Google has launched a service that allows you to send them a text message with a search phrase from your phone and then they send a text reply with the results. Here are some examples:
- I sent this text phrase: "pizza 27023" and within 10 seconds I had two text reply messages with pizza restaurants in the 27023 zip code, including their addresses and phone numbers.
- I sent this text phrase: "weather winston-salem" and within seconds I received the current weather in Winston-Salem, including temperature, partly cloudy, humidity, wind speed and direction, and the temperature/rain forecast for the next three days.
- I sent a text message with my address followed by "to" and then a destination address and within 10 seconds I had detailed directions sent back. The directions are broken into 5 messages because there is a limited number of characters that each message can have.
Think about this for a second. You’re trying to get from point "A" to point "B" and you aren’t sure of how to do it. You find the closest address and then text message that address, "to" and your destination and in seconds you have directions. How cool is that. Check out the information page for full details, but I can tell you that other search functions that are equally as cool include movies, flight status, stocks, translation from one language to another, currency conversion, and on and on.
Eventually I think that all mobile phones will be GPS-enabled or have some sort of ‘place recognition’ via triangulation of the tower signals and then you won’t even have to actually know where you are. Then services like this will enable you to feed you information based on a query like "pizza restaurants within 2 miles" or "directions to 8800 Elm Street, somewhere, usa 22222".
This is the kind of stuff that makes my head want to explode.
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Befuddled 
This isn’t new…. been using it for MONTHS…. :p
466453. Scary that I know that.
Hey Darkmoon. I figured it had been around for a while and I was late to the party, but to me “new” is relative. Having read your stuff I think of you as an “early-early-user” of tech stuff and me more of the “early-mainstream-user” of tech stuff, and honestly I gauge that merely on the anecdotal evidence of friends and family. BTW, you remember when I said last year that Google’s stuff beyond search wasn’t all that great and you kind of took me to task? Well, I stand corrected and I should have known better than to argue with you!
lol. I tell ya what… you know what I love about texting Google? movie times.
You can’t believe how many times you’re out… and you say… hey.. let’s catch a flick. Wanna watch… Harry Potter? At Paladium? Give me a second.. let me pull up the times.
What’s awesome about it is that it’s not like EVDO or java web browsing so you’re not going insane trying to “browse” a site. Let Google do the work. Reminds me of the couple of 2-way pager services I used to have. Terribly convenient and you have it there as a note if you ever want to go eat at XYZ restaurant or what not.
Don’t forget, GOOG411 either. You can even tell it to map things and send them to your phone.
Google is to the Internet, as Apple is to the desktop imho. They find ways that make people’s life way easier and they capitalize on it. Brilliant.
Oops. I think that was supposed to be Palladium. 😉