Dan Wood: The Eponymous Weblog

Somebody wrote me and asked if I could post some suggested alternatives to Watson, so that even after tools 'break' in Watson, while we patiently wait for Sun to release Watson's successor, users can still access the information. So that is what this post is about.

First off, take a look at the Web sites that Watson tools are connecting to. You can find this under the 'Tool' menu when a given tool is selected. This is a good starting point. Bookmark the sites that you find useful. And, dare I say it, you can always break out Sherlock and give that a spin. It's slow, but at least it works for the most part.

• Amazon, PriceGrabber, VersionTracker, Meerkat, Google — these aren't expected to go out of service in the forseeable future.
• Epicurious and RecipeSource — these directly correspond to surfing Epicurious and RecipeSource.
• Movies — Try MovieFone or Fandango. Or marvel at Sherlock's movies channel.
• Weather — Try Weather.gov (and bookmark your location) or The Weather Channel.
• Reference — Use the king of reference sites, Bartleby.com.
• TV Listings — Watson uses TVGuide.com, but you may have better luck using Zap2It, or TitanTV — especially the latter if you have EyeTV.
• Packages — Rather than going to the individual sites, try a web-based aggregator such as PackTrack, or the Mac application PackageTracker.
• Phone Listings — Sites with phone listings abound; there are many used by the Watson tool, too many to list here. Just use the Tool menu to see what's appropriate for your country. Or use Google.
• Translation — Unfortunatly I haven't seen an alternative way to access multiple language translation sites like Babelfish, FreeTranslation, Intertran, Lycos, in one easy package. So just use the Web sites listed here.
• Image Search — To be honest, I just use Google's image search these days. They have a good enough selection for me!
• Stocks — There are many web sites that will look up stocks for you; some provide real-time quotes but most are delayed. A simple suggestion would be to use Yahoo and set up a portfolio.
• eBay — I don't have any specific suggestions, but VersionTracker lists a number of eBay clients. Any recommendations from our readers?
• Zip Codes — USPS's site.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve this list, please leave them in the comments!

Today I sent out a fix to the TV tool to restore iCal/EyeTV operation (albeit in a limited way, alas) via the Search tab. There is no duration information in the search results, so the default value is an hour. You will need to adjust the time manually if the actual program length is any different.

Today is, I regret to say, the last day of Watson support.