Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Do you ChaCha?

I recently read about a new free service for cellphone users who need quick answers to simple questions. It's called ChaCha (800-2chacha or 800-224-2242). Supposedly you just state your question and in a few minutes you'll get your answer via a text message. All for free! An article in the Wall Street Journal (April 24) said that their test of the service correctly answered queries such as: the name of the winning pitcher in last night's Red Sox game...the weekend forecast for Boston...the date of death of Abigail Adams...the cast members of "Brothers & Sisters"...Peyton Manning's salary...the sodium content of a McDonald's quarter pounder...and a Revolutionary War date. Your question is routed to one of 10,000 hired "guides" who look up the answer on the Web (they're paid $.20 per answer) and reply back. Speed and accuracy can vary but you can always text back for clarification or more information. ChaCha requires no registration and claims to work with most cellphone carriers. The only fee may come from your carrier if you're paying for minutes or text messages.
Has anyone out there tried this?
Of course, it's only natural that I also remind you that your library also supplies a free question-answering service (603-516-6082) and you can talk to a real, live human being and a professional librarian at that! You can even ask complex, multipart questions and we won't blink an eye! But I also believe that ChaCha has a place in our "search world", perhaps when the library is closed and you have that nagging question at 3am that's keeping you from going back to sleep!

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