Ask.com Returning To Roots With Upcoming App

Ask.com, is about to release a new iPhone app that sounds pretty cool. According to a report on TechCrunch.com, the new app will allow users to ask a question and get answers, all by using the iPhone's built-in microphone. The app, which should be released to the App Store in the coming weeks, will allow users to join the Ask.com social Q&A feature that is still in private beta right now. According to the report:

The app lets you ask questions either by typing them in or speaking them. It translates the voice to text and then tries to offer up the most likely answer right away, based on its index of more than 500 million question and answer pairs from sources across the Web, including other Q&A sites, FAQ pages, and more.

Future updates will allow users to ask questions about local sites, such as restaurants. For example, if you want to know if the local pizzeria is any good, you'll ask the question and get your answer. TechCrunch says that "your question will be routed to people nearby or people who have answered questions about those places in the past. You will also be able to see questions asked nearby, and adjust the distance from less than 1 mile to 50 miles using a slider." Ask.com was founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. Currently owned by InterActiveCorp, the Ask.com website has returned to its roots in recent months. While originally a "question and answer" site, Ask.com grew into something closer to an 'all in one' site like Yahoo! during the early part of the century. Now it hopes to return to something closer to what its creators envisioned, to improve on its market share. The new app will be part of that process. Ask.com is currently the fifth most popular search site on the web behind Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL. The new Ask.com app should be arriving in the App Store soon. Once it is released, AppAdvice will take it for a test drive and let you know what we think of it. [Photo: TechCrunch.com]

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