Sprint Announces Cell Tower Triangulation Enabled MS Live Search
 

I've been looking for this thing does anyone know where this is and if it's compatable with our beloved 6700???


SEATTLE, Sept 17 (Reuters) - U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp said on Monday it would offer a new Microsoft Corp Web and local business search application on its phones using a technology that pinpoints a caller's location.

Starting on Tuesday, the number-three U.S. wireless company will also offer customers a download of a new voice-recognition search product from Microsoft to allow users to find local businesses by simply speaking into a handset.

It is the first offering from a wireless carrier to use the speech technology and voice database Microsoft acquired when it bought Tellme Networks this year for about $800 million.

Sprint's upgraded offerings from Microsoft's Windows Live represent the next stage of their partnership to cash in on advertising from a budding mobile Internet search market.

The location-aware mobile search allows cell phone users to search for businesses close to their current location without typing in street addresses or zip codes.

"It's not single-handedly going to unlock the potential for local mobile search, but it's certainly a step in the right direction," said Greg Sterling, founding principal of research firm Sterling Market Intelligence.

Internet heavyweights Google Inc , Yahoo Inc and Microsoft are racing to strike alliances with handset makers and carriers all around the world to provide a host of ad-supported services, including search.

After seeing how lucrative Web search has become, Internet companies are targeting the mobile search market because of the number of handsets in the world and the "relevance" -- crucial to how much advertisers will pay -- of advertising delivered to a device found in almost everyone's pocket.

Sprint customers will find a new Windows Live search bar on Sprint's menu page when they access the Web. It will let users search the Internet, local businesses and Sprint's own network at once.

The location-aware search allows a user to type "coffee" to bring up a list of nearby coffee shops. Using voice search, a user can just say "coffee" and a list of results will appear.

Sprint finds the whereabouts of its customers using mobile phone towers to narrow down the user's location to within about 100 yards in densely populated areas. Sprint customers must first give permission before the feature is activated.

Sterling said the new search products from Sprint and Microsoft represent an accelerated improvement in terms of user experience, a key facet to building the necessary audience to drive advertisers to pay large sums for ads.

The new services will be available on most Sprint phones and at no additional cost to Sprint data subscribers.

Sprint Live Search
 

Anyone know if this will work on the Mogul? I know we have Live Search but will the cell tower triangulation work? Any idea how to get it? thanks!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/18/s...d-live-search/

The Mogul does not look to be one of the supported phones...ugh...

where is the link for download or a full listing of supported devices?

Wish I knew... Bah!

Sprint Announces GPS Enabled MS Live Search
 

fyi....

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/18/s...d-live-search/

late,
Coz

It's not really GPS enabled... it uses cell towers to triangulate the position. And even though AGPS uses cell towers, I don't think we are there yet.

Also, from that list of devices that support the voice commands, I don't see this available for our devices, but we can only hope.

EDIT: I merged another existing thread on this topic as well.

where's the download link?

There isn't one. As of right now, this is not for our devices. I went to the Sprint mobile site and the Vision site on my Mogul and there are no links or even a Windows Live Search bar as stated on the article.

However, from reading comments on the Engadget article, users with other phones (Samsung A900) that are not PDAs get a message that there's an upgrade happening on the Vision site.

This leads me to believe that only phones like the RAZR, A900, etc. will be able to use this application. Something tells me this will be rolled out as J2ME first and then maybe we'll get a WM version.

Keep in mind we already have a Live Search WM app on our devices, and even though it cannot triangulate our position with the nearby cell towers, they may not see WM users as a priority.

I hope I'm wrong... but this is usually how it happens :(

It is mentioned in the Engadget article.

Why does sprint keep adding features to their crummy regular phones, and forget about us with the real "magic screens" in our pockets?

at least we have huge clocks

LMAO! :D

it does not say what devices are supported. It only states what phones will be able to use the voice search feature.

Merged yet another thread on the same topic.

Well, some of us do.

It's not the size of your clock that matters...it how well your clock keeps time that matters.

late,
Coz

EDIT: sorry for not keeping this on topic...please don't ban me;)

Highly improbable that they'll release a WM version that enables triangulation on our phones. Maybe with EVDO Rev. A rolling out soon, the Mogul might be able to use triangulation but I'm pretty skeptical that'll happen for other phones like the 6700. Sprint it seems is pretty adamant not to give out that feature for PPC owners or AGPS for that matter.

I would also like to vent at how poorly this was released and advertised. At the very least they could have said that PPC's are not on the supported devices list. I spent hours looking for it...lol

ahhh.....mogul not supported. lets just hope we get real gps with rev.a upgrade. If we even get either.

I don't understand... why are we so sure this isn't the same technology as AGPS?
The definition of AGPS is a location fix that uses tower triangulation to find the rough area that the phone exists, then often a simplified onboard GPS chip will confirm and get a more accurate fix based on this data.

Now, every CDMA phone over the last several years (as far as I know) has been mandated to include what they call "AGPS" for emergency 911 purposes. Pocket PC's included.
Now, as I understand it, the "AGPS" used in these phones are not as sophisticated as full blown receivers and are only accurate to within 100 yards. According to the specifications of AGPS, it should be much more accurate than that, so I'm wondering if "AGPS" is just a loosely used term.

In any event, the article here states:
There are not many phones on the market with standalone GPS enabled, however if all phones have AGPS for e911, and are accurate to within 100 yards (as this triangulation technology claims to be) wouldn't you think that this is the "more widely available" tech that they are referring to?

I would like to consider that perhaps this is actually "AGPS" as the industry calls it, and perhaps not as accurate as a real GPS chip, its a good start!

It's not aGPS.

Cellular triangulation is just a less accurate form used, even for e911 purposes.

aGPS is actually quite accurate and faster than standalone GPS units (sometimes, SiRF III chipsets are fast, but are susceptible to landmark interference, which aGPS avoids)

The reason why it's not aGPS? If it were, it'd be just like TeleNav which Sprint charges $2.99 day/ $10 a month for--that system gives you "live" information about where you are and where you are moving to.

Cellular Triangulation, otoh, is not that accurate and is not good if you are constantly moving, but it requires no special aGPS chipsets either.

By this logic, you cannot use the "drive by directions" feature of MS Live. If it were aGPS, you could--but then why buy TeleNav?

Either way, both systems require APIs to transmit/translate the information for a specific app (here MS Live) and there is zero evidence that Sprint has done this for either regular triangulation or aGPS on PPC devices.

I can suggest a couple of reasons

(1) We're a total minority with them. Bread n Butter comes from those "other" devices, not smartphones

(2) Reduce cost. Why invest money in developing APIs for PPC devices when you can just go buy yourself a GPS unit?

Cell phones don't have such an option, so it makes sense for a network to do so (and usually charge for the aGPS feature). But you do, so why should Sprint foot the bill for something you could do yourself?

Yeah, I don't agree with it either but that's how Sprint rolls. Why else does the Mogul have a Java app enabled if not to run the same Java Sprint apps as all their other devices? No Wm version = no WM development = no lost R&D.

My friend got a Samsung M500 phone through Sero from Sprint. He tells me he doesn't have to pay anything extra to run the Java version of Google Maps on his phone. The M500 from what I understand has A-GPS and I've seen him running Google Maps with tracking. It didn't really looking like Google Maps, but the little marker showed up and showed us precisely where we were and where we were going.

Like Malatesta made the distinction that A-GPS can actually be better than standalone GPS, carriers aren't going to just start offering a service like that for with no cost.

People have said this program, http://www.navizon.com/ uses triangulation and wifi to give you a fairly accurate location. They say it even works for CDMA phones. I can see how the WIFI aspect works, but I wonder how they managed to do the triangulation thing.

I bet he was using this: http://www.mgmaps.com/

On sprint phones, since they run java, there is a method to "hack" (used very loosely here, since you're just entering in an address) into the aGPS and use this.

That'll give you "google maps" and aGPS. Lots of people do it on Sprint, but Sprint threatened the developer to take out the "option" in the program, so now you have to do it manually.

Navizon is off by about 15 miles for me...

lol....that's pretty messed up. Are you using WIFI too when you're in that area? Because triangulation alone is a joke.

Just triangulation...no WiFi available...