In this week's Tap That App Tuesday, we take a look at a different type of "virtual assistant" software -- one that's powered by real people. It's called Ooloo; a question-answering app for iOS and Android released late this summer, which acts a little like "Okay, Google," Microsoft's Cortana or Apple's Siri, but with a human mediator.

As an app, Ooloo is incredibly simple. You're presented with a big yellow microphone button in the middle of a nice-looking wallpaper. Click on it and you'll have three seconds to prepare your spoken query. Then ask the question, click the stop button, and post it!

(Photo : Google Play: Ooloo)

Within seconds (or minutes, depending), you'll get a response from Ooloo's staff, who are either real people sitting somewhere with Google in front of them, or secretly the smartest AI program in the world.

It's strange to be excited about an app that doesn't do anything technologically clever to conveniently answer your questions. Ooloo certainly isn't a step forward in speech recognition or computer intuition. But in stepping backwards and including human interaction, Ooloo also avoids any annoying "I didn't get that" pitfalls that come with the Siris of the world, by outsourcing those complicated software elements back to a human brain -- which of course is a special kind of computational wetware that accomplishes complicated AI tasks like speech recognition, common sense, personality, and even humor as a matter of everyday course. It may not be fancy, but the thing is, humans still do it better than Siri.

Recording a question and getting a response are the basics of Ooloo, but there are a couple of software features that you'll notice, and find useful, after using the app for a while.

One is the tagging: Because you only ask questions through audio rather than typing, Ooloo gives you the option to tag questions before you post them, so your archives of answers will be easier to sort through. Of course, you can always hit the "play" button next to old questions to identify them, but if you hate hearing your own voice, it's not a preferred option. Ooloo doesn't allow you to tag questions after you've posted them, which seems like an oversight, but who's complaining when there's a free service that Googles stuff for you whenever you want?

The second important, but easily overlooked, feature is rating answers. For every answer you get, you can rate it with "Awesome," "Good" or "Meh." Far from being a voluntary way for you to help Ooloo track their staffers, rating answers actually can help you get a better response to your original question.

(Photo : Google Play: Ooloo)

To test how thorough Ooloo was, I asked a pretty esoteric question about upcoming live jazz shows in Copenhagen, Denmark. The first response gave me information about a jazz festival in a different Danish city, miles away -- and starting late next year. I rated that answer "Meh," and just assumed that those kinds of specific questions were Ooloo's limit. But just a few minutes later, I got another response to that same question, and this time it was spot on.

Most answers you'll get from Ooloo include a link to their sources, which can be a great tool to find out more information later, and I could see this app being an invaluable way to begin researching a subject that you otherwise might not know where to start.

But for the most part, Ooloo seems to be at its best when you're asking for quick information on the go, perhaps when you don't have time to type (or when you're driving and you shouldn't). Knowing there's a real person on the other side of your question keeps you from asking dumb, inane things, and helps motivate you to get to the point; The better the questions you ask, the better the responses you'll get.

One less-than-frivolous question I asked Ooloo was "How can Ooloo afford to be free?" The answer I got from "Carol" was tongue-in-cheek, while coyly avoiding a real answer: "Ooloo was created to help people."

I'm suspecting that Ooloo is in the first phase of a multi-stage plan, which might at some point include putting a price tag on the app or even requiring a monthly subscription fee -- depending on how hooked they can get users on the 24/7 answer-any-question idea.

But currently, and for the foreseeable future, Ooloo is free for iOS and Android, and doesn't even require you to sign up for anything. Just download it and you're good to go. Tap that app!

Related