Cell Phones, Computers, Reviews
ChaCha Does Web Search By Voice, Answers By Text
Of all the numerous choices you have available to you for your Internet searching, names like Google and Yahoo! stand out. There are some worthy alternatives out there, though, most notably one called ChaCha, which has an interesting alternative angle: All its searches are human-powered. Yes, Google has made jokes about having monkeys power their searches, but ChaCha has real people producing and verifying every search result. Until now, the site has received searches via text message and sent the responses in kind, but now a new feature lets you phone it in, literally.You can now call 800-224-2242 and speak your question into a recording. Within a few minutes, you'll get a text message containing the answer. Well, you'll actually get three text messages in response: one thanking you for using the service, one saying your answer is coming, and then, finally, the answer itself. That's perhaps not exactly appreciated for someone paying $.10 or more per text message, but at least there are no additional charges.
Anything is game as far as questions go. We asked for the phone number for our favorite local pizza joint and got that, plus the street address, in a text message in about three minutes. Not all search results were so good, though. We also asked what a good DVD burning choice would be for archiving some of our DivX/XviD vids, and unfortunately the response sounded like a marketing pitch for the software, saying: "DivX for Windows gives you everything you need to create and play high-quality DivX videos on your PC." We don't disagree, but that didn't really answer the question.
Overall, though, it works quite well, and if you're in a situation where you can't text your question in this is worth checking out.
From textually.org
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