So you have Wikipedia – the user contributed encyclopedia, Google – the generic search engine and Bing – the decision engine to find out instant answers and information. These are good sources to find out factual information like the weather, How-To’s etc. However, if you need an answer/pointer to a question that has no definitive answers, the seemingly non semantic search/information portals fail.So, recently after reading this article, I posted the following question on Twitter, Aardvark & the latest buzz Quora.
Question : When do you draw a line that a project is not ambitious anymore but foolhardy ?
Responses :
Twitter : Venkatesh Rao (check his acclaimed blog RibbonFarm ) replied about half an hour after I tweeted. But again, the response depends on seemingly arbitrary parameters like who’s logged into twitter, timelines, who are your followers, whether the question gets retweeted and so on. Not the best option unless you are aplusk.
Quora : Quora is a one stop portal for questions exactly like this. Various experts can opine and both the questions and the answers can be edited endlessly. I got a reply from a seasoned veteran about his experience and how he tried to resolve the situation. Very useful. But the problem was the question had already been re-drafted to
When should you stop working on a project that may be ambitious but has very little chance of success?
Aardvark : Aardvark is a social service that connects users to answer their questions. The reply was almost real time from a CXO level executive. When I posed a corollary, the reply was again almost instant. The site has nifty featured like asking questions through IM, email etc.
So next time you have such a question, try it on Aardvark.
Note : Though the comparison of the three services mentioned is like apples to oranges, the attempt was to reach out to the community and get a ‘satisfactory’ answer.