Best Human Powered Search Engine
Posted on May 15th, 2008 | by admin |
Human powered search seems to be all the rage these days. I find it amusing that we’ve come full circle since the early days of web search in the 90s. Anyone remember the Yahoo! Picks from their directory with the cool guy sunglasses image tag? I digress.
While Mahalo wins for thoroughness sometimes you just need a quick and concise answer. Enter ChaCha. Ok, those that know me well will already point out that I like it just for the name. Truth be told I’m somewhat of a ballroom dancer. So back on topic ChaCha is spifftastic and here is a use case that illustrates just that.
I’m tasked with evaluating alternatives to Windows Mobile for work. We’ve been having tons of issues with our Treo 700w phones so I’ve suggested we test drive the latest BlackBerry and Palm. My boss is on the BlackBerry while I’ve got the Palm. So I head over to the Verizon Wireless store to pick up a Treo 755p and while I’m there I start looking at the BlackBerry. One of my requirements is that the handset we choose is capable of acting as a bluetooth modem.
Now I’m not saying the sales people at Verizon Wireless are dumb but lets just say they’re often uninformed. The old saying is true: what’s the difference between a computer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hphone salesman and a car salesman? The car salesman knows when he’s lying to you.
So rather than trust the clueless sales guy, dig through the manual or pour through search results I sent a quick little text message to ChaCha (242242) asking “Can the BlackBerry 8830 be used as a bluetooth modem?”. A minute later I’ve got the short sweet answer: “Yes. You can use Bluetooth or a USB cable as a tethered modem” along with a link to the knowledge-base article on BlackBerry.com
Sadly I’m still stuck with the Palm device, which is another story, but this little example shows how ChaCha can be there when you need it. The service is free to use from the web, twitter (D chacha hi), or SMS (242242).