One of the more cool features Microsoft ever released is the Encarta Instant Answers.
What it is?
Basically it is a Messenger you add to your contact list, and than you simply start asking him questions.
For example, I'm planning a dinner tonight, and I got some recipe from a cooking site. All the ingredients in this recipes are in ounces, so instead of opening Google, do a search, go to a web site and look for some conversion calculator I simply asked Encarta - "how many grams is 8 ounces?"
And the answer was -
Eight ounces are 226.796185 grams.
(8 oz = 226.796185 g)
What do you need more?
This is one of the more cool user interfaces I've seen. It brings me to think that IM is still heavily under utilized. You can take this concept to so many other places, I wonder how we didn't hear on any major start up that went to this direction.
What will be the future? Combine this capability with the amazing new speech technology in the new Exchange Speech Services and you got a winner!
By the way - if you want to use this service, simply add encarta@botmetro.net to your Messenger contact list.
