The Long March

For teachers and students, March is one of the most dreaded months on the calendar. People in the "time is money" corporate world might take issue with their complaint, but for those in education (except at universities) March means an endless month of five-day work weeks: no mid-winter or spring break weeks, not even a long holiday weekend to look forward to.

Yet, as a member of the corporate citizenship, in a marketing role no less, I have to bring a whole new outlook to events that dot my calendar: What’s the next big date to talk up? While March ranks low compared to other months like December, there are a few standouts that make this month newsworthy. Take St. Patrick’s Day, the vernal equinox and let’s not forget March Madness.

A stretch? Perhaps, but Answers.com did garner some press mentions for the events, nonetheless. The Carroll County Times and Detroit Free Press borrowed some St. Patty’s Day trivia from the answer engine, a blog pointed to Answers.com for info on spring, while the Charlotte Observer complimented the sports stats on the college basketball AnswerPage.

Speaking of compliments, Brainboost received one from Indy Star reporter Erika Smith. She tells readers to stop by the next time they have a nagging “Why” question.

OK — here’s two I’ve been wondering about lately: Why doesn’t big business take spring break? And why is the Atlantic 10 conference so bad?

Check and double check, all at Answers.com

We’ve all heard the cautionary tales that Wikipedia isn’t as accurate as some would have you believe. Scores of people abuse the openness of the system to insert their bias, promote false claims or just exact revenge.

Tom Taulli, a Wikipedia user, understands these pitfalls, and offers a solution: check your results against Answers.com. In a blog post called “Wikipedia’s false promise,” Taulli states:

“I always double-check things. For example, a good source for this is Answers.com, which licenses its content from well-established content sources.”

Let’s just chalk this up to better late than never: NYMag just picked up on the fact that the NYTimes website has AnswerTips capability. The author, Tayt Harlin, crows about the simplicity of the feature, but can’t understand why more people don’t know about this service (we don’t either). Must be why this was filed under the headline, “Point, Click and Tell No One.”

Did you know that March is Caffeine Awareness Month? Unfortunately, it is not an event Starbucks will be celebrating. It’s more of a crusade to raise awareness against the dangers of everyone’s favorite morning upper. Gary Puleo protested by touting some of the benefits of caffeine: it’s been shown to protect against Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cell damage in some studies, and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t cause high blood pressure. One thing that caffeine can’t do: cure a hangover. That tip came courtesy of Answers.com.

Need to decode some geek speak? Figure out just exactly what is comfort food? Why you’re being charged VAT? Or whether your second cousin is technically your third cousin? One place gets journalists the answers to these questions and more … Answers.com.

Lists, American Idol and TCEA Fans

WikiAnswers and AnswerTips continue to garner press a week after their initial coming-out. Barbara Quint wrote a piece early in the week on both features in a piece for InfoToday. The article highlights some of the positive feedback the tool has received, as well as some of the questions tools like AnswerTips raise for blog publishers.

Answers.com also made the cut on a couple of lists this week. In the Pensacola Journal, reporter Kate Peabody made a roundup of five hot sites on the web. Answers.com was listed second with this description:

Want fast facts? This free Internet site has it all. If you've got the questions, they'll most likely have the answers. Not only can you get help on topics such as health, technology and business, the site is user-friendly and a great resource tool for school work. I've used it about a dozen times to help my son with his homework and special projects

Then, Answers.com made an appearance on a list of 27 favorite Firefox add-ons.

Something to keep your eye on … hakia, a search engine, recently announced that it created an American Idol Search Guide. Putting your opinion of the singing reality show aside, it is interesting to note that in the press release hakia compared their service to that of Wikipedia. The company says:

“

Unlike Wikipedia or Answers.com, hakia Galleries(TM) presents pure Web search results which are neither edited by hakia, nor by the visitors.”

After visiting the site, I can see this search engine differentiates itself by categorizing, but it still just looks like links to me.

After attending the TCEA trade show, one attendee decided to post a blog about a couple of interesting companies exhibiting: Google and Answers.com. The blogger notes that comparatively one company is a “giant” and the other “a flea,” but sometimes bigger isn’t always better.

A News Triumvirate at Answers.com

Three big press releases came out this week from Answers.com on Tuesday.

The latest report of the day was the financial results for Q1. The release breaks down the numbers …so if you want to delve into the digits, check it out.

The news that got people’s tongues wagging, however, was the release of AnswerTips. The widget can now be added to any website or blog with just a small piece of code. Marjolein Hoekstra of CleverClogs and an early beta-tester for the product, marked the event by releasing another post about AnswerTips.

Other people just couldn’t seem to get enough of the tool, either. Take for instance Michele Lenta who runs WriteTech. She liked it so much, she added it to My Wine Education and her other personal blogs. Bary Welford also added it to three of his blogs: BPWrap, Stay Go Links, and the Other Bloke’s Blog. AnswerTips also showed up on Yvonne DiVita’s blog Scratchings and Sniffings and Bill Hartzer’s blog, plus many others, too numerous to mention in this post.

Then there were those who might not have installed it, but still talked about it. In the media, mentions were made in Adotas and iMedia. Internet Marketing Monitor, which named Answers.com as their Featured Search Engine in December, also did a great job reviewing the product for the company this week. Andrew, author of Changing Way, wrote about how he prefers the functionality of AnswerTips over Snap on websites.

But wait … AnswerTips was only the second piece of news released. The third announcement out of Answers.com this week is about WikiAnswers and its content being integrated on Answers.com. A copy of the press release appeared on the Online Marketing Guy website, while Loren Baker posted a report on Search Engine Journal where the comments also deserve a read.

Being an object of affection

Popularity might seem like something only high-schoolers strive for, but brands are always looking for status, as well. That’s why Answers.com was thrilled that they were ranked the 62^nd largest web property in the U.S., based on unique monthly visitors for the month of January by comScore. This compares to their ranking of 78 for December of 2006.

And talking about popular, AnswerTips, even though still officially unrealeased, has been like the cool new kid. As the tool has slowly slipped into the hands of bloggers, there have been some absolute raves. Case in point, the comments on Vivi’s Wine Journal: “OK, I’ve found the functionality that each and every wine blogger in the world should add to their blog. Its called “AnswerTips…”

MobileAnswers garnered some nice recognition for itself, too, this week. In a story from Adotas, the mobile service played a bit part in a story highlighting some of the obstacles for wide-spread adoption of the mobile web, the more popular apps online for mobile, as well as some neat sites outside of carriers’ offering. One of those mentioned is MobileAnswers, which according to the company, has been running faster and smoother than ever. MobileAnswers was also spotlighted in a blog post from Mobivity. The author tells his readers: “This is a really great service. There are some SMS tools out there that I’ve seen, but they don’t seem to work correctly, and charge a premium for each message.”

Back in September, Answers.com hooked up with School Bus Radio in an advertising deal. It seemed like a natural fit for the world’s greatest encyclodictionalmanacapedia to advertise with a service geared specifically to students. SBR, which officially launched in November, has since received flak from conservative activists balking at the idea of targeting kids with commercials. An article from Southern California newspaper Inland News, however, seems to highlight some of the positive responses from both bus drivers and parents in a district that recently adopted the service. Among its stronger points SBR does not play rap songs with questionable lyrics and per hour, there are less ads on SBR than on FM radio stations.

Quests and Culinary Insights

There is news this week that the quest for a natural language search engine is heating up. IT World reported that startup Powerset recently received funding from Xerox. While the article stated that natural language search will compete head to head with Google’s keyword based searches, the story also points to two other companies working to perfect the technology behind natural language search: Answers.com and Haika.

The numbers using Wikipedia make it obvious that it is adored by many, but it also seems to be a favorite among journalists … to take potshots at, that is. Exhibit 2,397: the recent article in Yale Daily News that snickers about a fake entry for “emysphilia” left on Wikipedia for several days. The result was that Answers.com and other sites picking up Wikipedia content propagated the false entry (the topic has since been removed from Answers.com).

Editorial Rant: Although Wikipedia is vulnerable to vandalism, the spirit of the site is to illuminate and enlighten people on a broad array of topics. Shame on Yale professors for 1) disseminating lies 2) bashing a site whose goal complements and correlates with their profession and 3) stooping to plain old graffiti.

Here are some things you might not know about Martin Beirne: He is a managing partner with Beirne Maynard & Parsons in Texas; His airline of choice is Continental; He recently visited Rome; His favorite website is Answers.com. Profiled in Law.com, Beirne shared these details and a few more.

Perhaps the Star Bulletin is feeding ideas to cooks looking for a romantic stay-at-home recipe for Valentine’s Day … nevertheless, there was a feature in the paper on how to cook the perfect roast. The secret: warm the rump to room temperature before cooking. Not exactly sure what room temperature is? Answers.com, the go-to culinary expert, stated it’s anywhere between 68 to 77 degrees — depending on how much one wants to pay for heat.

The Cynical Vegetarian also utilized Answers.com food knowledge in an article ranting about common (and nauseating) ingredients in food. While many of us don’t feast on mammal tissue, stomach lining and pig bristles, Answers.com shows proof that these ingredients do wind up regularly in our food … Bon Appetit!

1-Click: Perfecting Browsers

Looking to build the perfect browser? According to ComputerWorld, 1-Click Answers will help you near that state of flawlessness whether you use Firefox, Windows or Mac. The add-on was one of 46 mentioned in the article — and 1-Click was mentioned fourth. There’s no saying whether the applications were listed in order of preference, but I’d like to think it’s so.

Elsewhere, Answers.com had a quiet week in the news. However, it was interesting to see that a majority of mentions and links the site received this week were in comments posted in relation to other articles. For the most part, commentators scorned the accuracy of the reporter’s or another commentator’s statements by hurling the definition or some additional information at them, courtesy of Answers.com.

“Don’t you know what the meaning of ad hominem?”

“Are you so ignorant that you don’t possibly understand the concept of a wage price spiral?”

One blogger “El Johnny Cinco” keeps citing Answers.com, too. On “All in London”, he likes to use Answers.com for his Word of the Day feature… Cheerio, mate!

The Answers.com teacher newsletter went out on Wednesday, and by Thursday parts of it were already spotted online. SegaTech, for instance, shared the information Answers.com wrote on Black History Month with its readers.

Another blogger, Lemonade just happened upon Answers.com and felt compelled to spread the good news. Here’s a couplee of snippets from what she writes:

“I thought wikipedia was good, but wow, now I don't need to go through all the reference sites to find something; it's all in one place. It has so much stuff on there you wouldn't believe me if I told you, so check it out yourself.”