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If you want to map a locale or score some directions but want to avoid driving into a pole, you can now use your pipes . Google Maps now recognizes Search by Voice on Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 phones. Google introduced Search by Voice in 2008 and has been rolling that functionality out into different parts of the Googlesphere since. Now Google Maps 4.1 comes with voice search. Sponsor The categories of search that Maps will now recognize vocally includes the full spectrum of search fields already enabled for mobile. business name business category city, state ZIP code postal address intersection, city, state airport code latitude longitude Hands-free it is not, however. To start the search you still need to open Google Maps and hit "call" prior to making your search. The install is available on qualifying phones at m.google.com/maps . An interesting aspect of the language settings the ability to select not just your language but, if it's English, the accent you use. I wonder if this functionality will be available to Spanish-speakers or whether the different accents within Yue Chinese will eventually be recognized. Discuss
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Google Mobile Announces Search by Voice for Maps
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Yesterday we looked at DASH7 , a wireless sensor networking standard that may play an important part in next generation mobile services - including location-based services, Internet of Things and social networking. In this post we analyze some use cases for DASH7, which also point to where the Mobile Web is heading. We'll explore long distance mobile advertising and mobile coupons. We'll also look at how location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla could evolve. Sponsor Extending Location-Based App Functionality Given the growth of location-based apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla in 2010, it's intriguing to think about what's next for these services. According to the DASH7 report, enhanced loyalty programs could be the next big thing. With a DASH7-enabled phone, the white paper states, "a user could set his or her preferences in the Foursquare or Gowalla application that would allow the user to be automatically "discovered" or "checked in" at the coffee shop/restaurant/gun store/etc. and thereby accrue loyalty points passively, i.e. by just being "in" the establishment, rather than requiring active/conscious user behavior to participate in the program." Even more advanced services could offer customized promotions created "on the fly", targeting a certain user's preferences. Mobile Advertising From Long Distance and On-The-Go A long-held goal of the Mobile Web - at least for retailers - is using mobile phones for mobile advertising, loyalty programs, couponing, and other 'personalized shopping' experiences. Of course there are privacy issues with these things, but nevertheless these scenarios are (finally) coming soon. NFC-enabled phones have shown glimpses of this functionality, via smart posters, kiosks and billboards. As discussed in a previous post, NFC technology is limited to a 4 centimeter range - so the phone needs to be held close to the media asset in order to initiate the data transfer. Also it requires a tag reader application to be installed on your mobile phone. According to an as yet unreleased white paper that ReadWriteWeb was shown, the DASH7 Alliance thinks that "a far larger set of customers would be willing to execute the same applications provided that they were executable a) from a longer distance, b) while moving, and c) in some cases, passively/without any conscious initiation of their own." DASH7 has a range of hundreds of meters and can be used while on the move. While point 3 might scare some privacy advocates, it's very likely that customers would need to opt in before they "passively" received such advertising messages. If this is still to abstract for you, here's a potential scenario: I'm driving down a street and I pass a smart poster pasted onto a building wall. This elicits a beep from my phone, because my phone has 'passively' scanned the poster and discovered something that I want to be notified about (I've opted into receiving notifications only about certain things). Because it's against the law to check my mobile phone where I live, I wait till I'm parked and then I check what the beep was for. Turns out that one of my favorite bands is playing in the city tomorrow night! The smart poster I'd driven past was an advertisement for that band. So I then proceed to book a ticket, using my phone of course. Mobile Coupons Mobile coupons are a hot area of activity already, with Google and others offering them. However, currently mobile coupons are limited to short-range and active receiving. Soon we might have long-range couponing, real-time interaction and 'passively' receiving coupons. The DASH7 Alliance white paper offers a scenario of Paramount promoting its upcoming movie Iron Man 2, using a smart poster. In the NFC scenario, someone could walk past the Iron Man 2 poster and download a 2-for-1 coupon to see the movie. However, according to the DASH7 Alliance: "...a combination DASH7/NFC-enabled smartphone could still support the default NFC scenario, but could also provide for a) longer distance distribution of the coupon b) "passive" acquisition of coupons according to a user's pre-defined "coupon acquisition criteria" (e.g. "auto-accept coupons for any movies starring Al Pacino" , and c) real-time interaction with the media asset (e.g. "answer the following three questions correctly and win a 2-for-1 coupon to see "Iron Man 2".)" Those are just some of the next generation mobile services we can expect to see soon, thanks to wireless technologies like NFC and DASH7. Let us know in the comments if you have other potential use case ideas! Discuss
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What's Next For Mobile Apps?
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Rackspace launched an iPad app to manage a cloud infrastructure, one of the first to offer such a service. Amazon Web Services (AWS) does not have apps for the iPhone nor the iPad platforms. It has historically not offered mobile apps for AWS. Sponsor You can still access AWS on the iPad through the Safari browser. But is the experience as rich as what you would have as on a native app? Mike Mayo built Rackspace's iPad app. He says it is the functionality that gives apps their value. It's evident in both consumer and enterprise apps. Users get a rich user experience. You can see it in the Racskpace cloud app. Mayo humorously says that the app offers administrators "a life." Meaning that you can go out for dinner without the anxiety of not knowing how the infrastructure is faring. If you see a problem, you can reboot, directly from the device. The app does have a new service not available on the iPhone version. You can delete your servers on it. Mayo kept the feature off the iPhone due to the concern that it's such a small device, easily left at a bar or restaurant. He feels people are less likely to leave an iPad due to its size. We're not so sure. People leave their laptops behind all the time. We could go into details about the app and what it offers but Robert Scoble's video does a good job of that. Mayo is currently developing a Rackpace cloud app for the Android. Disclosure: RackSpace is a sponsor of ReadWriteCloud's parent site, ReadWriteWeb. Discuss
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Does the iPad App Give Rackspace An Advantage?
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Robert Scoble,
safari
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Bookmarking service Delicious has just rolled out a Google Chrome browser extension. Like other Chrome extensions we love to play with, this one is lightweight, fast and useful. There's no bulky sidebar here. Bookmarks can be created and saved with a miniscule "TAG" button and they can be searched from Chrome's excellent omnibar. So, do you think this will prompt loyal Delicious users - many of whom had been holding out on Chrome in favor of Firefox - to switch to Google Chrome entirely? Sponsor This is what the button and simple form for bookmarking a page look like:
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Delicious Chrome Extension Early Beta Now Available
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As of today, Facebook Fan Page status updates will begin appearing in Google search results, according to a tweet by Google. The announcement means that we will begin seeing results from the nearly 3 million fan pages, but not from the more than 400 million users. Google currently controls around 90% of the search engine market, according to StatCounter , with Yahoo and Bing it's closest competitors. Will Bing's exclusive access to Facebook user updates change this at all? Sponsor Google first announced the expansion of its real-time Web search last December, noting that it would include data from Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Indenti.ca and Twitter. And, of course, Buzz is now included in that list. Since then, Bing and Yahoo have made deals to step up their real-time Web search as well. Yahoo recently brokered a deal with Twitter and Bing expanded its partnership with Facebook to become the default on-site search engine for the social network. Also included in the Bing deal was the ability to fully index public user updates, but this functionality is not yet available. While it may be true that having access to only Facebook Fan Page updates puts Google at a disadvantage in terms of the sheer volume of content indexed, do we really want to have every piece of content shared by those 400 million users in our search results? A recent post here on ReadWriteWeb garnered a large stream of traffic from Facebook's more technologically inept portion of its user base and the resulting comments were less then intellectual. As Brandee Barker, a spokeswoman for Facebook, told us the other day, "Facebook Pages are designed to provide authentic voices for public figures, celebrities, and organizations." While some are arguing these new results will just be a stream of advertisements and self-promotion, they will focus on official voices from organizations and the content they want to share. We're not sure about you, but maybe we don't want to hear every little thing every person on the planet has to say about everything. Although the Internet is a great and democratizing force, perhaps having some filters remain in place isn't the end of the world. It can be hard enough just keeping up with the stream of updates as it is. Adding the daily chatter of 400 million may just go one step too far - although we'd still like the option. Maybe, in the end, this will give Bing a bigger share of the search engine market, and that isn't a bad thing. Just like a multi-party political system offers more choices, maybe a more balanced search engine market would be better for us too. When we want the official word from official organizations, we can go to Google. When we want to put our finger on the pulse of the 400 million users, we can go to Bing. Discuss
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Google Takes First Shot at Facebook Search Results
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