This is a good tip for anyone with a cell phone, with a few special bonuses for iPhone users. Google offers a free alternative to cell provider’s regular 411 directory services, which often cost money to use. 1-800-GOOG-411 is an automated directory service that uses voice recognition to handle your queries and a robotic text-to-speech reader (which is sometimes hard to understand, but it’s free, so who’s complaining?) to deliver your data. Like other 411 services, Goog-411 gives you the phone number and address and offers to connect you.

What you may not know is that Goog 411 can send a text message that features a phone number, address, and a Google Maps link. To get the text message, simply say “details” and “text message” when prompted. A text message appears almost instantaneously (at least it does for me).

A tap on the phone number dials the number. A tap on the Google Maps link opens the address location in the Google Maps app. An arrow also appears next to the text message. Tap the arrow, and you can create a new contact with the information or add it to an existing one.

Of course, you could also use the Google Maps feature to search for the information as well, but sometimes Goog-411 is quicker if you only know a nearby intersection and don’t want to type out the long names, or if the EDGE network is acting up. In fact, I find that using Goog-411 is much faster than using the keyboard/Internet combination to search and utilize information.

In cardinal numbers, the 1-800-GOOG-411 number is:

1-800-466-4411

Check out the YouTube video below for an introduction to the service by the Google guys.

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