Sunday, June 12, 2005

Answers.com: A Reference Search Engine

While reading the NYTimes article, "Enough Keyword Searches. Just Answer My Question.", I was introduced to Answers.com.

Answers.com prompts you with "Tell me about:", after which you type a term like "Neoliberalism" and you get something that looks like this:

neoliberalism: Definition and Much More From Answers.com

It basically goes and does a search at many popular reference sites on the Internet (like WikiPedia) and combines their outputs into one LONG page. I had already learned a lot about "neoliberalism" from WikiPedia, but Answers.com informs me that neoliberalism is "A political movement beginning in the 1960s that blends traditional liberal concerns for social justice with an emphasis on economic growth." Thus, I can start to see why "liberal" is used, though I think that the ways at achieving "social justice" by neoliberalism are not very "liberal" by today's standards (in America).

Anyway, the point is that Answers.com does a pretty good job presenting its search results. It's a good one to use if you'd like a pretty complete summary of a term, I think.

A better example might be:

quantum mechanics: Definition and Much Much More From Answers.com

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