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Excuse Me Services (creators of Dial Directions) has finally made available its Say Where iPhone application which lets users search several popular Web services using just their voice. The tool was originally shown off at DemoFall back in early September, and it's taken this long to go through Apple's certification process.

Its big feature is that you can search Google Maps, Yellowpages.com, Yelp, and Traffic.com without having to use the iPhone's often times challenging on-screen keyboard. You simply talk into the microphone and it converts your speech into a search query. There's location awareness, … Read more

If you've spent any time using iPhone apps, you probably have gotten a hint of the fact that they may well be the hottest thing going and, in some ways, the future of software.

That's largely due to the fact that, especially with iPhone 3G, the device combines GPS, an elegant interface, Mac OS X, an accelerometer and high-speed Internet connectivity.

Now, Dial Directions, a company that has focused on providing speech recognition tools to cell phone users, is getting in the iPhone game.

And on Monday, the company announced at DemoFall its Say Where iPhone app, a … Read more

When I talked to Opposing Views CEO Russell Fine in preparation for my review of the site a week ago, I asked him if he honestly thought that his service, which recruits experts from both sides of contentious issues, would actually change anyone's mind. The question comes from my observation that the profusion of contemporary media choices--by which I mean talk shows and blogs--allows users to easily associate themselves with content that fits into their own particular views. And that it's so much easier to read people with whom you agree than it is to open yourself up … Read more

Yelp and Where are two free location-finding iPhone applications that take vastly different approaches to direct you to what you're looking for.

While my personal preferences anoint Yelp for iPhone (review) the better service for its broader and more objective listings, Where for iPhone's (coverage) plotting of only partnered services will also have its cluster of followers. The bottom line is this: though serviceable, they both need work. Yelp's developers should hone the accuracy and breadth of this application's listings and stabilize performance against crashes. Where would benefit from letting users customize their choices by selecting … Read more

I reviewed the Linksys WRT610n recently and today I got my hands on the second true dual-band wireless router: the DIR-855 Xtreme N Duo Media Router from D-Link.

Like the WRT610n, the DIR-855 is equipped with two separate Draft N 2.0 access points: one works in the ever popular 2.4GHz frequency and the other uses the newfound 5GHz frequency. These two access points can operate at simultaneously, making the Draft-N Wi-Fi network available to both 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless clients at the same time.

The DIR-855 has the same design as the D-Link DGL-4500 router, but it … Read more

If you don't know, Where is a location-based application full of widgets that deliver essential information about what's close by you such as restaurants, gas stations, or even your friends. Basically, whatever you're after, the day-to-day stuff that is, Where is designed to deliver. The application gathers information from other social Web sites including Eventful, Yelp, GasBuddy, Zipcar, ShopLocal, Starbucks, and Buddy Beacon, and makes it available to your mobile device.

And Where is not picky when it comes to mobile devices. It's available on virtually any major mobile platform and carrier: Alltel, AT&T, … Read more

Sure, the YouTube video "Where the Hell is Matt 2008" is clever and maybe even inspirational, but what's been overlooked in all the hoopla over the clip is how technology contributed to its popularity.

Matt Harding first earned fame two years ago by filming himself dancing in exotic locales all over the world and posting the video montage to YouTube. Everyone from the The New York Times to National Public Radio has swooned over Harding's latest clip since it first appeared on YouTube three weeks ago.

In less than a month, the video has been viewed … Read more

It's entertaining to see all these new geo-focused sites trying to build out their social networks and their databases of local content. There's still a huge disconnect between the sites that make data entry easy and the ones that do a good job of helping you find what and who you are looking for.

Being lazy, I favor the geo-focused sites that don't require that I do any work. Everyblock (review) wins the lazy-geo award from me: It scans local news sources and public records and shows me what's happening in my 'hood. My participation with … Read more

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Think of it as crowdsourced cartography.

In about three weeks, Yahoo plans to launch a project called Corrections in which users of the Flickr photo-sharing site can help with a thorny computing problem: providing the name of the place where a photo was taken.

Flickr has 68 million photos that have been "geotagged" with latitude and longitude coordinates, said Dan Catt, who works on geographic work at Flickr, in a speech at the Where 2.0 conference here. Coordinates are fine for computers, but human beings looking at a Web site generally prefer place names to … Read more