• Pandia , Thursday, February 14, 2008 12 PM

Susanne Koch preps for her fantasy vacation to New Orleans, highlighting the many travel resources packed into Ask 3D. First is Zoom Info on the left pane, which allows searchers to narrow or broaden the scope of their initial query. In Koch's case, searching for "New Orleans" brings up options to focus on things like hotels, the city's history, news or even famous saints, as well as the choice to broaden the search to include info on Hurricane Katrina.

The Smart Answers feature (in the center pane) brings up a map of New Orleans, which offers links to Ask City, the engine's local search service. Koch likes the fact that directions to local attractions and business, complete with contact info, are so readily available.

On the right hand side of the results, users will find images, things like weather info, as well as articles from reference sources like Wikipedia. The fact that Ask also displays the current time in New Orleans, can also be helpful to travelers coming from another time zone, state or country--so they can get prepped for jet lag or plan when to make phone calls to family.

Read the whole story at Pandia »