Having A Personal Assistant On-Call, 24I7 (NAPSA)—Picture this: It’s a holiday weekend, and you're driving across state to get to the grand family reunion before dark. Trouble is, to avoid the holiday crush, you’ve taken a route less traveled and now you're all turned *round. To make matters worse, you volunteered to buy the entre, and you've no idea where the nearest store is. As for looking up that old schoolmate or making those lastminute calls to friends, forget it. You’d need a personal assistant to get it all done. Well, now you can have one— sort of. Through Infone, a new, high-end telephone service from Portland, Ore.-based Metro One Telecommunications Inc., an allpurpose personal assistance service is just a phonecall away, 24/7. Need directions? No problem. Infone’s operators can give turn-byturn instructions to get you to your destination, or to the nearest store to pick up that entre. Infone also provides enhanced directory assistance, so looking up that old school buddy should be a cinch. And with Infone’s new “voice e-mail’ feature, you can record a voice message and have it instantly e-mailed to all those friends you meant to contact, combining the convenience of email with the personal touch of yourvoice. “Throughout the holiday season and beyond, having Infone at your fingertips simplifies busy lives, saves time and makes multi-tasking a breeze,” said Tim Timmins, president and chief executive of Metro One. “Its TeleConcierge feature lets you make restaurant, hotel or concert reservations, order flowers, check the weather or even review your horoscope.” Want to see a movie? Infone can tell you what’s playing, where and when at theaters across the country. Flat tire? Infone can summon a tow truck or mechanic. Got a disembodied phone number floating in your wallet? An Infone reverse-directory search can tell you whose it is. You can even upload contacts and calendar information from Microsoft Outlook or your Palm Pilot or other personal organizer and access a copy of it anywhere, any time, via Infone. “You get a real human being to assist you every time,” Timmins said. “This is far more helpful than wading through a series of annoying recorded menus, as other services might have you do.” And there’s no subscription fee. You just sign up with a credit card and pay for what you use. Each call is only 89 cents for up to 15 minutes, then just five cents a minute after that. Last year, Metro One made Fortune magazine’s list of America’s 100 fastest-growing companies for the third consecutive year, ranking 20th. As of July, Infone had attracted about 20,000 subseribers in its first three months, companyofficials said. To sign up for Infone or get more details, please log on to www.infone.com or call 888-411-1111.
