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.

I love the GMail Mobile app; it’s a fast and easy way to read Gmail on my phone. 

However, it’s worth knowing that GMail Mobile rewrites all web links in email messages, rerouting the web session through a Google proxy server. This has serious privacy implications but doesn’t appear to be documented anywhere in the terms of service or privacy policy. 

Links in an email message are rewritten to point to a Google proxy server which intercepts and reformats not only the destination page but all subsequent pages as well.  (You’ll notice Google’s “Page adapted for mobile phone” link at the bottom of each page.) Hits to the proxy server could be logged and mined either by Google or by any agency that has legal authority over Google. (Given the lack of a formal privacy policy, I have no idea what they actually do with the data.)

The intent by Google is clearly laudable– they want to reformat fat web pages to be more web friendly, and to do so throughout the users session. Even from a practical standpoint, however, this isn’t always what the user wants– the user’s existing cookies for a site aren’t available, and the reformatting prevents some sites from working well. 

Add on the privacy concerns and this is clearly a feature that users should be warned about and given the option to disable.

I’ve written Google about this issue via their customer support form, but I haven’t heard back from them; hence I repost it here.

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>

BerrySearch v0.9 is now available for free over-the-air download. BerrySearch is the only mobile search application that features interactive autocomplete for Google, Wikipedia, and Dictionary searches– the autocompletions in each mode are suggested based on the particular content of that site.

Podlinez has an ingeniously simple system for listening to podcasts on any phone– every podcast gets its own phone number, and users can add their additional podcasts simply by entering the feed URL.  

Unfortunately, the Podlinez directory of podcasts is currently hard to navigate even from a PC and especially from a phone. 

For this reason, I’ve put together my own small directory of links to news related podcasts on Podlinez, available here: http://thebogles.com/berry/podcasts.  This directory is optimized for viewing on a mobile device; you should be able to listen to the podcast on the phone simply by clicking on the phone number links.  The mini-directory is also linked to to from the news and weather pages on Berry411.

 I am pleased to announce the release of BerrySearch 0.8beta, a free web search tool for the RIM Blackberry.

BerrySearch does for web search on the Blackberry what Berry411 did for local information, making key web reference sources fast to access and easy to use. 

Key features:  

• Google Suggest saves typing
• Single click access to Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary, Thesaurus, and more.

To install over the air, point your Blackberry at http://thebogles.com/berrysearch.jad.  And please do send me your feedback, it will help improve the final release.

The Berry411 app enables mobile web pages on the Blackberry to do several things previos otherwise possible only from native apps, including directly adding entries to the Blackberry address book.

Below is a brief sketch of how this works for single address entries; I will document in another post how to add multiple entries if there is demand.

(1) Look in the HTTP-ACCEPTS header and see if you see the string “text/xml-berry411”.   If you find it, this means the user has Berry411 installed.

(2) Construct a link like the following, replacing the bold values with the appropriate URL encoded values.

http://thebogles.com/berry/yp/add_contact?f=business_name&p=phone &a=street&c=city&s=state