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chacha posts

Filed under: Text, Web services, Social Software, Beta

ChaCha gives you info via SMS

ChaCha SMSSearch service ChaCha, which we've covered before, has launched a major new feature. You've always been able to ask questions via their website or IM and get answers from their "live experts". However, now they've added a whole new way to get instant answers - via SMS.

The free service is set to launch today, January 3. Jump in by sending a text to "242242" which cleverly spells out ChaCha on your numeric keypad. To test it out, we tried to find the phone number to a great beer pub in Portland Oregon. The response was quick informative, as you can see above.

Additionally, we tried a few other tests asking for directions and local weather conditions. Again ChaCha nailed it every time.

We're excited to see such an informative service hit SMS. We're not sure how they'll monetize this service (probably with subscription fees), but so far it is very useful.

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services

Cha-Cha launches in beta with real live search guides

cha cha search"The worlds largest live search engine" went live yesterday. Cha-Cha gives you a different kind of searching experience through human intelligence. They actually have a guide who can assist you in real-time via IM. This search guide concept pairs a real person who is skilled at finding information on the Internet with users. This individual is supposedly skilled enough that they will find the exact information you want, instead of the other million results that you don't want to look at. Doesn't this seem a tad odd? Why not just use Google? Because that's what these paid Internet guides are using, isn't it?

Take a peek at some unimpressive results from using Cha-Cha.

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