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Hot on the heels of their Askville release, Amazon.com has just debuted NowNow, a mobile service that will provide up to three answers per question for up to 25 cents per question.

NowNow Gives Answers To Mobile Users
NowNow sounds more like something people say to the dog when she's begging at the table. "Now now, don't do that." With the new service from Amazon, people will get answers that are a little more informative than a friendly wag.

Any mobile device that supports email, like the typical Blackberry, Treo, or other smartphone, should be able to use NowNow. During the beta period, asking questions will be free. Eventually there will be a charge but they do not anticipate it being greater than 25 cents per question.

NowNow pays its researchers to look up answers to questions, and does this through Amazon's Mechanical Turk service. They pay based on the quality of answers, so NowNow encourages users of the service to rate the answers they receive.

If the first round of up to three answers did not prove satisfactory, NowNow allows one free resubmit of the question. That leads to the question being reposted at the Mechanical Turk website under the NowNow section.

The site currently accepts new members by invite only. Amazon has NowNow in beta testing, as it does the newly launched Askville.

NowNow is being positioned as an alternative to web search on a mobile device. Considering that mobile web searches do not cost anything beyond the usual terms and conditions of a given person's service plan, and that web search on a mobile should be much faster than waiting for a human response, it almost seems like Amazon is operating NowNow for research reasons, rather than as a true new service.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.