Google SMS

Talking on the phone has never been something I enjoy. By far, my favorite way to use my phone is to use the SMS text messaging service. In a previous article, I wrote about 20 cool things most people probably don’t know you can do with your SMS service. If you are like me, you’ve grown accustomed to relying on the internet to provide you with instant answers to all of your questions from “what time does the bank close” to “what was the band that sang that one song?” But even if you don’t have internet access on your cell phone, you aren’t necessarily cut off from all the answers. You can get answers to many of these just by sending text messages to various service providers.

I find Google SMS services to be the most useful in my daily life. If you send a text message to “GOOGL” (“46645”) with your search text, you get an instant reply. Here’s some of my favorite Google SMS searches.

Q&A
Here’s how it works. Maybe you have a question. For instance, you want to know when President Obama was born. You whip out your handy phone and text “Barack Obama Birthday” to Google’s SMS number. Within seconds, you should get a reply something like this (complete with the reference website):

Movies
Texting “movies 48917” will return numbered list of movies currently showing. For example, I received:

If you reply to that message with the number for a specific movie, Google SMS sends you the times that movie is playing. So I reply with the number 2 (or if you already know what movie you want to see, you can skip the first step and just send “gamer 48917” as your text message). Google’s response:

Weather
Texting “weather lansing” (or “weather 48917”) returns something like this:
…and so much more
The following list of additional searches and sample queries comes from Google SMS’s own page. One real handy thing is that Google SMS will remember your zip code once you set it (text “location 48917” or “location Lansing” to Google to set your default location). Once you’ve set your location, you can simply text “movies” instead of “movies 48917.”

Search Feature	Sample Query
Local	sushi 94040
Glossary	define zenith
Sports	score red sox
Stocks	stock tgt
Zip Codes	zip code 72202
Directions	directions pasadena ca to 94043
Maps	map 5th avenue new york
Flights	flight aa 2111
Area Codes	area code 650
Products	price ipod player 40gb
Airlines	united airlines
Translation	translate hello in french
Web Snippets	web hubble telescope
Calculator	1 us pint in liters
Currency	8 usd in yen
Airports***	sfo airport
Help	help local
Local time	time new york