Google Mobile App for iPhone Gets New Features
Searching for useful information on a mobile phone isn't always easy or convenient. To help, Google's Mobile team released the Google Mobile App for the iPhone, complete with Voice Search and My Location features. With the app's voice search capabilities, you can perform a Google Web search using--you guessed it--your voice. To use this feature, you simply hold the phone to your ear, wait for a beep to tell you the app is listening, and then say what you are looking for. The application senses when you want to start speaking based on the phone's motion.
In combination with the application's My Location feature, you can also search for information relative to your current location. For example, say you want to find a coffee shop near you. Just say the command, and Google will display a list of coffee shops that are nearby. In order for this feature to work, however, you'll need to enable Location Services on your iPhone and you also must let the Google Mobile App use your location information. We can see where this could be a handy replacement for the POI feature we use regularly on our GPS to help us get our morning coffee fix while on the road.
Of course, there are plenty of times where you may not want to speak, or where talking is prohibited or discouraged, such as in the movie theater. For these types of situations, you can type in your search criteria using the iPhone's on-screen keyboard. Google will even suggest search terms to help you speed your searching.
For easy access to other Google Mobile apps, the new Google Mobile App for the iPhone also provides a scrollable application listing for one-touch access.
For a better idea at how this cool new app works, watch as Google engineer Mike LeBeau explains more:
To download the latest Google Mobile App for iPhone or iPod touch, just go to the App Store and look for Google Mobile App. Sadly for iPod touch users, the cool new Voice Search feature is currently available only for the iPhone in U.S. English.
