How to: Find how to

The interweb is chock full of information about anything and everything you can imagine. All of this can be overwhelming to the average user. In an effort to cut through the overload, a number of sites have emerged that attempt to catalog answers to simple everyday questions. These sites generally fall into 2 overlapping categories:

1. Question and answer - Lets you submit questions that are usually answered by other users or content experts. The answers are usually rated by the community. The questions can vary from why does a microwave oven heat food unevenly to what is the medical term for bad-breath. [Yahoo Answers | Live QnA]
   
2. How to - A smaller subset of the question and answer category that provides clear, step-by-step instructions on how to achieve a specific and narrow goal. For example, how to tie a tie.
   

Lets discuss the latter category in detail.

eHow

A database of over 20,000 articles, professionally written providing clear and concise instructions on how to do just about anything. Articles are organized into categories such as Business & Finance, Health, Computers, and Pet Care making it easy to find the answer you are looking for. You can rate, comment, print and email articles. eHow goes the extra mile by listing all the items you will need to get the task done upfront in addition to tips such as those for avoiding common mistakes.

eHow

weHow

eHow's sister site, where you can share your expertise or specialized knowledge with the rest of the world. weHow provides a platform for you create your profile to answer questions and get your ideas out there. Articles are organized in categories similar to eHow. You can rate, comment, print and email articles. The article is laid out similar to eHow with a stuff you will need section and a tips and warning section. You can browse profiles to see general information about the user, the articles they have written as well as the comments they have made.

weHow

wikiHow

Another eHow sister site with emphasis on collaboration. wikiHow contains over 13,500 articles as of this writing. wikiHow aims to create new content and improve existing content through your contribution by allowing you to edit and update articles submitted by others in the community. Just like Wikipedia, they expect the quality of these articles to rise as multiple users refine the content. wikiHow publishes a set of guidelines for participating in the community. The articles contain the usual set of steps, tips, and warnings. In regular wiki style, you also get to see the changes made to an article as well as the list of articles that link to it.

wikiHow is different from weHow in that weHow allows you to completely control the content of your article whereas on wikiHow the content belongs to the community and you are one of many editors on a given article.

wikiHow is different from its sisters because it is the only one in the network that

1. Is being slowly translated to other languages.
   
2. Provides an RSS feed of How to of the day.
   

wikiHow | wikiHow International | wikiHow RSS

The above network of how to sites are good for the written medium. Some how tos lend themselves better to the visual medium.

ViewDo

ViewDo is an aggregation of instructional videos submitted by its users. You can showcase your talent with the videos you submit. The videos are organized into categories such as Arts & Crafts, Electronics, and Fitness. ViewDo encourages you download videos to your portable media player, such as your iPod, so that you can watch the video while you are doing what you are doing. They even make this ridiculously easy by offering 1 click download to your portable device or iTunes. Each video is preceded by an advertisement that helps monetize the site. Additionally, you get the usual fixings of a web 2.0 service such as code for embedding, email sharing, comments, rating, and playlists. ViewDo provides RSS feeds for its newest videos.

ViewDo | ViewDo RSS

VideoJug

VideoJug is "Life explained. On film." through submission of user generated videos. The videos are categorized into very general topics such as Food, Drinks, and Health with subcategories to help you navigate to the video you are looking for. For example, the Food category is further sorted by cuisine, dish type, and ingredient making it easy for me to find Indian cuisine how to videos, soup type videos, and how to videos containing fruits. VideoJug is unique in that the videos are accompanied by text instructions. Although step-by-step written instructions are not required, they are definitely a plus in videos that provide them. Videos can be rated, tagged, shared by email, embedded, commented on, as well as downloaded to your iPod, PSP, or another portable media player. There are no RSS feeds for new videos so you will have to check back on the site for the newest or the most popular videos.

VideoJug

If you find any other instructional sites, text, video, or otherwise, share it in the comments.

Tags: ehow, wehow, wikihow, viewdo, videojug, howto