Ask.com has an iPhone app that lets you ask and get local answers

Don’t worry, this isn’t another search app you’ll never use. Actually, Ask.com isn’t a search engine per se. Originally conceived as the place to ask complex questions and get relevant answers, Ask.com returned to these roots earlier this year after its owner IAC realized there’s no point in battling search behemoths like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft on their own turf. Their upcoming iOS program aptly named Ask iPhone specializes in getting the right answers for your typed in or spoken questions in a way traditional search cannot handle efficiently.

The app draws its power from Ask.com’s database of half a billion matching answers from high-quality sources like Q&A sites, FAQ pages, and other relevant sites. Like on the web, you can tap crowd knowledge by hitting the “Ask the Community” button or ask your friends on social networks to help you out.

Version 2.0 of this question-answering engine will deliver geo-targeted answers based on your location. According to reports, you’ll be able to route complex questions to the knowledgeable people who opted-in to the beta program, crowd-source answers relevant to your locations, see questions asked nearby, and so forth.

Those features will be available under the “Nearby Answers” tab of Ask iPhone version 2.0. What’s best, you’ll be able to set the asking radius from less than a mile to fifty miles and thus narrow down your question to the right people or places. Here’s how it’s supposed to work. The app will present you with a list of places around you. You simply pick a nearby restaurant and ask if they serve pasta. Or, choose a movie theater and ask if the line for the latest Twilight movie is too long.

If all of this sounds familiar, then you may have already tried intelligent search assistant Siri, acquired by Apple earlier this year. That said, Ask.com does much more than parse complex search queries to perform keyword searches – it delivers answers to your questions. It’ll be all seamless and magical – that’s crowd-sourced, decision-based searching for you. Ask iPhone will be submitted to Apple soon and hopefully approved without a hiccup.

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