SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- DIR-ECT-IONS, the popular free service for 'directions by phone call,' is now available nationwide to all cities in the continental U.S. Anyone can get driving directions by calling from their cell phone -- just dial the word D-I-R-E-C-T-I-O-N-S (347-328-4667); tell the voice-activated service a starting address and destination address; and instantly receive a text message with Mapquest driving directions. In addition, callers can ask for business chains, like Starbucks or Fedex, and receive directions to the closest location. The service is free and works on all cell phones - no web plan or GPS needed.

"The mobile phone is at the center of the location-based services revolution," said Chris Hazelton, senior analyst for IDC's Mobile Device Technology and Trends program. "With increasing government regulations limiting the use of mobile phones by drivers, voice-activated services provide a simple, easy to use alternative to more complex input methods."

The service has already received enthusiastic consumer adoption in limited releases this summer in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other metro areas. It is powered by breakthrough speech recognition and voice interface technology from Dial Directions (www.dialdirections.com).

"DIR-ECT-IONS is making mobile directions and other location-based services easy and available to mainstream cell phone users," said Amit Desai, co-founder and chief product officer of Dial Directions. "Its popularity is due to voice-activation that's easy to use, accurate, free and accessible from all cell phones."

In addition to expanding nationwide, DIR-ECT-IONS is also introducing a new 'mobile invitation' feature called Meet Me. By free cell phone call, callers can quickly create social events, invite friends, and send them directions. Meet Me is the new generation of social invitations for mobile users - on the fly, quick, created and used by cell phone alone.

"Dial Directions and its underlying 'spoken location interface' technology represent a major leap forward in mobile consumer services," said Desai. "It's the missing link between location-based services (LBS) and voice-activated directory assistance (411) services. Following directions, we'll soon be introducing other innovative mobile services."

Dial Directions is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay area, and was founded by some of the industry's foremost experts in voice interfaces, speech recognition, and mobile technologies.

For free video and audio content about Dial Directions, please visit: www.thenewsmarket.com/directions. You can preview and receive broadcast- standard video and audio digitally or by tape from this site. Registration, video and audio are free to the media.

About Dial Directions

Dial Directions provides the industry's best platform for voice-activated location-based services. It powers DIR-ECT-IONS, the first nationwide free phone service for 'directions assistance'. Any cell phone user can dial D-I-R- E-C-T-I-O-N-S (347-328-4667); tell the voice-activated service their starting address and destination (address, business, or local event); and instantly receive a driving directions by text message. The service is free and works on all cell phones - no web plan or GPS needed. Dial Directions' breakthrough voice interface and recognition technology makes mobile consumer services easy enough for mainstream adoption. The company is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay area. For more information, visit: www.dialdirections.com