Review of Beyond411 For Blackberry Smartphone Devices

Review of Beyond411 For Blackberry Smartphone Devices
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Main Features

Beyond411 offers a lot of different, useful tools including:

  • Free directory assistance
  • Directions to local businesses
  • Save business listings directly to your address book
  • Directory assistance from GPS locations
  • General business search
  • Web search
  • Convert web results into mobile format for easy viewing on Blackberry

Set Up

Downloading Beyond411 is pretty easy. Once completed, it takes a few more minutes to enter a home, work or other address into your personal settings. Doing so then allows you to search for directory listings near any of the addresses you’ve added. Along with the directory listing, Beyond411 will even offer you the option of receiving directions to your selected location. All directions are powered by Yahoo.

Many times, I haven’t known the exact name of whatever I’m searching for, but entering the type of business has still provided me with the directory listings of all businesses of that type in an area. This is particularly useful when you don’t need an exact business, but would like to shop several businesses within a particular area. For instance, when needing a local shoe repair, simply inputting “shoe repair” returns directory listings all of the shoe repair shops in a particular area.

Beyond411 is also a great application to have when traveling. Besides searching for directory assistance near stable addresses, Beyond411 allows you to use GPS as a selection in finding nearby businesses. In using GPS, a satellite will pinpoint your location and will give directory assistance for all surrounding businesses for your search as well as offer directions to the selected business. I used this not long ago on a trip to Northern California and found it to be a great tool in locating a hotel, restaurants and other businesses I needed while on the road traveling to the Bay Area and while actually there trying to navigate my way around Oakland.

Another very neat function I’ve recently discovered within this application is that I can also search the web directly from the Beyond411 interface. I simply input the web address of the site I wish to use and command Beyond411 to perform a web search. The Blackberry browser is then activated and I am taken directly to the website I entered. Beyond411 also gives me the option of converting the site into a mobile format, when necessary, which is powered by Skweezer.

At some time or another, most Blackberry users will wonder how to add an icon to their homepage in order to quickly access frequently used websites in just one click. While this convenience has yet to be added to the Blackberry platform, Beyond411 helps to expedite the web search process in that it saves all previous web entries so that, on your next visit, one click on a web selection will take you directly to the desired site. While this isn’t exactly the same as an icon on your Blackberry home screen, it does eliminate some of the time it takes to first open your Blackberry browser and then either click on a bookmark or have to manually enter a site’s address.

Recommend? Definitely!

Overall, I’ve found Beyond411 to be an invaluable tool on my Blackberry. I use it regularly as do most other Blackberry users and have not been disappointed with its function. Searches are fast, thorough and conveniently stored for future use. I highly recommend using Beyond411 for Blackberry users and not only for directory searches, but for web searches as well.