Since technical difficulties (don’t ask) are why this post is so late, I thought I’d offer up something on technology.

There are many of us old enough to remember calling 411 information, giving a real live person a name and location and receiving the desired phone number all at no cost.

That’s right, the service was totally free.

But that was then and this is now.

Few people call 411 information these days, since the cost ranges from $1-2 dollars and (probably) up.

Enter stage left our good friends at Google.

I don’t know if the service is new, but it’s new to me—cutting-edge I’m not.

1.800.GOOG411 (1.800.466.4411)

It’s for business listings only and seems to be designed primarily for cell phones, since you can enter information with the keypad.

The service uses voice recognition and connects the call for free.

It does save your requests associated with your phone number, however, it doesn’t read blocked numbers, so if you block your phone as I do it won’t track you.

I know I’ll use it. I get really sick of looking businesses up in the phonebook; and for those who are out and about it would be really useful.

Image credit: gzed CC license

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Communication, Just For Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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