January 13th, 2010 by Liz
ReferenceAnswers, the resident trivia wiz over at Answers.com, got a new look this week. Not to worry, it’s still the home of Today’s Highlights, where you’ll find newly updated trivia about today, every day.

So get going - find out today’s Answer of the Day, and what it has to do with… Patrick Dempsey!?
Posted in Feature of the week, What's new: Taking a closer look at the features that make our world go ’round.
Tags: library • reference • ReferenceAnswers • Today's Highlights • topics • trivia
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Pop quiz: What do you get when you mix ReferenceAnswers, new resources and awesomeness?
Answer: You get your questions answered (and a lot of homework help, too).
The content team behind Answers.com’s reference library has been adding more titles to bring you more great topics with quality info. And just in time for spring semester!
I’d like to highlight two of those today, if you please.
American Annals:
Speeches, essays, biographies, landmark court decisions, editorials, and more bring history to life. Noted contributors include Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the author of “America the Beautiful.”
Wordsmith Words: A.Word.A.Day is about the magic and music of words. AWAD includes a vocabulary word, its definition, pronunciation information with audio clip, etymology, usage example, quotation, and other interesting tidbits about words to subscribers every day. You can think of it as a word trek where we explore strange new words. Words are usually selected around a weekly theme.
Care to check out the entire reference selection? Leave your library card behind and click here.
Posted in What's new: The latest and greatest updates from Answers Corp.
Tags: academic • American Annals • library • reference • ReferenceAnswers • Wordsmith Words
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Today is the last day to vote for Answers.com in the Webware 100: Search and Reference category. Make sure you get your voice heard and make Answers.com a winner!
Posted in Company love, What's new: What everyone else thinks of us.
Tags: answers.com • cnet • reference • search • vote • Webware 100
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It’s that time of year… Time to vote in the 2009 Webware 100! That is CNET’s annual web awards to honor the people’s choice for best web apps, sites and services from a list of 300 finalists spread over ten categories.
More about the awards from CNET:
This year–the third year we’ve done the Webware 100–we had about 5,000 qualifying submissions from which we selected the final 300. These are 300 very strong Web apps, spread into 10 groups of 30 each.
And, like last year, Answers.com has been nominated and is a finalist in the Search and Reference category.
So what are you waiting for? Vote now and recognize your favorite encyclodictionalmanacapedia!
Voting ends on April 30th and winners will be announced on May 19th, so stay tuned.
Posted in Company love, What's new: What everyone else thinks of us.
Tags: answers.com • reference • search • vote • Webware 100
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February 22nd, 2009 by Liz
Our minds work in mysterious ways. Dreams are the way that our subconscious speaks to us. Did you dream last night? What was it about? Instead of staying awake and pondering what all those symbols in your dreams mean, you can now check out the Dream Encyclopedia and Dream Symbols on Answers.com to help you divine the meaning what’s going on.
Suppose that you dream about your dog lapping up honey while sitting on your necktie during a flight home… You can try and break it down like this:
It may mean that your subconscious is telling you to finish what you are doing and rejoin your old friends. This will free you up to pursue what you really want to do and allow you to succeed…
Or maybe not. Try it out and see if your dreams make any sense to you!
Posted in Feature of the week, What's new: Taking a closer look at the features that make our world go ’round.
Tags: answers.com • dream interpretation • dreams • reference • topics
3 Comments »
December 2nd, 2008 by Liz
After Answers.com made changes to its homepage, voices were raised, opinions were shared and feedback was heard. The following is a special blog post written by Bob Rosenschein, Founder and CEO of Answers Corp and all around answers-enthusiast:
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We value your feedback and critique of the new Answers.com design, so let me share some background with you.
Since 2005, we’ve been investing in crafting Answers.com® as the world’s best encyclodictionalmanacapedia™. We’ve licensed hundreds of editorial reference titles from top publishers, including Houghton-Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Gale, Britannica, McGraw-Hill, Columbia University, MarketWatch, AccuWeather, Wikipedia, and many others.
But we also wanted to add a personal touch. People sometimes want answers beyond reference entries, so in 2007 we added WikiAnswers.com™, which is a Q&A community based on the wiki concept: anyone can add to it, anyone can edit it. The result is a large and growing database of user-generated questions and answers. It is Answers.com’s sister site.
So here are a few thoughts on what we’re trying to accomplish with the new layout:
- Overall. Connect reference Answers.com and WikiAnswers.com better. Make them visually more similar – yes – with bright colors and a blatant box to type in your queries. It also means more cross-links between them. We think users of both sites will be enriched if they know about the other.
- Narrower right column. On Answers.com, we previously had a wide right column, showing several display advertisements in it. The new design has more white space and a narrower right column, with only one display ad. This serves users better by reserving more room for reference content.
- Page navigation. You’ll notice Page Contents on the left hand side of every Answers.com topic page. The idea is to make it easy to see and jump to the various reference sources on each page, without having to scroll down.
- Home page. What were we thinking when we took off Today’s Quote, Birthdays and Histories?! We heard you – and promptly put them back. You may have noticed that we removed an advertisement from our home page, and also put a list of our Reference Categories towards the bottom of the page.
This is a work in progress, so keep those cards, letters, and posts coming. We want your feedback.
Posted in What's new: The latest and greatest updates from Answers Corp.
Tags: answers.com • Q&A • redesign • reference • wikianswers
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It’s been dubbed an ‘integration’ of sorts by Search Engine Watch and a ‘cross-pollination’ by Answers Corps’ CEO…
Want to hear what I’d like to call the supposed plan to connect Answers.com and WikiAnswers more closely? The absolute, godly love between two concepts that care for each other deeply: Reference answers and community-generated Q&A.
Excuse the butterflies flying over my head; I just had to share the rainbows and puppies and fireflies that are skipping along in my brain.
Posted in What's new: The latest and greatest updates from Answers Corp.
Tags: answers • cross pollination • integration • reference • Reuters • Search Engine Watch
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