What About This and That?
By Lark Birdsong
Birdsong Research
About.com, (http://www.about.com/) has been around since 1996 and was acquired in March 2005 by The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT). About.com has over 600 expert guides that steer content. Currently, information is organized into several major categories for automotive, business and finance, computing and technology, electronics and gadgets, entertainment, food and drink, health and fitness, home and garden, jobs and careers, parenting and family, cities and towns, religion and spirituality, sports and recreation plus others.
Business Search Example
In the business and money section (http://www.about.com/money/) About.com is currently focusing on resolutions for the coming year and keeping your business goals on track. On the left navigation area you will find several sources for business practices and industries which currently show links to retail, metals, biotech, immigration and the government. This is a place to get started with information needs when your discovery is just starting and you want to gain an overview.
General Search Example
At this time of the year many people are taking a look at their caloric intake. If you want to gain some understanding of your food relative to calories and have a tool to structure and monitor intake there is a source in the health section of About.com (http://caloriecount.about.com/).
I am currently using it to monitor my caloric intake as I am Racing Across AMerica (RAAM) on a four women team in 2008 (http://www.coloradoflash2008.com) and want to be a lean as I can for the 3,000 plus mile race on my bike. I have found this site to be useful factually as well as motivationally with my eating habits. And yes I am waiting for more weight to drop off me as I just started counting calories a week ago and have lost about 1 pound.
About.com is a great site to bookmark and use when you are wondering about many things and need to get started with your research. One note is that you will have to navigate a lot of ads and sponsored links and the calorie count area took a bit of time for me to learn to use if productively.
Should you need assistance with information
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