With that said, one service I have taken advantage of a number of times is GOOG-411, Google's voice-driven service, which not only offers free 411 service, but also the capability to perform searches around a particular area and connect you to the business or location.
I'm not sure often these services are used. But if you do, I'd urge you to try out BING-411 (see the connection?). It's at least comparable if not slightly superior to what Google has accomplished.
Both services ask for a city and state to begin with, as well as the name of or the category of a local business (e.g, "dentist"). Both services also allow searches around a particular intersection, or just the city at large. My test city, "Benicia, California," was recognized by BING-411, but not Google's service. Trying an alternate ("Los Gatos, California") was picked up properly by both services. Other search locations were also recognized correctly, but failing even just once eliminates an entire city from Google's service, a big black mark
I'm slightly disappointed that BING-411 allows advertisers to sponsor the top two search results, which I naturally toss out as being irrelevant. That only allows BING-411 one more result in its first grouping, forcing users to ask for additional results. But BING-411 also addresses my complaint in spades: not only does it identify the results as sponsored, but a small chime also calls them out as well. That chime is missing from the "true" results.
BING-411 does offer one nice feature, however: driving directions. How useful are spoken driving directions on a phone? Not as useful as on a GPS or mobile device; however, in California, where mobile browsing is probably technically legal (but texting and using a cell phone is not) voice directions are still quite useful.
BING-411 offers one direction at a time, allowing a user to say "next" to advance to the next instruction., and summarizes the trip in terms of mileage and drive time. I haven't tried a long trip using BING-411, but I would assume that you could remain on the phone with it the entire trip, if you wanted. Note that the service doesn't actually know where you are, however, so it can't recalculate directions automatically if you stray off course.
Both GOOG-411 and BING-411 offer to send results via text message, but BING needs to streamline this. Google's service offers this as a default option, while BING-411 allows you to send the information "to a friend". Hello, Bing! I can pull over, you know?
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