Free Automated 411 Calls, Courtesy of Google in Ann Arbor!

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Next time you find yourself on the road and in need of local information, try Goog-411 (Google’s Voice Local Search). It is in experimental stage, but you may find it easy to use, and on target. You can try this service by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone and it’s free.

When your call is answered, the service asks your city and state (only US business listings now), after which you are asked, “What business name or category?” I searched a specific business name in my city. After being provided with the address and phone number, I could choose to be connected directly, or get the details by SMS if using a mobile phone by saying “text message”.
I called the service a 2nd time to search by category and asked for “restaurants”. This time I was provided with a list of top restaurants in my city (#1: Excellent Restaurant, #2: Great Restaurant, #3: Really Good Restaurant, and so on). At any time, I could choose to go back to a specific restaurant by selecting its number. And all their choices for my city were surprisingly right on!

Google says they are “fine-tuning the service to get better at recognizing your requests”. Even still, it’s worth a try! 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411)

If you need a cheat sheet, paste this in your browser http://labs.google.com/goog411/shortcuts.html and you can have things texted to you.

Kathy Toth &Team
http://www.kathytoth.com/