Answerbag

When you have a burning question but Web search results won't do the trick and your friends don't have a clue, Answerbag might help cut to the chase. This free, Web-based question-and-answer service covers both wacky and sober subjects. It's unique for letting you attach images and YouTube or MySpace videos to posts. However, as Answerbag's user base is smaller than that of Yahoo Answers, prepare to wait patiently for replies.

The bright interface of Answerbag is a cross between that of the cute Yahoo Answers and the less playful Windows Live QnA beta. Just sign up with your e-mail address, then verify via e-mail, and you can start using Answerbag immediately. Answerbag organizes new items, video answers, and staff picks in easy-to-manage tabs. Contextual text ads are embedded within the page, but they're low-key. Of the various question-and-answer services we tested, we found Answerbag to be the most fun to browse. That's partly because unlike Windows Live QnA beta and Yahoo Answers, Answerbag lets you attach videos and images to illustrate queries. We found a decent egg-scrambling video, but another query asking about gravy merited only off-color humor videos rather than recipe help.

As with any peer-moderated service, Answerbag is only as useful as users make it. You can choose a category and subcategories (such as Arts, Outside the Bag, or Travel) from drop-down menus, as with Yahoo Answers. Health and Fitness, Social Sciences, and Recreation and Sports are the most popular areas of interest. We found some practical advice on cars and computers by wading through Answerbag's wide range of topics. In an emergency, can you use a car battery as a heart defibrillator? Actually yes, said one Answerbag user. When we asked whether paper or plastic grocery bags were "better," the replies trickled in, one-by-one, over several hours. The same question in Yahoo Answers yielded 18 responses in a mere 10 minutes, but most of them were junk. We like that Answerbag allows an unlimited reply time; Yahoo and Windows Live cut your question off after a matter of days.

Answerbag's subcategories, such as Crazy Thoughts and Pondering Time offer plenty of space for silly stuff, such as, "Has anyone ever been beaten up by the Easter Bunny?" You can flag replies as useful or not, or as offensive, and quickly look up other users by their useful or non-useful answers, among other criteria. Answerbag supposedly shuts out the under-13 crowd, and it seemed less cluttered by juvenile content than Yahoo Answers can be. Still, there are plenty of wisecracks on Answerbag, such as one reply to, "Is being on a computer every single day harmful to the computer?" Answer: "Depends how much you weigh." And social services such as this can attract lonely souls. For instance, we ran across a grateful post from a person who had been looking for "the least painful way to commit suicide" until fellow users had sent a flurry of concerned replies.

We like that you can post queries to Answerbag without displaying your real name. Profiles within Windows Live QnA, on the other hand, link to its users' Windows Live Spaces accounts. Your detailed personal profile page shows the status of your activity in addition to peer rankings. You earn a letter grade based on what other users think of your content. You can also comment on specific replies without posting your point as a new answer. And you can subscribe to answers for any question by e-mail or via RSS to feed into a newsreader.

Answerbag's help page offers a searchable list of topics and lets you post questions to receive replies from peers about using Answerbag.

Overall, Answerbag can be a fun diversion or a helpful resource. We're interested to see whether the video feature, which was introduced this summer, might get more practical use.