showtimes near you for the given film.
A search for "Robots 55419" yields the following:
Pretty damned handy if you ask me!
Also, doing "NWA 0355" yields the status of Northwest Flight 0355...there are similar little things for weather and even FedEx/UPS/USPS packages too.
Anybody aware of any other cools ones?
-AP
I realize the "Is there a god?" post was a joke, but I searched it on Google anyway just for a hoot, and I noticed something interesting...
If you search for "Is there a god?", Google informs you that it left the words "is" and "a" out of the search since they're so common. What's odd is that, if you just search for "there god?" (leaving out "is" and "a" like the search supposedly does), you get an _entirely_ different set of results.
What gives? It's obvious that Google actually IS processing those very common words and returning search results based on them despite claiming otherwise (since the exact phrases showed up in the respective searches, common words and all), but why would they go to the trouble of claiming that they're omitting search terms when they really aren't?
Maybe I'm just slow for not noticing this years ago, but I still find it intriguing.
Sounds to me like what you would say if your mouth was full.
(chomp-munch-chomp)
"So... mmf... Bill..."
(chomp-munch-gulp)
"Yuh?"
(crunch... chomp-munch-gulp)
"There god?"
(suck-chomp-munch)
"Ah'uh know."
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.