Lots of guests this week! We talk with both the Yahoo! oneSearch team, as well as Vlingo, the force behind its voice recognition search. We also take some time with Alltel to talk about their upcoming BlackBerry 8330, what plans are available, as well as what it’s like being a CDMA carrier in a GSM world. We also bring in the news, including fresh news on the BlackBerry 9000, a significant raise in BlackBerry’s brand value, the due date for Sprint’s Curve, and plenty more. You can download Episode 27 directly here, get it via feed here, or subscribe via iTunes.
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BlackBerry Cool Podcast: Episode 27
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Not to be out-done by Yahoo’s oneSearch, Microsoft announced Tellme for your BlackBerry. Not only does it recognize voice commands like “weather”, “movies”, “traffic” and “map”, as well as search for any company name, but the app also takes into account your GPS coordinates to further narrow down search results. It’s odd that the BlackBerry version came out before Windows Mobile, but you’ll hardly hear us complaining. You can check it out at www.tellme.com.
Yahoo! has teamed up with Vlingo (not to be confused with Vringo) to offer speech recognition in their mobile web search app. If you’re in the US on a Pearl, Curve, or 8800-series BlackBerry you can snag it here. It worked pretty well in my brief test, getting most of what I said right even when I sort of mumbled, although it seemed to have a little trouble with background noise. There are plans to make it work on more devices and in more countries too, so hopefully more people will be able to get their hands on it soon.
Nuance has announced that their voice-based search and instant messaging service, Voice Control, will be extending language support for French Rogers customers. Rogers has been pretty good about language support in Canada, so it’s good to see they’re keeping up. Look out for the updated software in April, available on the 8310, 8110, 8800 and Windows Mobile devices.
Evidence gathered from Google’s mobile offerings indicates that mobile internet usage is on the rise in a big way, reports Electronista. Google has seen mobile internet use increase since they released mobile versions of some of their products, like Gmail, Maps, and Search. A Reuters analyst, however, pointed out that it might a sort of selection bias on the part of Google, with people simply using their products more often rather than the internet in general. Still, some evidence points in the other direction: Google receives 50 times more searches from iPhone users than any other phone. Who would have thought a decent browser might actually get used more often?
Hayden just updated us on the status of vTap, the video search and video player for mobile. It’s now optimized for BlackBerry OS 4.3, which included streaming video support, and stretches back to the 8700. The search is pretty cool, working a lot like Boopsie in that it offers results as you type. On top of YouTube searching, they’ve also got a Wikipedia search with the same instant-return feature. The usual disclaimer follows that you probably shouldn’t be trying this out unless you’ve got an unlimited data plan, or really deep pockets. While it doesn’t look like the video search is ready just yet (just Wikipedia), we’re sure it will soon be accessible at http://m.vtap.com from your mobile browser.
