Another great tool that came out of the eComm conference last week was Fonolo. If you've ever called a company that has one of these interactive voice response systems with a phone tree from hell, you will appreciate the value Fonolo brings to the table.

Fonolo spiders the phone trees for many different companies toll free numbers, much like Google spiders web sites. Fonolo uses a combination of voice recognition as well as human editors to generate a map of the interactive voice response system.

An end user will go to the Fonolo website, find the company they are interested in, and see the IVR map for that company. Once the user knows where they want to go, they simply click on that part of tree, enter your phone number, and Fonolo will call you and take you right to that spot in the company's voice system-something Fonolo CEO Shai Berger calls "Deep Dialing." You can also bookmark it-just like a web site!

The service is not perfect. IVR systems change without warning, creating the potential for a deep link to not take you were you'd expect. The service also does not currently utilize any information you might need to provide the service, e.g. an account number. This functionality will be added later, though once it is, there will be some serious authentication and security issues to consider-ones I know Shai Berger and the rest of the Fonolo team are thinking about.

The service is currently in closed, private beta and will be ad-supported for consumers when it is released.