Goog-411: Google Offers Free Telephone Information Service

Goog-411 is a new telephone information service offered by the geniuses at Google. It's free, fast, easy to use, and is currently available for calls placed in the United States and Canada.

The next time you are at home, or on the road and need to place a 411 call to find a business, use 1-800-Goog-411 (1-800-466-4411) instead, and you will be connected to their information service for free. You talk to a computer (with excellent voice recognition skills) the entire time, and you are automatically connected with no fuss or wait, that is unless you want to play around with the extra options.

Yes, it initially takes more time to punch in an 800 number into your phone, but this service should be the number one contact in your phonebook, so you can use your cell phone's speed-dial function.

With Goog 411, you can say the business along with the city and state, or you can say your city and state and say a category, like restaurants. As soon as you say the category, you are immediately given the top 8 restaurants in your area. Ironically, when I tried that with my town, the one restaurant our old 411 service could never find was the first result.

Goog-411 has some extra options that aren't mentioned by the computer at first. When the computer asks for your city and state, you can either say it, or you can type in your zip code without hitting a pound sign or anything after.

If for some reason the computer can't understand what you are looking for, it gives you the option to use your phone's keypad to type in the city or business you are looking for. If they get it wrong you can easily say, "Go back," without being connected to the wrong business.

Goog-411 also gives you have the option of receiving a text message about the business you're looking up by saying, "text message" during the call. Google will then send you the address of the business, which is helpful if you are lost.

Goog-411 can be as easy or thorough as you want it to be. You can be connected to a business under 30 seconds from start to finish, or you can spend time finding the perfect shop or restaurant for a nice outing.

Residential information, calls from pay phones, and languages other than English are not supported at this time, but knowing Google, I'm sure it's in the works.