New way to get the 411

The News & Observer reports on new cell-phone messaging services that utilize text messaging to search for information such as phone numbers, restaurants, weather or sports scores. Some of the recent entries in the market are Google, Yahoo and 4Info.

Seamus Mc-Ateer at M:Metrics noted the services are popular yet. He said, "How popular are these services? "It's very, very new and what we're seeing now is very low numbers." In September, 1.3 million people did a text messaging search. McAteer predicted that the "services will grow in popularity as more people hear about them."