But many people don’t have the curse (or the luxury, if that’s how you see it) of living on the Internet 24×7 like I do. And even if they did, many people may not even be savvy enough to ask Google smart questions to get the right answers. As the old computer axiom goes… Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Also, when your issue is a personal one and not mechanistic or procedural one, no googling is going to help you, no matter how advanced your search query might be. Computers simply cannot think, yet, and they’re even further away from having real human feelings.

What if you had a personal  guru somewhere… a real human with flesh and blood just like you… whom you could simply call or shoot an email to get immediate answers to your nagging questions? What if there were tens, even hundreds of these gurus knowledgeable in different fields all ready to answer your questions?

That would be nirvana for me, and that’s precisely what I’m setting out to accomplish with a new service I’m launching today. Dubbed “Ask George”, users can ask (almost) any question they have by filling a simple form or calling a hotline to talk to a real human. For now, all questions will first get to me, and if I can’t adequately deal with it, I’ll then forward it to the growing community of experts who have volunteered to help out (please contact me if you’d like to get involved).

Yes, I know this doesn’t scale well, but this will suffice for the time being, as I continue to understand this space better while building tools to automate as much of the communication as possible. Over the course of time when incoming requests reach a critical mass (or when I find myself a girl, whichever comes first… but don’t count on this one), I’ll get out of the way and let help-seekers reach the community of experts directly.

In reality this is nothing new. I’ve been answering questions from people around the globe on all kinds of issues for years now. But by formalizing and packaging this as a service offering, I hope to avail my expertise (and that of the growing community of volunteer experts) to more people and to provide a better service.

So go ahead and ask for help, when the going gets tough.