when you can’t search for an answer…

July 05, 2007

For a few years, I’ve been trying to remember the name of this restaurant I went to ten years ago or so. It was really fun, with an island theme and there was an actual plane (or part of one) inside the restaurant where you could sit and eat dinner. There are way too many restaurants in San Francisco, and too many matches to whatever search I could come up with about good places to eat near the airport. Fluther solved my dilemma in two days.

I had just checked back into fluther which has grown into quite a nice site. (I got an early peek at it last year, but it officially launched last week with an already thriving community.) I had asked “Why do we use the letter ‘g’ for a ‘j’ sound?” The answers were not as authoritative as my research into the history of the letter ‘c’ where I sought answers from professional linguists; however, if I’m fine with an answer as authoritative as one from a hallway conversation (perfect for my restaurant question), then fluther is a good solution.

The site has some nice features. It tracks my questions and answers and even recommends questions for me to answer. I wonder how it comes up with those (which aren’t about linguistics or restaurants with planes). It’s also good to see that they’ve started a blog, which really ought to have an entry about the origin of the name and maybe explain why they are interested in jellyfish photos.

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