ResearchBitch.com takes notes and gives quotes

You gotta love a Web site with a name like "ResearchBitch.com."

The company bills itself as a "revolutionary search engine that does your research for you." A student can ostensibly provide the site with at least 100 words from an outline, class notes, an assignment or just random thoughts. Ten to 30 minutes later you are supposed to get an e-mail notification that directs you to a custom Web page with the results.

"Researchbitch.com will do the research for you, but it will not write the paper," the company cautions.

Online service helps with Web research.

(Credit: Researchbitch.com)

I thought I'd give it a quick try, so I grabbed a recent story from The New York Times about the fate of polar bears in the face of global warming.

I never did receive an e-mail notification that my research was ready, so the next morning I went to the Web site and entered my user name and password and saw that the results were there. The system had conducted research on each individual sentence from the article I had submitted, separately, which provided for widely varying results.

For instance, results for this line: "If emissions of greenhouse gases and resulting global and Artic warming continue apace, the study said, two-thirds of the 22,000 or so bears will disappear by mid-century," provided results that were on target, bringing up links to newspapers and other sources related to global warming. Each result has a button you click on to get a full listing of similar results on Google.

But results for a sentence that lacks context on its own, such as this one: "'Regardless of what condition they're in,' he said, 'if they're stuck in the wrong place, then maybe they just can't make it,'" (referring to the drowning of polar bears that can't find a nearby ice mass) brought up results that were all over the map and had nothing to do with global warming and the fate of polar bears.

I don't know how fast the system operated since I did not receive an e-mail notification so I can't comment on how much time it can save you. And basically, you should make sure that every single sentence is targeted to get the best results.