Never Deal with Phone Menus Again

      by Wyatt Walter

I just read through LifeHacker’s 2009 top ten list of the web’s most under-hyped apps and just can’t get over number 2: Fonolo. Most of the other applications are just web apps that perform the same function as desktop applications, but Fonolo seems to stand out among the rest as one of the more innovative and useful applications I’ve seen in a while. The application is really simple (something that seems to make the good ones stand out), but it allows users to call common businesses that utilize phone menus and display the menu visually. Once the services gets through the menus, it connects to the users’ phone to pick up.

In a world where most things are available to us online, there’s a surprising amount of things that one still has to pick up the phone for and this allows consumers to have the convenience of browsing, much like the web, but still be able to get to talk to a real-life person. I can see Fonolo being ripe for the picking from the likes of Google to add to Google Voice as a wonderful time-saving feature. Hopefully we’re not too far from the day where businesses offer such a service right from their website as well, but I’m sure we’re a long way from that day..

Filed under News : Comments (0) : Sep 21st, 2009