Mobile search is a big battleground at the moment, mainly because Google isn’t anywhere near as dominant as it is on the Web, which is encouraging its rivals to pile in with their own technologies. Yahoo is keen to talk up its oneSearch service, which has just been given a revamp. One of the most high-profile new features is voice search.
What’s that then? As you might guess, you speak a search query into your handset, and Yahoo brings back some results. Suggested queries include flight numbers, places, website names, and even restaurants. The technology comes from a separate company, Vlingo. It even adapts to your voice, apparently - good news for anyone with a lisp, stutter, or tendency to shout ‘BOLLOCKS!’ when they mean to say ‘train times’.
(It might not adapt that much, if I’m honest. But perhaps in the next version…)
Yahoo also says it’s planning to open up oneSearch to other publishers and developers, to bring back more useful results. I didn’t quite understand what that meant, but they do give some examples - such as you searching for Italian restaurants, and getting reservation information from bookings companies, rather than just a phone number and address. Or getting train timetables when you search for a certain place. This is expected to go live with selected partners in the next few months.
Finally, oneSearch has been beefed up with a new feature called Search Assist, which aims to make it quicker to tap in search queries on your mobile keypad. How? Predictive text completion, so you type ‘hil’, and it suggests Hillary Clinton, Perez Hilton, Hillary Duff and other common search terms. It only works on the iPhone at the mo, but will become available on AJAX-compatible handsets in the near future.
Are there many AJAX-compatible handsets?
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