Google 411

Maybe Murphy was the last to know about Goog411, but here’s a quick post anyway, in case any readers don’t know about it yet. All you do is dial 800 Goog 411 or 800 466 4411 from your phone.

The automated system prompts you for city and state and then a business or category. So you could say something specific like Moe’s Tavern or something generic like plumber. Goog 411 will tell you the address of the business it thinks you’re searching for, or read you a list of businesses if there are multiple matches. When you confirm your selection the call is transferred to the phone number. As an alternative you can say “text message” and the details will be texted to your phone, assuming you’re calling from your mobile.

Goog 411 works well. The interface is quick and Google seems to have a good handle on voice activated systems. There isn’t a lot of extra conversation. Murphy finds retrieving voice mail irksome because the prompts say things like, “You have reached the blah blah messaging system, there are x messages in your mailbox.” It should say, “x new messages, y saved messages.” Extra conversation isn’t useful when you’re trying to get through twenty messages.

The Google system also facilitates going back a step and starting over easily without disconnecting the call and calling back. In other words, it’s a nice interface. Best of all, you don’t have to pay one or two dollars to your cell provider for directory assistance. Just add Goog 411 to your phone’s contacts.

If you like these kind of services you should check out Microsoft’s Tell Me too. It has additional features like stock quotes and sports results. Murphy had more trouble navigating the Microsoft service, but maybe he was mumbling. You can try Tell Me at 800 555 Tell.

Murphy didn’t see anything about these services outside the USA. Anyone?

iMovie Editing

Murphy hasn’t made the move to the latest iMovie yet, he’s still on iMovie HD from iLife 6.   But he found something the other laggards might be interested in.  Then again, maybe Murphy is the last to know.

Selecting a portion of a movie in the iMovie monitor has always seemed awkward to Murphy.  You can’t drag the left-most marker first, to mark the beginning of your selection.   Murphy always found this frustrating, until he finally consulted the help documents.  If you place the playhead at the beginning of the footage you want to capture, you can then place the pointer below the playhead and drag right.  The “in” marker will be placed at the playhead, the “out” marker will be placed wherever you stop dragging.  

This is fine once you know it, but Murphy found this far from intuitive! Usually, Murphy uses FCE 2 for video editing.  But his MBP doesn’t have the program installed.  For quick and dirty videos iMovie is fine.  For moving quickly and taking advantage of keyboard shortcuts FCE is the way to go.  There’s very little that application can’t do.

One little gripe about iMovie.  It would be nice if the clips didn’t extend all the way across the timeline.  An empty space to add more clips would be a nice visual cue.   Murphy is interested to hear from iMovie 8 users -  how do you like it?  Anyone?