The MSN Search team did something more remarkable than plug in about a million more facts into the Instant Answers feature set: they updated their blog!
All the Redmond-dwellers must have been busy from December 13, 2005 through January 17, 2006. Plumping up MSN Instant Answers with a million new facts had to occupy a bit of time, energy, and CPU cycles.
Mark Stumpf on the Instant Answers team delivered the latest MSN Search blog update with his overview of the newest answers for Instant Answers. As one commentor on the blog noted, the list is US-centric: Baseball stats, Football stats, Weather facts, Government officials, and Holidays.
Users can get Instant Answers just by asking their question in the MSN Search box. For example, I asked it about the average termperature in January in Kentucky, which Instant Answers said was 34 degrees F. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind over the next three days, since the local forecast calls for 60 degrees F and sunny.
Perhaps MSN Search will make Instant Answers more globally appealing by summer, when the 2006 World Cup gets under way. Some of us have rooting interests besides the USA when play kicks off on June 9th.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
