Do you remember the post from a while ago called “How I Get Almost Any Question I Have Answered Using The Internet“?  Well, last night a quick question came up so I figured I give a working example of how I come across answers.

Well, there were actually two questions: “Is the idea that it is unhealthy to eat right before bed a misnomer?” and “Was ‘misnomer’ used correctly in that sentence?”  Here is what I did to answer those two questions.

1. Define: Misnomer – to do this, I headed over to Wiktionary.com
   • Enter “wiktionary” into address bar and hit Ctrl+Enter (a nice little short cut I learned from my friend George Carpenter):
     
   • Type “misnomer” into search box provided:
     
   • Wictionary.com gives the list of possible definitions and gives examples of each.  Then, as you can see, it gives “Usage notes” giving possible usages of the word (very handy for getting a feel of the many ways a word can be defined and used):
     
2. Research: Is it really unhealthy to eat right before bed?
   • I hit Yahoo.com up for this answer (I know, I know, Google is better!  I’m still using Yahoo for this example!):
     
   • I entered “eating befor bed” into the search field (I put the words in quotes so yahoo would search for occurrences of the phrase):
     
   • I then got a list of sites containing the phrase I was searching for.  The first link seems like it might have some answers:
     
   • As you can see from this screen shot, this site breaks the answer down for us:
     
     • Does the Timing of Meals Matter?
     • Timing of Meals and Weight
     • Other Health Effects
     • Eating at Night: a Real Disease?
     • The Bottom Line

There you have it, a quick example of how easy the internet makes it to find answers!  Please remember, when doing research, it is always good to find multiple sources of information to get more of a consesus of whether or not an answer is accurate.  For more tools for researching answers, revisit “How I Get Almost Any Question I Have Answered Using The Internet“!

Have a question?  Most people will tell you to go Google it.  Well, today there are many different places you can look to find answers.  Today I would like to list a couple of the places I go to find answers.  There isn’t any specific order and the list is not exhaustive or complete but hopefully it will be of some help to you.

1. Yahoo Answers – There are several answers communities out there but this is one of my favorites.  You can obviously ask a question and receive answers from other members of the community but the easiest way is to do a search to see if someone else has already asked the same (or similar) question.
2. Yahoo Search Engine – The same way someone “Googles” and answer, I “Google” using Yahoo (or call it “Yahooing” something).  I use different combinations of quotation marks and plus signs to help to narrow the results.
3. Yellowpages.com - I can’t remember the last time I actually used a physical phone book!  For residential numbers, try whitepages.com or anywho.com (on the Reverse Lookup page, you can search by phone numbers and find the owners).
4. DIY (do it yourself) websites - On pages like Instructables.com and ehow.com, you can learn how to do almost anything yourself.
5. Wikipedia.org – As the best known, probably most used online encyclopedia, most of you have heard of wikipedia.org.  Here we have a great source for information about almost any topic.  Wikipedia is run by an army of volunteers and seems to be quite exhaustive.
6. Dictionary.com - need a concise definition, try a dictionary site and what better site is there than Dictionary.com?
7. Lifehacker.com – As the site itself exclaims, “Tips and downloads to get things done.”  You can find all kinds of tips and tricks for computing and life in general and I am finding myself turning here more and more often in order to find answers.  It’s fun to browse through too!
8. Techie friends – OK, I know this isn’t a specific website BUT it is a source of answers for me.  Everyone needs some friends who are tech-savy to turn to when things get rough.  I have many good friends that are computer nerds, geeks, or just all around sharp that are great places to turn when I need help.  Find a tech-friend today (and show your appreciation!).

Well, here’s a few sources that I turn to when looking for answers.

While looking for answers online, always use good sense and investigative techniques.  Obviously not all information online is reliable.  Much of it is opinion and from specific viewpoints and sometimes is even outright dishonest or mistaken.  Use multiple sources and try to view the information from the standpoint of the source.

All that said, where do YOU find answers online?  I love to find great places for research and learning!

A few weeks ago I made a post about receiving free directory assistance and one of those ways was to call -800-GOOG-411.  Today I came across another awesome service by Google: Google SMS for your phone!

The process is quite easy.  All you do is text your search to 466453 (“GOOGLE”) and Google will text back an answer for you!  First try texting “help” and you’ll get a list of helpful hits.  Here’s the video demo from the site:

Note: As being one who finds text messaging in general to be pointless (until I found this), I do not have unlimited texting on my phone so I have not tried this yet (by the way, if any of my friends or family read this, I don’t mean to offend you but if you ever text me, I probably won’t reply).

That being said, please leave a comment if and when you DO try this and let me know how it worked for you!

I originally heard about this on the how2dostuff blog.