Google launches Gesture Search for Android 2.0 phones and above

Google have officially announced the launch of Gesture Search, which is a new way of searching your Android phone’s content by simply writing letters on the screen with your finger.

Below is an explanation from Google themselves.

“Say you want to call your friend Anne. Just open Gesture Search and draw letter “A”, and Gesture Search returns a list of items that have words starting with “A”. If your handwriting isn’t all that neat, that’s okay. If the “A” you draw looks a bit like an “H”, as seen in the bottom left corner of the screenshot, “H” results will be brought up as well. If needed, you can also erase a query by crossing it horizontally: left to right erases the entire query, and right to left removes the last letter or space in the query. Now you can either scroll down the list to find Anne or write more letters to refine the search.”

Sounds like a pretty good and simple tool to use, and definitely a lot more convenient to use in public rather than voice search. If you fancy trying out the Gesture Search for yourself, search for it in the Android Market; it will only appear and be available to download for handsets running on Android 2.0 or higher. If recent rumours are correct, all Android phones will be upgrading to 2.1 meaning all Android users will be able to take advantage of the new Gesture Search tool.

Keep an eye on the blog for new Android mobile phone releases which will be sporting Gesture Search.

Smartphones that Work for Business

Carl Weinschenk, who edits our Unified Communications Edge site, asked several analysts which smartphones were best for business. Clearly, Carl found that these devices -- and others that didn't quite make the list -- will play a central role in both unified communications and business computing.

Some responders went with the cool and some with the functional. The bottom line is that there is no shortage of useful and fun phones for business people as well as consumers.

Participants in this slideshow were two Gartner analysts -- Carolina Milanesi, research director of Mobile Devices for Technology and Service Provider Research, and Ken Dulaney, a vice president and distinguished analyst. Other participants were Chris Silva, senior analyst for enterprise infrastructure at Forrester Research; Allen Nogee, principal analyst for In-Stat; Kevin Burden, practice director for mobile devices for ABI Research; and Avi Greengart, research director for consumer devices, mobile devices/digital home for Current Analysis.

Not surprisingly, Research in Motion was the big winner of our informal poll. All but one of the analysts chose at least one BlackBerry device. Among those chosen were the Bold 9700 and the Curve 8900. Two analysts chose Nokias – the E71 and N900 Maemo. The Apple iPhone was chosen by two analysts. Single votes were cast for the Google/HTC Nexus One, the LG eXpo, the HTC Fuze, the Palm Pre and the HTC Touch Pro 2.