I have GOOG-411 in my auto-dialer on both my office phone and home phone, and it's in my address book on my iPhone as well. I own an iPhone, and while Google Maps is a thing of beauty on the iPhone, sometimes just saying what you want and having it found and dialed for you can literally be a lifesaver. And while I'm not condoning the use of one when you are driving, this certainly does make things a lot easier as opposed to fumbling with the phone and pressing buttons trying to find something. Needless to say, GOOG-411 can be indispensable on a cell phone. Of course, your telephone company may apply other charges for making a phone call, so you may want to check on that little detail. It confirmed my selection and said, "I'll connect you." You are connected with no charge for the information nor the call. Or it might ask, "What business name or category?" My pizza query had it say, "Top 8 Listings." Then it began naming pizza places. It works either way, and GOOG-411 will prompt you with different helpful options each time after you speak. Assuming you're in the mood for a pizza in Asheville, N.C., just say "Pizza, Asheville, N.C." Or you can say the city and state first, then say a business name. You just dial 1-800-GOOG-411, and it will ask you to say the business name followed by the city and state. Let's say you are looking for a restaurant in your area. And it does all of that with an almost supernatural degree of accuracy. It will hear what you have to say, act upon your request, find the number and connect you. I can't completely confirm this, but I suspect it's a free service because it doesn't require live people at the other end. Now before you go off thinking that this is just another voice-recognition service, this is one that you will really use, and you'll use it a lot.Īnd let me remind you again that unlike the phone company's 411 service, GOOG-411 is completely free. GOOG-411 is operated completely by your spoken commands. Basically, GOOG-411 lets me find the phone number to almost any kind of business and then connects me to that business free of charge. But when I actually began using it, I realized that it's so much more. It's a Google service that has proved to be extremely useful and a real money-saver when I'm using the phone.Īt first, I thought that GOOG-411 was similar to the telephone company's information service. Then there's Google Earth and Google Maps, which let you find almost any place on Earth and show you how to get there.Īlthough it's been out for some time now, I thought I'd tell you about GOOG-411 just in case you haven't heard about it by now. Most of us know about Gmail, for example, which offers free e-mail addresses that come with lots of storage.
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