Is your cell phone ruining your life?

Wired has an interesting article by Rob Beschizza titled, "Ten Reasons To Throw Away Your Cellphone." The article lists all of the reasons why cell phones can make your life harder and more complicated. One of the reasons, and the one I identify with most, is listed below.

It makes you perpetually available
If it's on, they can get you. If it's off, they wonder why they can't get you. It's a lose-lose situation for your Zen.

Personally I think the benefits far outweigh the detriments, but obviously not everyone agrees. So I'll be keeping my phone for now. What about you?
Read the article for the rest of the reasons why Wired thinks you should throw out your phone. Ten Reasons To Throw Away Your Cellphone

Edit: I just realized how ironic it is that this post has Cell Phones ruining your life, while two posts ago cell phones were saving lives. LOL

Google Phone Search

Over the weekend Google launched into public beta a new free 411 service for your phone. You can access it by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone. The service is currently completely free, and totally automated. It's also only available in the US right now. The automation thing could be a problem. If you can't get the computer system to understand you, there are no human operators on the other end to talk to. But that aside, this could seriously upset the big telecoms. The 411 market in the US is currently a $7 billion a year money maker for the telecoms. So I doubt they will be very pleased with this new offering.

It works by connecting to the local search info in the normal Google search engine. So if your business isn't listed in the local search database, then Google wont be able to find it in it's free 411 service.

I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, but I am hopeful that it will be a viable alternative to the current 411 service and it's associated charges.

From TechCrunch: Google Launches Free 411 Service
Google's official site: Goog411

[edit] I tested it using both a specific business name and a generic business type. Both worked great. I had to repeat the business name twice before it understood me, but then it found the right business. The generic business type seemed to come out correctly even when I was purposely slurring and mumbling my words. The voice recognition is actually pretty good with common words, but more obscure words seem to need more precise pronunciation.