AskMeNow answers your nagging questions

Published 9:00 pm Monday, October 31, 2005

If you’re one of those people who thinks he’s always right, but can’t prove it on the spot, we might have just the technology for you.

This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested a new service called AskMeNow that attempts to be like a digital version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s” phone-a-friend. This service works by answering questions of all sorts in just a few minutes for free, or in some cases for 49 cents per question.

AskMeNow, based in Irvine, Calif., is a division of Ocean West Holding Corp. and is only available in beta (or prerelease version), but its full-scale service will come out this month.

Its concept is very straightforward: You send questions to the service by calling from your cell phone or e-mailing directly from a portable smartphone, and answers are sent back to your phone or hand-held via Short Messaging Services (SMS) or e-mail within about a minute.

Questions can be asked for free using a form-entry method, called “auto answers,” or by calling in questions that don’t fit into one of the form-entry categories. (These are referred to as “AskAnything” questions, and they are the ones that cost 49 cents each.)

To answer your questions, the company employs real people who sit at computers in the Philippines, furiously researching the Internet (using data from content partnerships) trying to respond to your queries within three minutes. This doesn’t always mean the response is correct. It simply means that the retrieved information was online somewhere. But our results proved rather accurate.

If your question has been asked before, it’s more likely to get a faster response because its answer is already on file. AskMeNow reserves the right to not answer questions that aren’t family friendly. The service sometimes answers opinion questions using opinions posted online, but we couldn’t get an answer to our question, “What is the hippest bar in Washington, D.C.?”

To start using AskMeNow, users must go to its Web site, www.askmenow.com, to enter sign-up information including your name, ZIP Code, country and cell phone number; you’ll never have to enter credit-card information as fees are all charged through your carrier. BlackBerry users also need to enter their e-mail addresses, because answers are e-mailed to BlackBerrys. On all other phones and devices they are sent via SMS.

AskMeNow began its testing with BlackBerry devices, and these hand-helds are still the most compatible with the service right now. Katie used a BlackBerry 7290 to test a few features, including a downloadable version of the program that resides on your hand-held. This included eight icons for auto-answer questions, or form-entry categories, that make it simple to get information about certain categories including weather, stocks, directory assistance, sports, movies, flights, directions and horoscopes. Answers to these questions are free, excluding carrier fees.

Next month, AskMeNow plans to offer downloadable auto-answer programs for other phones and gadgets, including the Palm Treo and other cell phones. Extra icons will also become available, eventually including one that saves local settings so you can more easily ask about restaurants, movies and weather in your area.

Katie tested these auto answers with questions about the weather in the small town of Batesville, Ark., by entering the city and state in the appropriate blank spaces. About 10 seconds later, an e-mail message including the five-day forecast for this locale appeared in her inbox. Another question returned the name, address and phone number for a nearby movie theater where “In Her Shoes” was playing, by just entering the movie title. She also saw final scores for a Red Sox game by selecting “MLB” from a list and typing out the team name.

We asked some tough questions like, “Where are the Rolling Stones playing tonight in Washington, D.C.?” and “Why do men have nipples?” But we got accurate responses to both. Katie even tried a snarky question: Why are girls smarter than boys? But the response just said that her question was unanswerable because of editorial policy.

In its release mode, AskMeNow will run one-liner “sponsored by” references to other companies at the very bottom of each answer response. It will also sell ring tones, cell phone wallpaper (screen designs) and games using icons in the auto-answer section.

Users who sign up for the service now will have to re-register with the revised version that will be released in November, as that new version won’t be able to transfer accounts from the current registry. But sign-up doesn’t take long at all.

If you’re asking yourself whether AskMeNow is worth a try, we think the answer is yes. But take heed, all ye who think you’ve found the way to prove that you really are always right; AskMeNow just might prove you wrong.

Walter Mossberg writes about personal technology for The Wall Street Journal.

Walter Mossberg