Give voice-activated directions a rest: use your thumbs

IAC Search & Media, the parent company of ASK.com, announced on Thursday (Jan. 3, 2008) that it has incorporated the voice-activated technology developed by Dial Directions (Dialdirections.com) into ASK.com's mobile directions service. The press release asserts that "voice input is a natural complement to the Ask.com Mobile Directions" portal and is an improvement (over typing on a mobile device) because it 'eliminates typing addresses, which can be slow, error-prone and, in some cases, unsafe.'

Now wait a second. Typing addresses on a mobile device may in fact not be more difficult. If you think of all the hard-to-pronounce street and city names out there, you'd be certain that ASK.com has not 'figured it out' and users will be wasting away minutes speaking s-l-o-w-e-r and s-l-o-w-e-r before eventually giving up. You can be certain that a percentage of the time ASK.com won't recognize peoples' pronunciation of cities or streets in the U.S., for example cities named by the Native American Indians or early Spanish settlers. Try getting directions to or from Wewahitchka, Florida, from ASK mobile's speech-activated directions search engine...just try.

As we blogged about earlier this week, automated voice-based search directories aren't perfect and neither are automated voice-activated directions services. Unless you're using a live person (e.g., ChaCha), text input will always have to be incorporated into any form of mobile search and only the folks at Google have figured out a way to make texting truly fast, easy and simple.

Using Google Number Search technology to type addresses *can be* (if the technology was applied) quick, error-free and quite safe as evidenced by this simple sample query, '10 3696464 787338,' which spells a popular address on your keypad:

http://www.google.com/search?q=allnum%3A10+3696464+787338

Google simply needs to fold-in GNS into Google Maps Mobile and as a result it would be far more accurate, easier to use and safer than ASK.com's voice-activated directions service.