My girlfriend Shelly is by no means a technophile. She loves text messaging but doesn’t care how it works. If her PC stops working then she just walks over to another one or uses a friend’s. Her PC can sit there for months as long as she can get her email and text messages some where she is happy. Of course, this doesn’t bode well for Microsoft because Microsoft is historically a company dependent on technophiles—people like me and probably you—that are willing to guts balls it and patch software, tweak the registry, and even replace parts if necessary. Unfortunately users in the 00s—“naughties”—seem to care less and less about operating systems, suites of software products, and the like. Newer users just want to chat, text, email (less and less) and be connected to information without all of the techno-babble hassle that got this PC age kick started in the first place. And, on that vein of thought my non-technophile girlfriend introduced me to this bit of text messaging wizardry.
(I may be the last to know about sending text messages to Google, but just in case I am not here goes.)
If you send a text message to Google (466453) with the name of something like ‘Microsoft’ then Google will send you a text message back. I texted ‘Microsoft’ to Google and got a stock quote back. I texted ‘Michigan Athletic Club’ to Google (466453) and got the complete address and phone number of the Michigan Athletic Club. Don’t quote me but she said the texts are free. Maybe they are free, maybe not, but I will bet getting a phone number this way is cheaper than dialing 411 (for information in the U.S.). After initial queries Google started sending me useful hints. Apparently you can send commands to Google like SET LOCATION and CLEAR LOCATION to indicate your physical locale on the planet. You can send commands like MAP, HELP MAP, HELP TRANSLATION, VIEW LOCATION, and I suspect many more. When I sent MAP followed by my street address Google sent the complete mailing address and phone number.
As a final test—I do have real work to do—I sent the very generic text message ‘HELP’ and Google sent me messages for weather shortcuts {e.g. ‘W NYC’}, a message for finding local pizza places and even the the command to abort sending, STOP, and another for random tips ‘TIPS’. I typed TIPS and got information about using Google text as a calculator, finding movies, flight information, sports venues, and even the price of an iPod.
Happy texting. Also, check with your service provider before you get crazy; I’d hate for you to have a huge bill from texting Google.