The Download Blog

Mobile voice search company Vlingo on Wednesday released Vlingo 3.0 for BlackBerry. Like Vlingo 2.0 before it, Vlingo 3.0 uses your voice commands to text other Vlingo BlackBerry users, search the Web, dial a number, create a note, update Facebook and Twitter, and open other applications. New to Vlingo 3.0 is a robotic voice that reads back your actions (like, "calling Home"), plus two premium features. One lets you text any contact (not just others using Vlingo's BlackBerry service), and the other creates, replies, and forwards e-mails based on your dictation. These two services, packaged into Vlingo Plus, cost $17.99 for a one-time fee.

Since Vlingo 2.0 allowed for e-mail dictation in version 2, it's disappointing that the premium set-up in version 3 yanks back a core feature. The benefit is having Vlingo read back the contents of your message rather than having you view it yourself. This makes the move to audio a move to hands-free composition as well, which is useful if moving your lips is the only motion you can spare. However, as Vlingo 2.0 won't expire, those who want to continue dictating e-mail for free and who are uninterested in the application's other enhancements should consider skipping the upgrade.

In addition to the technological add-ons, Vlingo 3.0 officially plays nice with some Bluetooth and all wired headsets. So long as you pair the devices and press the side button, you can rattle off voice prompts through the headset without lifting the BlackBerry to your mouth. If you're driving while calling a number or dictating an e-mail or note, the new setup, along with the just-debuted audio playback feature, helps keep your eyes focused on the road.

(Credit: Vlingo)

As a final addition, Vlingo 3.0 becomes compatible with the BlackBerry Storm, Bold, Curve 8900, and Peal Flip phones, and adds some tweaks to make Vlingo work seamlessly on many more phones tied to corporate policies. (Company admins will still have the final say, however, on any programs they choose to lock out.)

The hands-on test
As with Vlingo 2.0, setting up Vlingo 3.0 takes about five minutes. Following the setup wizard, you'll first configure a hardware convenience key on the phone that activates Vlingo when you push it. This literal side door into the app obviates the need to launch it from the phone's start screen. After that, you'll also be shown a quick tutorial and will need to wait while the app indexes your address book. Figure in a few more minutes to set up your Twitter and Facebook credentials the first time you update your status messages with each social service.

How did the app actually do? Very well, although still not perfectly. My Facebook status update message, "Testing Vlingo 3.0" retrieved "testing Vlingo tree Plato," and did not always capitalize the 't' in testing, which for an editor is a serious offense. Luckily, Vlingo lets you view a message before sending it on its way, or reads it back to you, if you're a premium user.

The robotic read-back was also accurate in our tests, and is optional. In the settings are adjustments for volume, the voice's gender, and length of the message--it's here you can also silence the speech. Yet with this voice playback, headset support, and the new premium e-mail and texting services, Vlingo is by far the strongest voice service offering for BlackBerry, and is poised to make a buck to boot.

Related story: Vlingo one-ups Google with a better voice-powered iPhone app

(Credit: Screenshot by Bonnie Cha/CNET)

Delivering on its promise, Google released a new mobile application on Wednesday that brings its Voice Search feature to BlackBerrys, much like it did for the iPhone and Android-based T-Mobile G1.

The Google Mobile App is available now as a free download and allows you to conduct searches with the sound of your voice. To do so, you simply hold down the Talk button on your BlackBerry and then speak your search term into the phone. Brits, you'll also be happy to hear that the app now supports British English accents.

Perhaps even more powerful, the app also includes support for Google's My Locations feature, which brings up search results based on your location as determined by your BlackBerry's GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular triangulation.

Other enhancements include shortcuts to several Google services, such as Gmail, Maps, News, and Reader. To get Google Mobile App on your BlackBerry, you can point your phone's browser to http://m.google.com or enter your mobile number here. Be aware that the app requires you have to have BlackBerry OS 4.1 or higher and BlackBerry OS 4.2 or higher for Voice Search.

(Sources: Google Mobile Blog, Information Week)

Article edited at 2/10/09 at 8:00 PM to clarify the history of OneSearch for mobile.

(Credit: Yahoo Inc.)

Yahoo on Monday released an update to its voice-activated mobile search app, Yahoo OneSearch, that gets a handful of new capabilities for both its full-fledged app and OneSearch shortcut, plus new support for the Windows Mobile operating system. The OneSearch shortcut is a plug-in that lets you search by typing or speaking search terms into a search bar located on the home screen of your mobile phone.

After releasing a voice-enabled version of its OneSearch plug-in to a few Nokia phones last August, Yahoo has been slowly expanding the application's capabilities, as well as expanding the application itself, to the remaining mobile platforms. Considering the California company's latest string of woes, its slower rate of production compared to competing mobile search apps, namely Google, isn't too surprising.

What the OneSearch update offers is essentially good, but it isn't anything new to the field of voice search, either. Among the additions is a location feature that uses cell tower signal to mark your approximate whereabouts. After placing you, your search results will list local businesses by default. It's a necessary feature to win mindshare among mobile searchers, but Yahoo is playing catch-up among its peers. Microsoft integrated its version of location triangulation into Windows Live Search for mobile last month, and location awareness has been a big part of Google's mobile map client for well over a year.

Yahoo's OneSearch application and shortcut also receive some nice enhancements in the suggested search department. As you type a query, Yahoo's search app breaks its predictive offerings into two. The first block of suggestions is populated with a list of your previous search terms. The second block pulls in matches from an internal dictionary that include the first letters you've already typed. Although assisted search is by now a comfortably worn theme in browser and mobile search, it's welcome in Yahoo OneSearch as a timesaver all the same.

Yahoo's final feature is brand-new support for its voice search plug-in for Windows Mobile phones--but only in the U.S. Yahoo's OneSearch apps, however, have expanded onto some cell phone models in Australia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

A correction has been made to this story. See below for details.

As mentioned in an earlier post about the upcoming firmware update for T-Mobile's G1, the built-in Google search tool is getting voice-powered search. Like Google's rule-breaking, first-party iPhone search application, users can simply talk into the application to have their queries transcribed into text.

(Credit: Google)

The big difference, however, is that users will need to begin a voice search by tapping the microphone icon instead of simply holding their phone up to their face.

Why is this you ask? The G1 is missing the oh-so-important proximity sensor, which on the iPhone tells the application you're holding it up to your face. Also, the app doesn't make use of the G1's accelerometer, which means it can't fake knowing you're lifting it from palm to head. In the iPhone iteration, the application uses both of these sensors in tandem to do its voice searching magic.

No doubt future Android devices that have either sensor will fall in line with the iPhone's offering, such as the long-rumored G2. Until then G1 users will need to tap first.

Correction: This blog initially misstated why the G1 app does not allow you to just hold the phone up to your face. The T-Mobile G1 does have an accelerometer, but the application does not make use of it.

Google on Friday is expected to release version two of its mobile search application for the iPhone. The new version works much like the old one, letting users query Google outside of the mobile Safari Web browser, as well as search through contacts and narrow down results by their current location. The big change is the addition of search-by-voice, which lets you skip the keyboard entirely.

Google has found a really neat way to distinguish between voice and keyboard input. Using the phone's accelerometer and proximity sensors, it can tell when you're lifting the phone up to your face. Once you do, all that's left to do is speak, and your voice will get processed then turned into a query similar to what's been done with Google's GOOG-411 service--including suggestions of what it thought you said. This works for both Web searches and contacts, which makes the application double as a voice-powered contact search. You cannot, however, dial a result without clicking on it.

It's worth noting a few companies have already beat Google to the punch with voice-activated search tools. Excuse Me Services has two applications: Say Who and Say Where, which let you dial contacts and search for local Web services using nothing more than your voice. Say Where in particular is the more interesting of the two since it can use voice queries to find directions, gas stations, restaurants and traffic maps.

Also, early Monday rival Yahoo launched voice support for its OneSearch product, however instead of using internally-built technology it uses Vlingo for the the voice recognition and processing.

The updated, voice-ready version of Google's application will be available on Android and Blackberry devices in the coming months. iPhone users with the application already installed will find the updated version in the updates tab of the app store.

Update: A few folks, including Microsoft were nice enough to remind me via e-mail about voice search service TellMe which I forgot to mention.

Update 2: As of 4:50 PM PST the update has still not gone out through the app store. However there is now a demo video of how it works:

Updated on 10/10/08 at 11:35 a.m. PST with more details about beginning a voice search on Nokia devices.

You can now speak your search into Yahoo's search widget for Nokia start screens.

(Credit: Yahoo Inc.)

Voice-responsive search has been available from Yahoo's OneSearch 2.0 application for select BlackBerry phones since this last April, but until this week only a few of you could to try it out.

On Thursday, Yahoo slipped voice recognition into the OneSearch 2.0 home-screen shortcut--available for a smattering of Nokia Series 60 phones--and in the Yahoo! Go 3.0 files for select BlackBerry, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia Series 60 models, such as the BlackBerry Curve and high-end Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. Those using older versions of either of these apps will have to download them anew to get the chatty update.

Operating the voice search is simple--on BlackBerry, just hold down on the green 'talk' button and speak your search term. OneSearch will start scouring Yahoo's database for answers as soon as you let go. Nokia owners can hit the pencil key to get going. Those without pencil keys will launch tier search by pressing the right shortcut key (labeled Y! OneSearch) and speaking or typing into the search box that appears.

Although voice-recognition technology is constantly improving as a whole, many voice searches I've tried using various applications have fallen flat. It helps to launch uncomplicated searches in quieter areas. I've experienced my share of success, but have also had to punch in search terms or edit them in the search field when the speech recognition software bungled a command or when the search engines didn't return the results I had in mind. Still, it's good to have options, and as the technology improves, voice searches will save plenty of typing time and hassle.

You can download the OneSearch 2.0 with a voice start-screen widget for select Nokia Series 60 phones by navigating to m.yahoo.com/shortcut from a PC or phone. The new version of Yahoo Go 3.0 (technically 3.0.4.6), which includes the voice-supporting Yahoo OneSearch widget, can be found for some Nokia and BlackBerry models at get.go.yahoo.com from a PC or the phone's native browser.

Thumbs up: The local listings app takes voice direction. Thumbs down: For the time being, you can only get it on eight Sprint cell phones.

(Credit: V-Enable)

At CTIA 2008 in Las Vegas, Yahoo's executive vice president of Connected Life, Marco Boerries, demonstrated with great enthusiasm the newest feature to grace its mobile search tool: voice input. The technique, which asks users to press and hold a key while speaking their lookup request, is already active in Windows Live Search Mobile. Yahoo, however, hasn't released it beyond a preview. On Tuesday, one ankle-biting competitor jumped into the ring with its version of voice search.

FreeMobile411, which was itself just released in WAP form on April 11 (4/11--sigh), announced a Java version that adds the ability to search local listings by listening to your speech. While the overarching technology has been around for a while in the guise of carrier-branded solutions, it's the first time that parent company V-Enable is marketing it under the FreeMobile411 identity.

The upshot? FreeMobile411's beta Java application is ready for action, and like Yahoo's oneSearch 2.0, its predictive typing and favorites-saving features enhance a search experience that includes businesses and residential listings within the U.S. The down side? For the time being, FreeMobile411's Java app rollout is pitifully small--just eight Sprint cell phones. It's not nearly enough to challenge Yahoo head-on, but it will be interesting to compare these apps side-by-side when they're both easy to get. Windows Live Search Mobile, too, had better put up its dukes.

You'll be able to keep tabs on the FreeMobile411 app's status via the Web site, also launched Tuesday. In the meantime, anyone with an Internet-enabled phone can try the basic service using FreeMobile411's WAP site.