Mobile Answers to All of Your Questions Anywhere

Directory Assistance Provider KGB (Knowledge Generation Bureau, not the Russian Security force) launched a new mobile service in the United States today which provides text message answers to any question you send in. So far, the service is much better than a similar one that we tested last year called ChaCha. That service didn’t always answer our questions, and when it did, it was sometimes wrong. Want to know how much Madonna weighs? We did. So we texted in our question and received this response: “She weighed 110 pounds on tour and 115 pounds when she’s off tour. It also said she is 5’4 feet.” We’re not sure what “it” was, but we appreciated that the answer came in under 5 minutes. A second question: What is Michael Jackson’s middle name? Yielded this result: “American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman Michael Jackson’s middle name is Joseph. thx.” The service costs 50 cents per question, which is pretty expensive in our eyes. So why not just use Google? It’s for quick answers that you might not have time to search for. Say, for example, if you’re driving and want to quickly find out what station to tune in to for the night’s baseball game. Type in the question, a KGB representative will search and text you back with the answer. If only it was voice powered–like solutions from Nuance–then we’d be Trivia champs. We like using KGB, check it out for yourself by texting a question to kgbgb (542542), or by downloading the iPhone application, and let us know what you think.