Weekly Site Review | Mosio

Hello. My name is Steve, and I have a problem. I'm hopelessly addicted to Mosio, which is essentially the mobile world's equivalent to Yahoo! Answers. Making such a vague comparison doesn't give Mosio credit where credit is due, though. The service is just plain fast, fun and useful "“ and it's free too. When I set up my account, I instantly dove in and popped a test question "What is one thing you would change about Mosio if you could?" Less than 3 minutes later, I had several responses waiting for me on my phone. Not bad. Next, I upped the ante and started asking questions like "What is the best time of year to go to Hawaii?" and "Which Bluetooth headset has the highest speaker and recording sound quality?", with both questions eliciting responses in under a minute or two. Let's take a closer look at why I love Mosio so much.

Unlike something like Yahoo! Answers or Live QnA, Mosio is made for mobile phones. Simply text your question to the Mosio community and wait for a text back. You'll get up to 10 SMS message responses and you can hop on the Mosio site to view the rest. This is great for people who don't have internet data plans on their phones, but do have unlimited text messaging packages. Even if you're like me and you already have a mobile internet data plan, the human factor of Mosio is very valuable. Sure, I could use Google's mobile search to find a sushi place in Seattle "“ but getting the opinions of real people, in this case, is much better than simply sifting through a laundry list of restaurant addresses and phone numbers.

The Questionarium is where it all goes down. This is what you use to connect with the Mosio community "wygo" (When You Go Online "“ an acronym that is commonly used by Mosio users). Here, you can answer the questions that others are texting in, comment on the answers of others, give a "˜thumbs up' or a "˜thumbs down' to the answers of others and update your user profile. You'll find all sorts of questions here. Right now, there's someone asking about how to get to the closest Key Bank location in their Portland, Oregon neighborhood while another is asking about strategies for getting through a particularly tough level in a Pokemon game.

ABOVE: A view of the "Questionarium".

This is usually the part of the review where I start to dissect all the little nuances that make my otherwise-perfect site recommendation fall just short of greatness. Well, not this time. Mosio is just cool. It integrates seamlessly with your Twitter account if you wish. You can even harness the powerful voice recognition technology of Jott, speaking your questions to the Mosio community while receiving text messages back a few moments later. While, of course, answer times do vary "“ and will certainly depend on the type of question you ask and how well you ask it "“ your fellow Mosio users are usually very, very fast to get back to you. I highly recommend that you take some time to play around with this site - there is lots of fun to be had in terms of customizing your experience. Don't forget to answer some questions too. Think of it as good karma for the next time that you rely on Mosio when you're away from your computer.