I learn the importance of reliability firsthand on a road trip to Northampton, on a sweltering July weekend. Passing by Springfield, I wonder — in my non-native Bostonian way — via text message, how the city became the state’s third most populated. Moments later I get this rage-inducing response from a ChaCha guide: “Probably because you are there, and who wouldn’t want to be near you?” Several times recently, I’ve texted ChaCha and received no response at all.
“Many of these guides are only interested in making a quick buck, which is why there are so many laughably bad search results,” wrote Jason Kincaid on the Washington Post’s TechCrunch blog on August 5, noting that the service seems headed for “implosion.” Kincaid discussed ChaCha’s “pay-for-performance system,” deeming its efforts to “trim their workforce down to a small army of accurate and hardworking searchers” a doomed idea that will only infuriate the guides.
Doomed or not, there’s no other way for a complete stranger to ask me honestly, “What should we eat for dinner?” I say, in my non-expert opinion, they should try my recipe for polenta.
Caitlin E. Curran can be reached at ccurran@phx.com.
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It was a sunny but brisk Friday afternoon in March when my bike was hit.
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Not to downplay this year's Pride Week or anything, but the annual weeklong mélange of events geared toward New England's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community is just one year shy of its 40th anniversary. Which makes it sort of like the night before Christmas.
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Rico swaggers down the aisle of the Art House Theatre in Provincetown, oozing confidence and brazenly flirting with the cheering women who’ve claimed every available seat for the sold-out show.
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The Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg have been scavenging Russian literature for 30 years now in search of suitably theatrical subjects.
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Andrew Watkins is having faulty-buzzer issues.
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The holiday season is traditionally a time of wonder and wastefulness.
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The world of snow sports merges with the world of art in completely unique way.
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"When you come to our show, you gotta dance. You dance however you want to dance."
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Last weekend I had a chance to check in on two important latter-day postmodernists, Susan Marshall and Seán Curran.
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I have a possible solution for the binge-drinking quandary: be more discerning about what you pour down your throat.
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Lifestyle Features
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