• The Chicago Tribune's Steve Johnson offered an astute look at Google Answers, as well as a nice plug for Ask MetaFilter, last week. The site requires an exasperating login, but the good news is you can also find the piece without a registration Hypertext blog. (Yay, it's a TypePad blog!)

A more enticing Ask is Ask MetaFilter (ask.metafilter.com), which also poses questions to a user community. The longstanding site is highly entertaining reading because it gets metaphysical, although the drawback is that it'll cost you $5 to join the MetaFilter community.

While Yahoo Answers is more about facts, Ask MetaFilter, in its best moments, is about feelings, opinions, theories of life. A recent, not atypical question: "Did you marry someone despite misgivings and have it actually work?"

• One trope that's rapidly gaining currency among lazy resourceful young professional bloggers is to collect Ask MetaFilter answers about a topic of interest. MediaBistro collects writing advice; LifeHacker collects, well, life hacks.

• Last week, NPR's Five for Friday gave some love to the site, too.

The best answers on Metafilter are those that provide an Aha! moment -- like the obscure book you remember from childhood, only you can't recall the title. Someone will know. And when you want to find the best (used book store/pancake joint/park) anywhere in the world, chances are that one of Metafilter's thousands of members will tell you exactly where to go. So if "Five for Friday" didn’t give you the right mix of ideas for weekend fun, go ahead, ask Metafilter. We won’t be insulted. And we may even give you the answer.

• If you want to see what other prominent Q&A sites look like, look no further than Amazon's Askville (Yay, another TypePad blog!) and Yahoo! Answers. There are some great things about both sites, but neither really holds my attention, at least so far.

• And then the absolutely funniest Ask MetaFilter-related link: MetaFilter spinoff site MetaChat's hysterical conversation about the worst, most blatantly trolling Ask MeFi questions possible. They're offensive, insulting, intellectually dishonest, and wonderful. Even better, after being discussed on MetaFilter, an enterprising site member actually submitted some of the ridiculous questions to Yahoo Answers. Hilarity ensues!

How long can a normal, healthy 8 week old kitten survive inside an adult python? URGENT?

I am fairly certain that the python did not chew much. I also do not want to damage the python much.... what is the best strategy for rescuing the kitten?

The answers are a lot better than the questions.