Earlier this evening I finally got around to reading the newest issue of Popular Science, and it mentions a new thing that Google is offering: Google SMS (Short Message Service).
Basically, what happens is you text message a question to Google – about the weather, movie listings, area restaurants, trivia, dictionary definitions, etc. – and you get the answer within about a minute. I tried it with a weather query, and got messaged back almost immediately. You can even ask it for SMS help. 
Information when I want it! No internet connection required! And I don’t have to sign up for anything! And because I have a text messaging package already, it’s basically free! This is definitely making my inner geek do a happy dance. 
Not available in Canada. Wah.
Yeah, I completely forgot to mention that it’s just a US thing. :smack: Sorry!
Maybe they’ll add other countries when it gets out of beta…?
It’s been around since October at least. I mentioned it back in December here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=5592501&highlight=google#post5592501
They’ve added a few features since then.
I tried doing a search on “Google SMS” before posting, but “SMS” was considered too short. I wound up with 30 pages of results, and I wasn’t about to go through all of them – but I wouldn’t have found your post anyway, because I only searched for threads in the past 3 months. I figured that because it was still in beta, and because Popular Science was treating it like a new thing, it probably wasn’t very old. Oh well. I know for sure that at least one of the new features was only released in February, so I don’t regret my OP. 