Tech Geek

One day last fall my colleague and I had gone to Polson for a clergy meeting with our bishop and the clergy from our cluster and the cluster to the south of us. I'm sure you can guess the general agenda of our conversation, but that's not what I want to talk about here. After the meeting ended and we had eaten lunch, we had one more stop that we wanted to make. Both of us, with growlers in hand, knew roughly where Glacier Brewing was, but neither of us was quite sure.

We didn't have a GPS with us and we certainly weren't going to stop and ask for directions. So we headed in the direction we thought it was and I pulled out my cell phone. I don't have a fancy cell phone with a big touch screen or anything like that (not that I don't want one, but that's another story). I just have a regular old flip-phone. I dialed 1-800-GOOG-411 and a nice computer voice said "Calls Recorded. Google. Say the business and the city and state." I said, "Glacier Brewing in Polson, Montana." The helpful computer voice said, "Glacier Brewing Company on 10th Avenue East in Polson, Montana. I'll connect you."

Well, I didn't really need to actually call the brewery, so I said "text message" and the service sent me a text message with the address and other information for the business. If I'd stayed on the line, it would have connected the call for me. I did just that the other day as I was pulling out of my driveway to pick up a Costco pizza. GOOG-411 connected me to Costo and the pizza was waiting for me when I strolled in 11 minutes later!

GOOG-411 is a free service that works from both mobile and landline phones, although it doesn't work from pay phones. It only works for business listings, you can't use it to find home phone numbers. It could really come in handy if you needed a tow truck in a strange community and didn't have access to a phone book. Or if you thought you knew the address of that church you were meeting a colleague at, but found out that you hadn't remembered it quite correctly.

Google has a full list of the commands that the service recognizes posted here http://mobile.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76436 and a video explaing the service here http://www.google.com/goog411/.

Why does Google do this? There isn't any advertising and they may not be making any money on it. But they are gathering a phenomenal amount of data. Specifically they are learning how different people pronounce phonemes. It is, perhaps, some of this research that has given Google the ability to add captioning to YouTube videos, as described here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme. I'd also write something about Google Voice here, but I don't have it yet!

Blessed Advent,
Pastor Andy

P.S. Thanks to a tweet from @lensweet, I'm listening to some Gaither Christmas Music from http://www.gaither.com/news/2009/11/christmas-gaither-radio/. Not my thing for every day, but a nice addition to my office on a very chilly afternoon!

Full disclosure: The story I described above is fiction, but it certainly could have happened the way I described it! We did have a meeting in Polson this fall, and we did go the brewery after the meeting. But I didn't have to use this service at that time. Actually, last spring, I had to use GOOG-411 last spring to find the church, since my colleague wasn't sure exactly where it was. And I have also used it to find the brewery, though with my parents, not my colleague. I didn't want to admit to knowing where the brewery was and not the church! :)