Blogged Bull

Live Search Mobile now available for the Blackberry (Beta)

February 19, 2008 – 2:01 pm

Hello all,

Today I’ll be reviewing an application for my Blackberry. This is my first application review, specifically a mobile application, so please bear with me.

To begin I’d like to say that I’m not a huge Windows fan, although I do use it quite frequently, Microsoft is not at the top of my list.

What does this have to do with a Blackberry? The nice little application by Microsoft called Live Search Mobile
Back before I was wise and got a Blackberry, I sported a Motorola Q. Despite all the programs I installed and un-installed from my Q, there was always one program permanently glued to the memory of my phone. It was the Live Search. I loved it. It had everything I wanted, and was visually pleasing.

Now it’s available for the Blackberry, and here’s my review:

First, point your Blackberry’s browser to wls.live.com and download the application by following the prompts on the screen.

After installation you’ll get a Terms of Use screen which you’ll probably barely glance at and immediately click on Accept anyway.

And then a nice loading screen followed up by the actual Home screen after a short delay.

Notice the empty space in the icon list on the Home Screen of Live Search. Probably means their is much more to come in future releases. Lets go over what we currently have on our screen:

1. Search Bar
2. Location
3. Categories
4. Map
5. Directions
6. Traffic
7. Movies

But you can obviously see that anyway right? Right. Lets click on Categories.

Now what you see is a list of Search Categories. Notice all the categories have an arrow that point to the right, which is a sign that there’s more to come after making that selection. I clicked on Restaurants:

Hey I was right! Mmm Seafood, lets click on that.

And after a brief delay, it loads a list of Restaurants related to Seafood starting from the center of my zip code, to the farthest away. Now if I click on Red Lobster, it brings up a new page.

Hmm I’m not a 100% certain where Red Lobster is located, so I’ll click on “Directions To Here” (Shouldn’t it be To There?)

I selected my zip code as the starting location (you can also enter in your exact address).

And voila! A Route Summary. But, I’m kind of a visual learner, so I want to see this on the map. I press the Menu button, and click on Map Route and I get this:

If I want to go back to the Route Summary, I simply hit the back (Esc) button. OK, so I know where Red Lobster is now, but I want to first zoom into the Finish area and make sure I don’t miss any landmarks etc. So I first move my trackball to the right so that its covering the red flag. Notice as you move the cross hairs across the map, it will display the new directions closest to the center. Now that your cross hairs are over the red flag, press the trackball once so that the Zoom bar appears to the left. Now roll your trackball forward to zoom in, or backwards to zoom out. Press it again to set that desired zoom level.

Now I’m going to press the menu key and select “Aerial View”

Ahh yes! Now I remember EXACTLY where Red Lobster is! Now press the menu button and click on Home to exit the map and return to the Home Screen.

So we’ve covered three categories already! Categories, Map and Directions. Lets take a look at Traffic. You could always simply pull up the Traffic for major highways by hitting menu, and selecting Show Traffic from the map, however if you select Traffic from the Home Screen, you’ll get a list of major cities. I KNOW that traffic in Los Angeles is bad so lets select it from the list:

After a brief wait while the map loads you get this. It reminds me of my grandmothers Spaghetti.

As of this sentence being written, it is currently 04:22 AM my time. Meaning that it’s 03:22 AM in California. Those red lines on the map mean “Backed up traffic, go around” etc. Yellow means it’s only slightly congested and green means your good to go! I REALLY don’t want to live there. Congestion at 3AM, no thanks.

OK now lets go back to the Home Screen and click on the last icon on the page, Movies! Now since Live Search already knows my location, it doesn’t ask me again where I am, so when I click on Movies, it automatically gives me a list of movies and a list of theaters closest to me (scrolling to the right selects the Theaters tab).

Now the closest theater to my location is Century Rio 24, so I select that.

Now we have a similar screen like we had earlier, however, it’s got a little gem called “Movies Playing”. This is seriously my favorite feature, check it out:

It gives me a list of the movies that are playing at THAT theater! How cool is that? And all the show times.

If available, the selected movie will even display critic review, worth, etc. If I want more information about the movie, I just click the trackball again for more options. The only thing this application doesn’t tell me is what current prices are for popcorn. I’m still forced to sneak candy in with my “man-bag” due to the outrageous extortion happening at our theater concession stands. But that’s another story.

Let’s go back to the Home Screen and press the menu button once.

You have some obvious selections here but lets go to the Options menu.

I see you perking up now. You see the abbreviation GPS. Your Geek juices are flowing and you wonder just how cool this could really be. Well, if your with Verizon, you just don’t have that option. What you CAN do however is hookup a Bluetooth GPS for the cost of two full gas-tanks, which is way cheap considering you now have unlimited access to GPS for the rest of your life for free unless the Air Force and Uncle Sam finds some way to start taxing you for it. If you just got your BT GPS and don’t know what your doing, follow this guide. I already have mine hooked up so lets take a look at the “Configure” option:

Even though I have my Bluetooth GPS turned on, it is not listed in the list of available devices. It’s either None or Blackberry GPS. However when I select Blackberry GPS and hit Save, the system asks me for my Bluetooth password for the device, then a window appears saying it is initializing. Now, some Bluetooth GPS modules (aka Mice) take a bit to warm up, especially since they haven’t been turned on in some time. While I was waiting for mine to warm up, heres the screen that I patiently waited for to change:

Zzzz…

Once the BT GPS has warmed up, we can go back to the map and see where we are.

Luckily I live on the second (of two) floor of my apartment building, so theres only a minimal amount of ceiling to block the signals from the satellites. Remember, when driving through a city with tall buildings, otherwise known as an Urban Canyon, you may lose or have very little GPS signal.

Now that we have our Bluetooth GPS activated, lets test it out. I went back to the Home Screen and typed in “Chinese Restaurant” and hit search. It searched from the default location “87107″ so I want to try this again but this time choose my GPS Location instead, as if I were already driving.

Now the map will track my location, while giving me directions to the Chinese Restaurant:

Of course there are a few other things you can do with Live Search Mobile. My only regret is that it does not feature some things from Google Maps and Blackberry Maps. If I could I would roll all three into one nice program, as they all have great features.

Now last but not least, while I was writing about the popcorn, I realized that there is an icon missing from the Home Screen. Gas Prices. Yep, you read it right, the Motorola Q version of Live Search Mobile, has a Gas prices icon that when clicked, will search for the cheapest location nearest you. But, I must say the Live Search website DOES state that the application for Blackberry is still in Beta, so we could expect to see those other features released in the near future.

Anyway, thanks for reading this review (or was it more of a tutorial?). Please be sure to leave a comment on my writing skills etc. Let me know where I can improve.

-Bull