Chacha | Hoipolloireport

Someone asked this question at Mahalo Answers about web site promotion using the service.

“What’s the best way to promote a web site on Mahalo without indulging in spam?”

Many chimed in about etiquette, plugs, helpfulness etc, but one at the top was all that someone needs to know:

“How about this: Please don’t.”

In case you haven’t noticed, the ‘Answers’ model is catching fire. Mahalo has fired a shot across the bow of Yahoo Answers. And then there’s the mobile version of this that’s like the flame thrower aimed at both – ChaCha.

Basically ChaCha is a way to text a question (to short code 242242) and have a live person research the answer and send you back the answer via return text. How cool is that?

Let’s just hope spammers and marketers don’t try to pollute that model. Don’t think they would? Consider this: The “Answers’ model is a real-time, human version the one that made Search –and Google — a key part of marketing.

This video by David Pogue on mobile technology is entertaining and thought provoking. So good it makes Jimmy Kimmel look like a high school skit.

It is a nice complement to that other lame version (for the XO laptop) by none other than the deceased Lennon.

“Imagine there’s no Apple, no products beginning with i…”

You may say it’s a nightmare, with Google, Mac and Dell

You might have real conversations, but the world would be… dull as hell!”

What was fun for me is that he demos Callwave, Google mobile text search, T-mobile, Pandora etc which I am huge fan of. The last bits are scintillating, especially the My Way parody for the iPhone. Pogue has other skits. Like this one on Voice Mail, to the tune of Sound of Silence.

Which makes me think that Pogue occupies a different kind of slot, even though he is nominally a technology critic for the New York Times. He often pokes a sharp stick at the trend or the tool he is reviewing, such as questioning (mostly in jest) the ‘psychosexual terminology of computing,’ and the tech impact on business and jobs. As in suggesting Bill Gate’s sings:

“I just called to say I bought you, I just called to say you’re unemployed,

I just called to say I own you, And to tell you that we’re truly overjoyed. . . . “

And again, his insight (a riff, really on Moore’s Law) with:

Pogue’s Law: any extra speed introduced by faster chips is soon offset by increasingly bloated software.

If only all technology columnists could be as eloquent.