Yahoo Launches a Text-Based Assistant Called Captain

By Dave Parrack

O Captain! My Captain! Yahoo is almost done. Verizon has a bid on the table, the race is almost run. O Captain! My Captain! Yahoo has one more product to share. It’s a text-based personal assistant, which is surely very rare. Captain, Yahoo called it, but no one quite knows why. MakeUseOf has all the answers, so there’s no need to cry. 

Yahoo has had a tumultuous few years. The last time we wrote about the company was in December 2016 when Yahoo revealed another giant security breach. However, just occasionally Yahoo delivers something good. Its latest product, called Captain, is actually rather neat.Yahoo Reveals Yet Another Giant Security Breach Yahoo Reveals Yet Another Giant Security BreachAnother day, another Yahoo hack. This one dating back all the way to 2013. This particular security breach resulted in the user data of 1 billion Yahoo accounts being stolen.READ MORE

A Free, Text-Based Personal Assistant

Captain is a free, text-based personal assistant. It’s not an app and therefore doesn’t require you to download anything. Instead, you just text “Hi” to 773-786 (U.S.-only) to make contact. Once you have accepted the terms, Captain will help you get started. Captain is obviously nowhere near as powerful as Siri, Alexa, or Cortana, but that may actually be a good thing.

So what can Captain actually do? You can either use Captain alone, or add members to your group. You can then use Captain to create reminders for you or other group members, and create lists to be shared with other group members. All accomplished using nothing but SMS text messages. There’s scope to expand beyond this simple start too, but it’s good enough for now.

This may seem old school, but it has several advantages over using an app. For one, using an “old” technology means even people without smartphones can use Captain. And your kids will find it harder to ignore an incoming text message than a message on one of the countless apps they have installed on their phones. It’s also free apart from your standard text messaging rate.

Yahoo Is Actually Genius

Captain proves that Yahoo can still deliver the goods. The company is currently in the middle of being acquired by Verizon, and yet it has still found the time to create an eminently useful tool. And Captain follows hot on the heels of Yahoo Answers Now, which is genius for other (more comedic) reasons.Yahoo Answers Now Has Its Own Standalone App Yahoo Answers Now Has Its Own Standalone AppYahoo Answers now has its own standalone app. This mobile version of the inexplicably popular website lets you ask and answer questions from the comfort of your smartphone.READ MORE

This all begs the question, have we been misjudging Yahoo all these years? Probably not, no, but we think Captain is a fantastic idea nonetheless. What do you think of Captain? Or Yahoo Answers Now? Or even Yahoo in general? Please let us know in the comments below!

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/yahoo-text-based-assistant-captain/