Tag Archive for 'Search'

Finding Addresses in Austria

Published
by
joesonic
on July 24, 2008
in GeoWeb
. 0 Comments

Your Ad Here

I have tried to compare the big three search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live in their functionality and usability for finding address locations. Address Geocoding is an important field of the GeoWeb and should be not problem for these three companies, but during the test I identified enormous deficits or a complete lack of these functionality.

Test address was: Europastrasse 4, 9500 Villach, Austria. This information should be more than enough to visualize the exact location on the map.

Lets Start with Microsoft Live Search. In my test this service completely fails. First of all if you try to enter the address in the search box of the ordinary Web Search you get some results which may be related to the address but it was not checked that the entered string represents an address (complete lack of semantics). Therefore, I changed to maps.live.com, to see if I can locate my address here. First of all you have to change the mode from the default (businesses) to locations. Then I entered the address to search. The results displays the map near Villach but far away from the correct location. Live maps do not have address geocoding for Austria. Hence, it cannot be recommended to search for Austria addresses.

The next service I tested was Yahoo Local Maps. Similar like Live Search it was not possible to visualize the address from the normal web search. In the Yahoo Local Maps mode it is possible to enter the address in the search field. The result does not perfectly fit but it is close. Additional you get a hint that the exact address cannot be found but the nearest address is visualised. In this case much better than Microsoft Live Search.

At least I tested the market leader Google. And it is the test winner of my small experiment. By entering the address as search string the first result is a small map, which visualizes the exact location of the address. From this small view you can directly change to Google Maps. Of course also Google Maps locate the address without any problems through the search box.

So try it for yourself and tell me your Experiences.

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Google Maps with voice search

Published
by
joesonic
on July 7, 2008
in Google, Mobile and Web
. 0 Comments

Your Ad Here

Typing on a mobile device my be very cumbersome. Google also recognized this disadvantage and provide a voice search for Google Maps for mobile devices. They give a short tutorial how to do voice search. unfortunately it is only available for some blackbarry phones, but I assume it the service is accepted by the user, more phones will be supported.

But how it is written on the site?

“Using your voice is optional. You can always type your searches as usual.”

[via: http://www.google.com/mobile/blackberry/maps/voicesearch.html]

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Google as Currency Converter

Published
by
admin
on January 31, 2008
in Google
. 0 Comments

Your Ad Here

I want to know how many Euros 100 USD are? I knew that Google is porviding a currency converter on its web search, but I couldn’t remember how this works. Therefore I tried:

My first attemp was: 100usd = ?eur

Surprise, Surprise what was the result? This is the result:

neues-bild-2.png

Works straight forward, Well done. A little bit of semanic in there. I hope other this will also work so smoothly like that. For example a keyword like “locate” can switch from google search to google map search or so.

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.