Beyond411 v3.9 is now available for OTA Install, you can upgrade using the “About/Upgrades” menu item.  The new features are a much cleaner look and feel and the restoration of the address book integration feature in a way that should compatible across all phones.

Update: 3.91 fixes an autocompletion bug and is a recommended update.

Google Mobile recently eliminated the notice at the bottom of search results that it adapts linked pages for the user’s phone (though it’s still in the terms.) 

As I’ve written in the past, intercepting the user’s browsing session to reformat pages in this fashion has impacts in terms of privacy, functionality, and content ownership.

• Privacy: Unless users read the terms of service, users may not be aware that their session is potentially being logged by Google.
• Functionality: Some sites break after reformatting (due to cookie domain issues, for example)
• Content ownership: Advertisements and formatting on modified sites are potentially impacted or eliminated.

My objection is not to reformatting per se– obviously, Berry411 does exactly that, though only for a clearly defined and labeled set of pages.  My objection is the fact that the user has no ability to opt out of the reformatting and proxying in Google Mobile search, and that many users will be unaware of what exactly is happening.

For this reason, Google results as viewed through Berry411 now put control back in the hands of the users.  The default is not to reformat linked pages; a link at the bottom of the page allows the user to turn reformatting on and off and this setting is remembered persistently across sessions. 

(On a vaguely related note, there is one other new persistent preference available in B411 local search results– you can choose whether or not you want dialed phone numbers saved in your search history for convenient access. This option is available through the preferences link at the top of the page.)

BerrySearch v1.0 is now available for free over-the-air download by pointing your phone at http://thebogles.com/berrysearch.jad

This version adds IMDb autocomplete and search to the Google, Wikipedia, News, Images, and Techorati Searches of previous versions. 

Other additions:

• Shortcut key sequences allow you to quickly change the search type: “g:” for Google, “i:” for IMDb, “d:” for dictionary, and so forths.
• The “Edit Settings” menu item allows you change the network connection type to BES (if your company has a BES) or Direct (for using your carrier’s APN, which you should configure as described here.) 

I would appreciate input from users on the following question: is it better for BerrySearch to exist as a separate application from Berry411, or should Berry411 be a swiss army knife that does everything?

(Much of the context specific autocomplete in BerrySearch is now supported in Berry411 as well, in a slightly more complex form. For example if you begin a search in Berry411 with “g:” for Google or “imdb:”, the appropriate style of autocomplete is used.)

Please vote in the poll on this question.

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Movie geeks will like this one– Berry411 now autocompletes over 200,000 movie titles from IMDB and links to a fully mobile-optimized version of the IMDB site. 

No custom code had to be written for IMDB reformatting, thanks to a few new advanced options in Berry411 search plugin configuration to strip images and apply the reformatting to linked pages on the same site.

Yellow pages are great for finding businesses by name or category, but if you want to find a specific product locally, sites like Yokel are a much better way to go.  Yokel lets you know exactly which local stores have a product in stock and how much it costs.

Thanks to some integration help from the good folks at Yokel, Berry411 mobile search is now able to interactively suggest helpful Yokel searches.

Suppose you’re looking for a Wii remote, for instance.  As you type wii, Berry411 will interactively suggest searches for Wii related products on Yokel (such as wii console and wii remote).

Clicking on those links take you directly to Yokel search results, including availability and prices at local stores.

In addition to a comprehensive set of product links from Yokel, Berry411 also automatically suggests other relevant plugin searches based on past searches by users. 

If you search for Happy Feet, relevant searches will be suggested using the plugins for Google Movies, IMDB, and Yokel shopping, as well as yellow pages.

These new features are available automatically to users of recent Berry411 releases (3.7 and above), no upgrade is required.

Berry411 3.85 combines both a local set of preset search completions plus server-side completions. This provides the best of both worlds– the instaneous response of a local dictionary plus the completeness of server completions.

It also ensures basic autocompletion functionality even if network completions aren’t available– for reasons I don’t yet understand, perhaps having to do with BES settings, network completions aren’t working for particular users.

Berry411 version 3.8 now suggests relevant links to mobile web sites (recommended by BlackberryOne, Cantoni.org, Smallsites, and Otweb.com) and podcasts  (provided via Podlinez) based on your yellow pages search;  you can download 3.8 over the air on your Blackberry at http://thebogles.com/berry411.jad.

Here’s how it works.  Suppose you were looking for wine.  As well as suggesting wine related searches, Berry411 suggests links to mobile web pages about wine.  r

Clicking on them takes you directly to the site. 

As before, Berry411 yellow page results include inline links to reviews from Yelp and Urbanspoon.

So Berry411 can help you both the right wine and the best wine store.

Mobile podcasts are similar.  Suppose you wanted the lastest new from Digg.  Berry411 suggests links to the Digg podcast (Diggnation) as well as the Digg mobile we site.  There are several hundred podcasts are available, including some of my favorites from NPR like “Wait Wait” and “This American Life”.

Update: 3.83 restores the “search history : clear history” menu option.

I’m taking a poll to see how much interest there is for a version of Berry411 which works with phones other than the Blackberry. Please share your thoughts!

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Berry411 version 3.73 is now available over-the-air from http://thebogles.com/berry411.jad, as described on the Berry411 home page.

The major new feature is an autocompletion dictionary that includes over 250,000 business searches, sorted by popularity. The dictionary is stored on the Berry411 server and grows in size and relevancy as more users use the system.

(Recently, for example, over a million houses in the Seattle area lost power. Puget Sound Energy hotline was already in the dictionary when I went to find their number on my Blackberry.)

The autocomplete dictionary has been prepopulated with the names and 1-800 numbers of popular travel related business like car companies, airlines, and hotels. (For example, if you type Hertz, the phone number is suggested directly as a completion and can be dialed directly without even searching.)

As described previously Berry411 provides the ability for any web page to add addresses to the Blackberry address book. This post describes how to add arbitrarily many addresses and navigate to the web page of your choice after the address book update is complete. Berry411 defines a simple XML based scripting language that is interpreted when linked to by the browser. The key operations are illustrated in the example below. You’ll want to define a similar document on your site, substituting the values appropriate for your application. Then direct the user’s browser to “http://berry411.com/berry/handle_script?url=YOUR_URL”, where YOUR_URL is the URL-encoded URL to the XML document you created.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<actions>
  <add_contact firstname=”foobar” lastname=”barbar”>
    <address type=”home” street=”31 Example Street” city=”Bogusville” state=”NY”\
zip=”01239″/>
    <phone type=”home” value=”4255551212″/>
  </add_contact>

  <add_contact firstname=”foobar2″ lastname=”barbar2″>
     <address type=”work” street=”12 Sample Street” city=”Bogusville” state=”WA” \
zip=”01239″/>
    <phone type=”home” value=”2065551212″/>
  </add_contact>

   <navigate href=”http://mobile.answers.com”/>
</actions>