IPhone | Heritage Blog and Business Reviews

Yellow Pages iPhone App Gets Voice Search

Posted April 27, 2010 by cgseo under under Pay-Per-Click

Voice search is one of the more convenient features of phones these days (at least when it works). AT&T Interactive has launched the latest version of its Yellow Pages app YPMobile, and it comes with voice search, which should make the app a great deal more useful. “As mobile consumers increasingly rely on their mobile device to find and immediately use local information, we are focused on integrating new features to help users easily navigate their everyday lives,” says David Williams, vice president of mobile product management at AT&T Interactive. “The addition of voice search complements the text-based local search experience by expanding the situations in which users can use the YPmobile App, making finding nearby businesses even easier.” In addition to Voice Search, the app also comes equipped with new map-based search functionality, and integration with Facebook and Twitter – users can broadcast their newly-discovered “hot spots.” Given the popularity location sharing is attracting these days, some may go for this. The app is available for free at Apple’s App Store . Recently AT&T Interactive also made its Buzz.com social local search product available to the public. Read my interview with the company about that here .

Tags: Buzz, David Williams, Facebook, Interactive, interview, iPhone, popularity, product management, Search, voice, voice-search

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If the iPhone/Gizmodo Incident Had Happened to Google

Posted April 27, 2010 by cgseo under under Pay-Per-Click

Brad Stone at the New York Times Bits Blog has an interesting article up in which he talks to Andy Rubin, vice president of engineering at Google and co-founder of Android. While the article is mainly about Android, there’s a part toward the end that is humorous when Stone jokes with him that his press relations colleague wanted to confess that he had left a prototype Android phone at a local bar. “I’d be happy if that happened and someone wrote about it,” Rubin is quoted as saying. “With openness comes less secrets.” Considering all the hubbub about the iPhone/Gizmodo incident (which even led to the police seizing Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s computers from his home while he was not even there), Rubin’s response is a well-placed jab. In fact, that’s not the only jab at Apple Rubin took in the interview. Stone writes, that he even “seemed to compared [sic] Apple to North Korea.” On the general public caring about mobile software being open or a walled garden like Apple’s, Rubin is quoted, “When they can’t have something, people do care. Look at the way politics work. I just don’t want to live in North Korea.” There’s no question that Google and Apple are becoming much fiercer rivals. It’s always fun to look at the jabs each takes at the other. Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently painted Android as all but the red light district of mobile operating systems.

Tags: Apple, Brad Stone, Gizmodo, iPhone, jab, local bar, rubin, toward-the-end

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Dictionary.com Illustrates How Search is Becoming More Diversified

Posted April 26, 2010 by cgseo under under Pay-Per-Click

Ask’s Dictionary.com has reached the 10 million download milestone for its mobile apps in just over a year. Dictionary.com gets about 50 million unique visitors a month between its site and its mobile apps. The company’s new iPad app already has over 100,000 downloads to date. I spoke with Dictionary.com President Shravan Goli who expressed a great deal of excitement about the iPad and tablet-style devices in general. He says their iPad app already gets a higher level of engagement from users in terms of time spent with the app. Over 40% of users, he says, are coming back 2-5 times a day. Pageviews for the app are nearly 2-3 times what they are for the site. It’s worth noting as well, that the site has games that are not even available through Dictionary.com’s regular apps (though a couple of them have their own apps in Apple’s App Store). While Goli is clearly ecstatic about the popularity Dictionary.com’s iPad app is already receiving, he’s more excited about the future. “What we’re excited about is working on the 2nd generation of the app.” Don’t rule out games in future versions either. Like other smartphone makers have come into play following the iPhone, we’re going to be seeing this big time with tablet devices like the iPad. This is at the beginning of its lifecycle, Goli says. “We look at it as something that’s going to explode.” And Dictionary.com will continue to look for ways to take advantage. “At the end of the day we’re definitely seeing some of our fastest growth.” This a good example of what we’re talking about when we discuss mobile making search more diversified – people are finding different kinds of information in different ways than they might have in the past. Of course Dictionary.com has been around for over a decade, but mobile simply changes the game – someone who may have used Google to look up a word on their computer, may have also downloaded the Dictionary.com app specifically for definitions – or maybe for some of its other features. People aren’t just going to look up words, he says. They’re going for pronunciations, how to use a word in a sentence, word of the day, etc. – things that aren’t incredibly easy to find through “generic search”. Goli says Dictionary.com’s well-recognized brand has played a great role in the success of its apps. “We haven’t done any marketing on the mobile side,” he says. They’ve essentially just marketed the apps on Dictionary.com itself, and they still reached the ten million downloads. Look for an even bigger expansion of Dictionary.com’s presence as they have also opened up their API, giving developers access to words and definitions for use in games and other types of apps.

Tags: api, Apple, apps, ask, decade, dictionary-com, iPhone, rule-out-games

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