Cellphones are used for everything these days, from listening to music, ordering pizza, checking stocks, and, oh yeah, talking.

Now add tour guide to that list.

The Georgia Aquarium has launched a program that enables guests to use their cellphones to get information on exhibits as they tour the world's largest fish tank.

Instead of using the more traditional headphones and a taped recording as a guide, as at many attractions, visitors to the aquarium dial a number on their cellphones if they want to know more about, say, beluga whales or otters. Each call lasts about one minute.

"Everybody has a cellphone," said Bruce Carlson, chief science officer for the aquarium. "It enhances their visit. There is a lot of enjoyment in using the device."

The aquarium rolled out the cellphone program — which is free, although you have to use your own minutes — about three weeks ago, officials at the attraction said. The 60 or so brief messages are arranged by gallery and total about an hour.

About 530 people listened to some part of the tour on their cellphones last week, up from 300 the previous week. The average visitors is listening to about 5 minutes of the tour, said Beach Clark, vice president for information technology at the aquarium.

"We want to keep it short and to the point," Clark said. "We want to just stick to the facts."

Aquarium officials chose cellphone tours over the traditional headset guide because mobile devices are cheaper and more efficient, they said. The headsets have to be cleaned, require driver's licenses and credit cards to rent and can be costly for visitors.

"We really started talking about it in the early phases of the aquarium," Carlson said. "A lot of people had the idea, but the technology had to catch up."

In addition, cellphones allow visitors to choose what they want to hear so they don't have to follow a pre-determined route to match what they are seeing like on an audio tour.

The aquarium also has an audio tour that can be downloaded to an iPod, but many customers would forget to bring the device when they got there.

"That was the No. 1 feedback we got on the iPod," Clark said. "'I left my iPod at home, is there another way to do this.'"