Business

Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More There are some 3.7 billion web searches every month for education-related topics. However, ask a student how easy it is to find answers to their burning academic questions, and they’ll probably just roll their eyes. Sure, there’s Wikipedia, Google (and Google Scholar), Khan Academy and there are even Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. While Khan is great for videos, it doesn’t produce quick answers and Yahoo Answers is atrocious. It’s littered with ads and answers are often misleading, incomplete or just flat out wrong. Quora has emerged as a promising foil to crappy Q&A sites, but, while it can be educational, it’s not geared towards those in school. That’s why Sallie Severns (a former Yahoo Answers executive) founded and launched Answer Underground — a learning utility and mobile app that it designed...

Flickr/mtarlock Namibia is Africa's fifth largest country and its driest country south of the Sahara. A newly discovered water source could supply half of Africa's driest sub-Saharan country with 400 years of water, reports Matt McGrath of BBC . The new aquifer – called Ohangwena II – flows under the border between Angola and Namibia, covering an area of about 43 miles by 25 miles on Namibia's side. The water is up to 10,000 years old and cleaner to drink than many modern sources.  Project manager Martin Quinger told BBC that the stored water could last 400 years based on the area's current supply. Currently the 800,000 people living in the northern part of the country get their drinking water from a 40-year-old canal that brings the scarce resource from Angola. Quinger added that Ohangwena II could change the nature of farming in the area, which has only been viable near two rivers in the region, and could act as a natural buffer for up to 15 years of drought. Natur...