Idea: iagity.com

Perhaps you've heard of lmgtfy.com. It provides you a snippy answer ("let me Google that for you") when someone asks a question that could easily have been answered with a Google search. I find that pretty annoying myself, especially when there are obvious search terms (often embedded in the question itself) that would seem likely to produce relevant hits.

Them: Where can I find the Moriarty sample code?

You: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=moriarty+sample+code

The link goes to an animated page that literally spells out for the questioner how they could have done their own Google search if only they hadn't been so clueless and/or lazy.

But now let's turn that around. What if you're the one with the question, and you've already tried the obvious Google search and there were either no helpful results or too many results for you to pick a good answer? Or you have a feeling you could find the answer with the right search terms, but none of the searches you tried was quite right?

To take the example above — if you'd seen Apple's Moriarity code mentioned somewhere, you might easily misremember it as "Moriarty", as in the name of Sherlock Holmes's archenemy. (Remember an early precursor of Spotlight was called "Sherlock".) You might easily search for the "wrong" thing and wonder why the heck the "obvious" Google search didn't work.

Enter iagity.com. It would present a page that says "I already Googled it, thank you", followed by a link to the Google search you tried.

You: Where can I find the Moriarty [sic] sample code?
http://iagity.com/?q=moriarty+site%3Aapple.com
http://iagity.com/?q=moriarty+sample+code

Them: Google for "moriarity sample code". Note the extra "i" in "moriarity". You could also have found it by Googling for "moriarty" on developer.apple.com instead of apple.com.

By providing an "I already Googled" link, you can pre-empt the wise guys whose first instinct will be to send you an unhelpful "let me Google" link. With two clicks they'll be able to see for themselves why the search you tried didn't work for you. If they have a helpful suggestion of what to Google for, they can tell you to Google for it. But they can't accuse you of not trying.

The iagity home page should provide a bookmarklet that I can add to my Favorites bar. When I'm looking at Google search results, I should be able to click the bookmarklet and it should convert the Google search URL to an iagity URL. I wish lmgtfy.com had such a bookmarklet, because when I tell people to Google something I usually Google it myself first. (Before you tell me http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lmgtfy+bookmarklet — I already Googled it, thank you. There are bookmarklets, but I haven't found one that does what I described.)

As of this writing, iagity.com is available. I might take it, but I'm behind on so many things already. If someone wants to beat me to it, knock yourself out.

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