Yahoo has its share of limelight in the ongoing CTIA 2008 with the revamp of its mobile search engine – oneSearch. For its second version Yahoo’s oneSearch is utilizing the voice recognition feature of mobile phones to, well receive search terms. Yahoo says, it’s one way of delivering faster and quick mobile search service to its users. Yahoo has partnered with Vlingo, a speech recognition company to help them deliver this kind of service.
Aside from the voice-enabled search, oneSearch is also activating the search assist feature which helps users in inputting text. Honestly, I don’ t know what Yahoo oneSearch really wants to give to its mobile users. Those two features actually contradict each other. Search assist should have been introduced first, then voice-enabled search as an improvement.
But anyway, aside from these two search facility enhancements, Yahoo is also implementing a more open mobile search through integrated search results by way of the “semantic web”. So, instead getting the usual search results in link, oneSearch hopes to deliver the most accurate and relevant search result to users in their mobile phones.
In addition to these new features, Yahoo oneSearch is moving the Yahoo mobile search box into the mobile phone’s idle screen. This is to make it easy for users to fire up the oneSearch box quickly without having the need to open the mobile phone’s web browser. I would have to agree that this one is a useful feature but would depend on mobile manufacturers’ decision whether to integrate this in the default menu of their mobile phones.
