<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type">
<title>OPLIN4cast (Template)</title>
<link rel="stylesheet"
href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/style.css"
type="text/css" media="screen">
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="The OPLIN 4cast RSS Feed"
href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/index.php/?feed=rss2">
<link rel="pingback" href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/xmlrpc.php">
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
/* To accomodate differing install paths of WordPress, images are referred only here,
and not in the wp-layout.css file. If you prefer to use only CSS for colors and what
not, then go right ahead and delete the following lines, and the image files. */
body { background: url(<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg">"http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg"</a>); }
#page { background: url(<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickbgwide.jpg">"http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickbgwide.jpg"</a>) repeat-y top; border: none; }
#header { background: url(<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickheader.jpg">"http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickheader.jpg"</a>) no-repeat bottom center; }
#footer { background: url(<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickfooter.jpg">"http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickfooter.jpg"</a>) no-repeat bottom; border: none;}
/* Because the template is slightly different, size-wise, with images, this needs to be set here
If you don't want to use the template's images, you can also delete the following two lines. */
#header { margin: 0 !important; margin: 0 0 0 1px; padding: 1px; height: 145px; width: 758px; }
#headerimg { margin: 7px 9px 0; height: 139px; width: 740px; }
/* To ease the insertion of a personal header image, I have done it in such a way,
that you simply drop in an image called 'personalheader.jpg' into your /images/
directory. Dimensions should be at least 760px x 200px. Anything above that will
get cropped off of the image. */
/*
#headerimg { background: url('<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/personalheader.jpg">http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/personalheader.jpg</a>') no-repeat top;}
*/
</style>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/plugins/podpress/podpress.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet"
href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/plugins/podpress/podpress.css"
type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/plugins/retaggr/retaggr.css">
<style type="text/css">
<!--#headerimg { display: none }
--></style>
<table width:="" 100%="" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td
background="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickheader.jpg"
height="147" width="760"> <br>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="color: black;">
<td style="vertical-align: top;"
background="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickbgwide.jpg"
width="760">
<div id="page"> </div>
<hr>
<div id="content" class="widecolumn">
<div class="navigation"> </div>
<div class="post" id="post-1285">
<h2><font color="#000000"><small><small><small><small><small><a
href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/index.php/?p=1285" rel="bookmark"
title="Permanent Link: OPLIN 4Cast #189: Online Q&A">OPLIN 4Cast #189:
Online Q&A</a></small></small></small></small></small></font></h2>
<div class="entrytext">
<p><a
href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/qa.gif"><img
class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1289"
style="margin-right: 4px;" title="qa"
src="cid:part1.09010702.00010903@oplin.org" alt="Q&A" height="81"
width="117"></a><small><small>You probably saw last week’s news about <a
href="http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=411795942130">Facebook
Questions</a>, but you might have missed the news that <a
href="http://www.ask.com/">Ask.com</a> also decided last week to quit
competing with Google as a general search engine and return to its
Q&A roots. Sprinkled into these news articles were lots of mentions
of other online Q&A sites. Will the library reference desk meet
this challenge?</small></small></p>
<ul>
<li><small><small><a
href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/facebook-questions/">Facebook
Questions officially launches</a> (Mashable/Ben Parr) ”Similar in
concept to <a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/">Yahoo! Answers</a>, <a
href="http://quora.com/">Quora</a> and <a
href="http://www.mahalo.com/">Mahalo</a>, Facebook Questions gives
users the opportunity to ask questions just by clicking the ‘Ask
Question’ button on the homepage.”</small></small></li>
<li><small><small><a
href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/28/facebook-qa-service-questions-begins-rolling-out-could-be-massive/">Facebook
Q&A service could be massive</a> (TechCrunch/Jason Kincaid)
”Facebook obviously isn’t going to ask your question to everyone else
on Facebook; instead, its system is going to try to analyze a user’s
interests to determine who would be best able to answer your question.
The service will also show the question to some of your friends, so
ideally you’ll receive answers from a healthy mix of friends and
experts (we’ll see how well it actually works).”</small></small></li>
<li><small><small><a
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/askcom_launches_qa_question_and_answer_service.php">Ask.com
gets back to its roots</a> (ReadWriteWeb/Frederic Lardinois) ”Ask.com
is getting back to its heritage by launching a new question and answer
service that mixes results from Ask.com’s search engine with answers
the company found on other Q&A sites and the ability to address
questions to the Ask community directly. The end result feels a bit
like a mix between Bing, Yahoo Answers, Quora and <a
href="http://vark.com/">Aardvark</a>.”</small></small></li>
<li><small><small>The <a
href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704256304575321070429328364.html">new
Q&A businesses</a> (Wall Street Journal, June 22) ”Their efforts
illustrate the continual evolution of Web search, which is constantly
adapting to new content. Once capable of spitting out links to
websites, search engines now directly yield results like photos and
videos and maps. Yet even search leaders like Google acknowledge Web
search falls far short of its goal of delivering any answer to any
question.”</small></small></li>
</ul>
<p><small><small><strong><em>Ironic Fact:</em></strong><br>
The Quora online Q&A service was started by a group of early
Facebook employees, including Facebook’s first CTO.</small></small></p>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;"
background="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/themes/4cast/images/kubrickfooter.jpg"
height="62" width="760"> <br>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>