We've just announced a new version of the Live Search application for BlackBerry devices. This one's been re-designed from the ground up with a completely new UI, simple network detection, GPS integration and a lot more!

Download it by pointing your BlackBerry browser to:

http://wls.live.com

Please read the FAQ if you experience trouble downloading or using the application at:

http://wls-beta.members.winisp.net/bbfaq.htm

Of course, since we've re-done the app, we haven't taken the Beta tag off...yet. =) We'd love to hear your feedback before we do so, at:

lsmobile@microsoft.com.

You can find out more about the app HERE.


** Updated: version 2.0.3048.13898 (May '08) **

Live Search for BlackBerry Beta (BlackBerry OS 4.1 or later)

What is Live Search for BlackBerry?
Live Search for BlackBerry is the essential mobile companion – it is an application you can install on your BlackBerry phone that makes it easy to search for business, get driving directions, view maps with up-the-minute traffic information and much more when you’re on the go.

What’s New?

The new version of Live Search for BlackBerry has the following new features:
• Contact Integration. Save a search result to your contacts for quick access later.
• Mail to a Friend. Send a text message with search result details to a friend.
• Speech Recognition (for GSM devices with BlackBerry OS 4.2 and later). No need to type – for yellow page listings, just say what you want to find!
• Web Search. Initiate a web search from within the application just by clicking the ‘Web’ icon to get results from various other scopes, e.g. Web, News, Images, and more.
• Weather. Get current weather conditions and a 4-day forecast for your current location.
• Improved Searching. Speak or type an address into the main search box – try saying “One Microsoft Way Redmond Washington” or your home address.
• Increased Traffic Coverage. Up-to-minute traffic info for more cities, e.g. Dallas, Indianapolis, and more.

Same As It Ever Was…

• Local Search. Search yellow and white page listings near you.
• Driving Directions. After finding a business, get directions to your destination.
• Maps. Smooth panning/zooming experience with maps optimized for readability and efficient use of your data connection.
• Traffic. View maps with up-to-the minute traffic information.
• GPS Integration. Track your progress along a route by clicking Menu > Center On GPS when you’re viewing the route on a map.
• Movie Showtimes. Quickly browse movie show times near you organized by movie or by theater.

We want your feedback!
Please send all feedback, suggestions, bugs, and questions to lsmobile@microsoft.com.

Happy Searching!
-- The Live Search for mobile Team

Wirelessly posted (9900: BlackBerry8800/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Like the simple UI. Will give it a test run on results. Looks like traffic is easy enuff.

Just downloaded the program and see two problems. First it only seems to work with BT GPS and second, searches seem to be based on major cities only.

Working with my internal GPS just great. I like it so far. Best movie access I can see. Maps load fast and zoom works well. Would like a shortcut for zoom. Traffic is easy to find.

To use GPS choose Enter New Location. Also it remembers recent locations.

I get invalid cod 907 when i download with wifi browser or blackberry browser. Trying a soft reset to see if i can get it.

Will give it a go, thanks.

Nice clean app! Only one MAJOR flaw.... it doesn't find ANY of the 4 Starbucks in my town

Of course, I already know where they all are (and they know me by name), but man, if it can't find a Starbucks.... I dunno if I can keep it....

EDIT: Oh sure, as soon as I complain about it, and try it again, it works. Sheesh!

I do like this application, though. Any thoughts to being able to search Canada, too?

On my 8700g, when viewing a map and pressing the alt+scroll it will not move sideways. I can only go up and down.

Thanks for the love, all! We're glad you like the app

For the few hiccups that folks are experiencing:

1.) The app is designed to run with the internal GPS on 8800. You need to set this in the app options. If you still have trouble with this, do let us know.
2.) You can select any city by hitting Menu>Enter New Location or selecting Near: Enter New Location... and entering the location of choice.

Wish granted! You can use I/O for zooming In/Out

Can you try again after removing the battery restarting the phone? We've seen this issue before and doing the above seems to fix it.

Phew! I'm glad it found the Starbucks. It finds every single one in Seattle ;)
We'll be sending love to Canada sometime soon, but no timelines yet.

Hmm, strange. It works on our device. Can you try this on other screens to see if the alt button is working ok? Meanwhile, you can press Menu>Pan Left/Right to change the pan action.

Thanks again!
The Live Search for Mobile Team

I like it. Dare I say like it better than Google Maps in it's current iteration?

Hey I like this app so far, very nice features.

I am using it today traveling around town, I'll report back.

Installed it..initial impressions:

1. Using the directions feature -
Why can't I just enter an address?

I only get a choice of:
Search
Choose City
Choose On Map

And, if I do a search, having just entered an entire address in, and for whatever reason, there is no connection, it blanks out my last search.

2. Searching by category - "trade Shows, expositions, fairs" - I expected a sort of "whats going on around my town", instead I get companies who handle this category

3. On the map - where in the world do I enter a location?
Zoom
Aerial View (this is a nice option!)
Show Traffic
are my only options.

That is all for now...

Certainly looks promising.

I have pulled my battery 5 times throughout the day. Tried all browsers.

Rebooted my bes server twice. MDS is functioning properly

Running T-Mobile 8320 - 4.2.2.175

You work for Microsoft?

Looks very cool!

Its not working for me either. I get the same error code 907, tried it 3 times and did the battery pull too. No go! Any ideas?

You actually can enter an address just like any thing else in the text entry field. The remainder of the links launch a city chooser and a map selector.

The rest of the feedback is incredibly valuable. We'll try to fix some of them soon

This is rather upsetting :(. Are all of you using a BlackBerry Curve?

That's what I posted on my GPS site this am as soon as I saw it. It will compete with them.

Movies clearly better.
Traffic easy.
GPS worked great for me all day.
Business finder - still testing.
Loads Fast
Great icon for home screen
Directions - well like GMM but won't replace my Telenav anytime soon.

For all of you using this hitting the trackball calls up zoom in maps. I like the zoom feature with the crosshairs.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8320/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

Can we get a link to download the alx,cod so we can load it over desktop manager?

ALT+Scroll still does not work, it does not appear to be my phone I am running the latest OS and it works fine in Maps and Google maps.

I experience this in Live Search when I use the Maps on any city I choose.

I like how this interface looks with a few icons. I played around with it and it works pretty good. I am going to test out the gps functionality.

No Canadian content

I mean the software works (Works on my Bell Mobility 8830). Using the internal GPS it does find my location (I can display the maps). But doing any search will return an US Location closest to Montreal.

No good...

When I try to install the new version of Live Search I get an error message telling me that Live Search is only available in the United States and the United Kingdom. I live in Chicago and I have never taken my Sprint 8830 out of the country. How can I resolve this?

Like it so far. Nice clean layout and the directions have been great.

will test it, soon

I believe you can scroll left to right using the 4 and 6 keys. Actually, I use the 2, 4, 8 and 6 keys for scrolling in the maps.

I had to download the client on a Verizon Blackberry 8830, use the synchronization wizard to get the live_search cod file. Then I had to use javaloader to load it on my 8320. It is now functioning on my 8320.

From what i gather, it is not my bes, mds. The file simply doesn't load or unzip properly on the 8320, and probably the curve with 4.2.2

Thus far, I like it better than Google Maps 1.6.3, which is adequate but crashes frequently and maddeningly on my 8800. Once I figured out that I could enter an address in the "Search" field, I had no problems. Just a couple of questions:

1) Why not web addresses (if they exist) in the business listings? Google seems to provide better details at this point, so if I pull up a business, I can see a web listing and sometimes hours, etc., and not have to actually make a call to figure out what I need. (Although I got burned by this last week when I pulled up the location and hours of a retail chain, only to go there and find out they'd closed that outlet--which I'd have known if I'd called.)

2) I was able to install OTA very easily from my 8800 using the wls.live.com URL, but when I tried to do so with my wife's Curve, this link didn't get me all the way to the .jad, but rather a .zip I couldn't use--I had to do some finagling to find a workable link, http://mobile.search.live.com/client...ive_search.jad
--which worked fine. She is GPS-less, though, which makes Live Search a little less handy (and her usual method is to have me search, go figure).

I like the Categories breakdown--sometimes an index is nice to have, even if I could go into Google Maps and look for "Korean Restaurants". Overall, a very nice job.

I get the following error when trying to download to my 8100 (AT&T):

907 Invalid COD
HTTP Error 413:
Request Entity Too
Large

First impressions: Not bad. My thoughts.

1. Should just be able to punch an address/location in to the text boxes instead of having to click the scroll wheel and then choose "new location"

2. The directions seem to be pretty good but sometimes miss very basic things (like my house and my shop are basically on the same main street, dont know why it took me 5 miles out of my way).

3. LOVE the movie times/locations. Best I've tried so far. 1 suggestion: Add a small movie description when your looking at the movie itself

4. Can't select "home" from map view. Have to back track once to get the options list to pop up again

5. Possibly add an option for a maximum search radius from any selected point

6. I do like the text turn by turn directions quite a bit.

7. What would be awesome is if you could hook your restaurant . nightclubs ect results with citysearch to give reviews.

Other than that, good job :D

No, Im using a BB 8820 on at&t. Tried again today and it still wont load.

To all with AT&T that's having a 907 issue, make sure you are not using MediaNet to download.
I had this issue with MediaNet and somehow it works when I tried with BB browser. Don't know why, don't care... I am just glad I got it to work.

Sweet App!! I'm really liking this. No problems so far with my 8300.

Hey nice find! That worked, for whatever reason. So far it looks very nice! I'll check out the features later now that I got it working!

"GPS receiver inialization" stuck on screen...

Looks like you have 8830 from VZW and VZW disabled the GPS functionality on all of their Blackberry products including the latest one (8830)

Hello all,

We've put together an FAQ from the issues we've been reading about. Please read it if you experience trouble downloading or using the application at:

http://wls-beta.members.winisp.net/bbfaq.htm

Thanks! Downloading and install on my 8300 was a snap....plugged in my zipcode, and quickly found 5 starbucks within less than 5 miles of my house! I like the zooming control - very nice UI - intuitive. I only have GPRS from here (no EDGE), so maps are a bit slow, but still very nice. Looking forward to playing with this in NYC tomorrow...

The satellite view still blows me away. The naviteq photos of my house are *so* clear, although they must be at least a year old. They still show the swingset in my backyard, and I took that down about 9 or 10 months ago. Unbelievable though, that I can actually look at this on my blackberry.

When i click on Download Live Search Now, I then get Download Live for

Windows Mobile 5 or Later or
Windows Mobile 2003 and 2003 SE

Sense I have a BB 8703e which do I use?