Google SMS rocks


I was playing with Google’s SMS feature. You can search yellow pages, residential listings, weather, movie times and definitions simply by entering some text and sending a text message to 46645.
It works really fast — and well. It found my telephone white pages listing with all the correct info, told me the weather and gave me a definition for the word “parse”.


The weather:

Weather:
Knoxville,TN
52F,Partly Cloudy
Wind:NW 6mph
Hum:54%
Su:43-61F,Chance of Showers
M:33-53F,Mostly Sunny
Tu:39-53F,Mostly Sunny
W:37-53F,Chance of Showers

The definition of parse:

* Parse: To divide a command or string of characters into its component parts. When you issue a command in Excel or Access, the command is parsed to see if all the va…
Source: www.oznet.ksu.edu/edasi490/Glossary/cgw.htm

Granted, a more generic definition of parse (to analyze) might have been better.
There’s been a lot of talk of sending headlines and info to users based on profile information they filled out, but I have never found that very useful.
Other than talking to other people, SEARCH via SMS seems like a killer app.
Try it!
I used Google SMS via a Palm and a bluetooth enabled cell phone using FunSMS, which made it easy to do queries and get results (and save them).