Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

This cool text messaging trick comes by way of my Seattle real estate agent. If you're in need of the address or phone number for a business or restaurant, you can always call 411 for help. If you send a text message to 466453 (which spells Google on a phone dial pad), you'll get the address and phone number on your screen, so you don't need to write anything down or worry about getting reconnected. Simply write the name of the business city and state in the body of the message and hit send. I used this to successfully track down pizza near the house I'm moving to simply by typing Pizza Bainbridge Island, WA and hitting send. I got three different pizza places back, with full address and phone number for each.

This feature also works for doing price comparison from retail stores. Simply type price and the UPC or ISBN code for a product in the message body and you'll get back comparison results to your phone. While this is a free service, you do have to pay your carrier's standard rate for messaging. I've been a proponent of Google's free 411 service (800-GOOG-411) for awhile now, but didn't realize you could get similar help via text messaging. Couple 466453 with kwiry for building to do lists and you've got 2 useful reasons for having text messaging.