Ubona is a voice search engine that has just gone live in Bangalore. All you need to do is to call their number (080-4070 0000) and speak out the name of any of the place or product (currently only for restaurants, hotels, sweet shops, bakeries). Their speech recognition system will comprehend what you have said, and connect you with your desired destination or, if you are calling from a mobile phone, send the information as SMS. The service is accessible from any landline or mobile phone at no extra cost. While they are starting off with food joints, they plan to soon extend this to include other domains- entertainment, health, travel, consumer electronics, gifts, shopping etc. Ubona is targetting not just the consumer market but also business users (as a way for companies to reach out to their consumers).

Voice search engines are not easy to build; there are issue of speech recognition, lack of audio clarity, accent differences etc, but if the system can be trained to work in the majority of cases, this can be a very compelling product. Specially for the mobile platform, where form factor considerations are a big bottleneck for search to pick up. BuzzWorks is another voice search engine that was featured in the last edition of Proto, though (if I remember correctly), they seemed more focused on local utilities (like plumbers, carpentars, car mechanics etc).

The online mapping space in India just jumped a few notches upwards. MapmyIndia has rolled out an in-car GPS navigation device for Indian road travel. This device provides real-time turn-by-turn navigation with visual map guidance and voice instructions. It contains basic maps for 55,000 towns and villages connected by national and state highways, with detailed coverage of streets, localities, sub-localities in 18 major cities. The device has a 3.5” colour touch-screen and can either be mounted on the dashboard or carried in hand while sitting in the backseat. Priced at 21K INR, the navigator is currently available with car accessory and consumer electronics dealers in New Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai (also online on Indiatimes, FutureBazaar, & MapmyIndia.com). This is a one-time cost for the product which comes pre-loaded with complete all India maps and standard accessories. There is no recurring usage charge for using the product as the GPS signal is free. Updates to the maps will be made available twice a year on a charged basis. Not just that, the device also has multimedia features to play movies, music, photos, games etc.

This sub-section of MMI’s website features the navigator; you can catch snapshots of the device’s UI here; go here if you want to purchase it online.

This move underlines MMI’s virtually unassailable position in the Indian cartographic space; they are clearly the pioneers. As for the device, its difficult to predict unless one sees it firsthand. The 21K price-tag is certainly steep and may prohibit adoption, specially in the end-consumer segment. The success of the device is likely to be influenced heavily by the device’s user experience, as it is meant to be used on the move (while driving), often using only one hand.