Live Search for Mobile - Now with Speech Recognition

  • Do you have a Windows Mobile phone?
  • Do you ever find yourself looking for a phone number, or directions, or gas prices, or movie listings while you are on the go?
  • Do you wish you could just speak your search queries, rather than fumble with your phone's tiny keypad?

If you answered ‘yes’ to the three questions above, the Live Search for Mobile client is for you. Point your Windows Mobile phone's Internet Explorer to https://wls.live.com and install the client on your phone.

The Speech Recognition Team at Microsoft spent the last few months helping the Live Search team to speech enable this exciting application, and we can't wait for everybody in America to give this little gem a try. Install it now!

Here are some of the cool things you can do with the speech enabled Live Search for Mobile client:

  • Search for businesses by name
  • Search for businesses by name and location
  • Search for businesses by category
  • Find locations by saying a zip code, city and state, or full address

Some examples of the things you can say:

  • Microsoft Corporation
  • Microsoft in Redmond Washington
  • Mexican Restaurant
  • Los Angeles California
  • 98052
  • Miami Florida 33101
  • One Microsoft Way, Redmond Washington 98052

You can check out a cool video of the feature here

The speech recognition functionality for the application doesn't actually sit on the Windows Mobile phone. Instead, the phone takes your speech input, sends it to a server, the server does it's recognition magic, and sends the results back to the phone.

All in all, you'll find the whole experience a lot faster than typing your search query on your keyboard. Especially if you have a phone with a 10 key keypad. Can you imagine typing "One Microsoft Way Redmond Washington 98052" with that? Or even just "Mexican Restaurant"? No way! Speech makes things way easier.

And hey, can you imagine how much money you are going to save in 411 fees? Behold the power of speech!

And even if you don't have a Windows Mobile phone, you can always call Microsoft's new free 411 service at 1-800-CALL-411.