ChaCha

Facebook on the verge of announcing HTC smartphone?

Rumors of a Facebook phone have been flying around for years. But has the time come for that chatter to become reality?

Word has it that the social network may be making the big announcement at an upcoming press event next week. Facebook sent out invites today asking members of the media to "Come See Our New Home on Android" on April 4. If history is any gauge, Facebook announcements with invites like this tend to be grand in scope, such as Graph Search and the News Feed redesign.

Facebook has reportedly been working on an advertising campaign … Read more

HTC Status announced for AT&T and Facebook fanatics

The recent rumblings about the AT&T-bound HTC ChaCha were right, as the two companies made their friendship official today via Facebook.

Rebranded as the HTC Status, the Android 2.3 Gingerbread device has a dedicated Facebook share button that lets you instantly post things to the social networking site, such as status updates, photos, and videos.

You can use the button to check in to places, post news links, and even share what music you're listening to. There's also a chat widget that shows you when your friends are online, so you can instant-message with them. … Read more

Robot babies

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

The U.S. State Department plans to announce new policies on Internet freedom

HTC unveils its first tablet, along with five new phones

Facebook launches an SMS version of its site for non-smartphones

Skype launches the Skype Mobile Partner Program for low-bandwidth Skype use in markets without reliable 3G

The FAA may consider repealing the ban on cell phone use during air travel

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers considers awarding the rights for the .gay domain

Japanese researchers are working on robot babies

Did HTC just out Android 2.4? Not quite

We could scarcely believe our eyes when we read in HTC's press release last night that both the HTC Salsa and ChaCha "Facebook phones" will run Android 2.4, Gingerbread's successor.

Android 2.4? That at first seemed unlikely given several factors--the fact that Android developers are just starting to roll out Gingerbread 2.3 phones at this show and elsewhere, the fact that Google just finished a substantial effort to educate developers about Gingerbread, and the fact that Google has stated that it's trying to consolidate its Android release cycles. That adds up to … Read more

HTC buddies up with Facebook for two social-networking phones

BARCELONA, Spain--The rumors of a Facebook phone have been floating around for a while, but it was only recently that HTC's name came into the mix and, even then, Facebook once again denied the existence of any such product. Well, turns out the company wasn't being completely honest.

Today at Mobile World Congress, HTC unveiled two new smartphones that will feature dedicated Facebook buttons for easy access to the popular social-networking site. The HTC ChaCha and the HTC Salsa (yes, those are the names) each have a Facebook button on the bottom, which when pressed will let you … Read more

Daily Tidbits:TripIt debuts API for travel itineraries

Online travel itinerary and trip-planning service TripIt announced Monday that it has launched a new application programming interface for developers who want to integrate the company's travel itineraries into their respective service. The API will allow developers to share itinerary information between sites and travel agents. The first iteration of the TripIt API, which is available now, will only allow users to read, add, or delete trip plans.

ChaCha, a human-powered answers service, wants to raise $30 million in a Series C round of funding, reports PEHub. So far, the company has been able to raise approximately $11 million, … Read more

AT&T forms co-branding partnership with ChaCha

AT&T announced Wednesday that it has formed a strategic partnership with ChaCha, a mobile service that allows users to submit questions via text message or phone and receive their answer in a text message.

The deal calls for a co-branded greeting and AT&T promotion when consumers call ChaCha's answer hotline or text message the company a question.

More important from a business standpoint, the two companies will also work together to improve ChaCha's mobile-answers service and develop both text and voice ad-based services.

The partnership between AT&T and ChaCha is interesting, to … Read more

ChaCha

Category: Data

ChaCha is a human-assisted search tool. What that means is that users have a text-chat conversation with a person on the other end of the search engine, someone who's supposedly an expert, and they help you find the info you're looking for. In addition to this, there's a regular (read: people-free) search tool that lets you hunt for results unassisted.

We didn't have great luck with this our first time, but the idea is really neat. Short of hiring a research assistant or using search experts, there's not an easier way to have … Read more