theReformed

I heard about a searching service recently that promises to "give more specific and relevant results". ChaCha.com attempts to give the web a personal shopper when looking for results. I always hit Google - never once in my life have I not been able to find what I need when using Google, but I like to test the waters with new web technologies so I thought I would give it a go.

I can imagine they get a lot of pranksters asking questions like "how can I steal my mom's credit card". However I posed a rather specific question to them (it was actually a problem I was having at work and was unsure of how to fix it).

My search was for: "Format or relabel drive in OpenBoot for Solaris"

I signed up for an account, started my "search with a guide" and the following conversation took place: 

Status: Connecting …Status: Looking for a guide …
Looking: …

Status: Marilisa has connected to help you with your search on format or relabel drive in OpenBoot for Solaris. Please wait while your guide searches for your results.

Marilisa: Welcome to ChaCha!

You: hello.

Marilisa: hi! can you explain thissearch so I can clarify it?

Marilisa: chacha thinks this is written in Italian! but I think this refers to a computer issue?

You: I have a SCSI drive that had an old BSD installation on it, Solaris won't recognise it as a Sun disk so I am trying to either format the disk or relabel it using OpenBoot on a SPARC machine.

You: yes it's a computer issue
You: I just need to locate the commands.

Marilisa: ok that helps; let's see
Marilisa: several links are pdf.

…. two minutes later - she posted a link…

http://www.theconsultant.net/archives/category/software/solaris/ 

You: that link you posted is a generic Solaris link. Solaris is a UNIX operating system.

You: I need a specific list of disk commands for OpenBoot.

… another two minutes go by

Marilisa: I am trying to send the pdf links but chacha doesn't let me.

You: right.

… another minute 

You: you know what I think I might just hit google myself.

After looking on Google for about 25 seconds I found this link to a forum post which answered my question perfectly.

http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5082643&start=0&tstart=0 

So as you can see from this, I most certainly did not get a more specific result. No offense to Marilisa, she was probably confused and had no idea what I was talking about. But the point I am making is that back in the original Web 1.0 boom we had all kinds of stupid and daft ideas popping up that were utterly useless and could never hope to make a penny in revenue. As the investors were pouring in the millions, they were falling straight back out the bottom and tumbling down the drain. This ChaCha service reeks of those wild and reckless Boo.Com days.

I honestly think that this time around there is a little more sense floating in investors and VC/Angel Investors, however we are getting dangerously close to the champagne-party-come-private-jet fest that crippled the industry last time round. It seems that people are panic building products that suck, just so they may be in with a chance of being bought out by Google or Yahoo! for $5billion in 3 months.Inventing solutions for problems that don't exist - and burning through billions whilst doing so. 

Looks like the 2.0 bubble is on the cusp of yet another pop.

Let's party like its 1999.