Catching up .. Google has launched the ability to do businesses searches via voice with just a phone call. You can get a writeup of how it’s done at http://labs.google.com/goog411/ , but this is more about phone numbers than Web sites.

And the phone number to know is 1-800-466-4411 . Dial that number and first you’ll get the message that the call is being recorded. Um, okay. After that you’ll get a notice of “Goog 411 Experimental.” A nice male droid will ask you for the city and state, and then the category or business that you’re looking for. I gave it a city and state, and then, hoping to mess with it, gave the word “Thai.” Googdroid correctly started reading off Thai restaurants. As it reads results, you can use voice commands to choose certain listings. Sometimes the droid seems to have a bit of a hearing problem. As it ran down a list, I decided I wanted number five. It took several times of me repeating, “Number five… NUMBER FIVE!” to get the point across.

For each listing you can get additional details. You can also tell Googdroid “Text message” and it’ll text your phone with a business name, phone number, and address. (When I tested this I got the text messages just seconds after disconnecting.) One thing to note: Googdroid is extremely eager — in my opinion too eager — to connect your call. Sometimes all you want is the phone number, but he’s always ready with, “I’ll connect you.” I had to hang up on him when I wanted just the phone number.

This number’s going in my phone’s address book. I’m very thrilled with the number of free ways you can do business lookups now. Take that, 99 cent 411 calls!