"ask the Twitterverse" - that's an interesting one. I've tried that a couple of times and not found it effective (maybe I don't have enough followers), but I think that, or something similar, is how we'll increasingly do things in future: throw out a question and someone, somewhere will come back with an answer. The Stackoverflow question/answer site is proof that people love being able to answer questions for other people!

Nice post! I like how you've expanded on my question about whether we're programmed to learn by 'trial and error'.

These days I work from home, so when I have a problem I can't just pop my head over the cubicle and ask a colleague. My strategies for finding out how to do something will involve any or all of these: Google, phone call/email/IM to a colleague, consult the Help, consult product forums, ask the Twitterverse. I *do* consult the Help, but as I said in my article, early success is CRITICAL as to whether or not I'll use that method with that product again. If I have difficulty finding what I need in the Help the first time (think Microsoft Word!), I'm less likely to try it when I have later problems -- at that point Google is my friend ;-)

I had another experience recently. We're in the process of moving to another house and the previous owners didn't leave the manuals for the oven and cooktop. I needed to reprogram the oven's clock and to learn a bit about how to operate this fancy oven, so I went to the manufacturer's website, downloaded the manuals, printed them out and now have them as a permanent reference for when I need to try something new with the oven. And yes, I've read parts of them already (even before we've moved in!), and was able to reprogram the clock successfully. Now for operating the fan-forced this and that.... I *will* read the manual before I try these things, but may never touch it again once I've gained some mastery of the techniques.