5. Live Search, Continued

When you find a business, you can see it on the map, get directions to or from the address, and place a phone call easily. You also get a chance to cancel the call if you didn’t mean to call rather than having to just hang up quickly.

Directions are particularly good in Live Search; you get a list of turn by turn directions, and you can see the whole route on the map or just a single turn. Also, as you scroll over the map route, the turn directions update as you reach the right area of the map. That means you can scroll around to check out the area without losing track of the directions, and you don’t have to fumble for number keys all the time either.

Map images load reasonably quickly, even when you’re looking at satellite images. Traffic information is color-coded in an intuitive way; it’s not available everywhere, but it’s clear, useful and accurate when it is available and not obtrusive when it isn’t.

Live Search is available for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Motorola RAZR, SLVR and PEBL, Nokia Series 40 and 60 phones and several LG, Samsung and Sanyo phones with J2ME. Note that you have to pick your phone by hand at wls.live.com, and the BlackBerry links don’t work directly (choose "PC version" in the error page to get the download). The BlackBerry version has a slightly different interface that lets you use the scroll wheel and keypad to navigate rather than assuming a five-way controller, but the functionality is almost as good. (You don’t see the list of turn instructions, just the instructions on the map, and you can’t look up contacts in the current version.)

On any supported device, Live Search is much more powerful than the Live Search Web site, and for many searches it’s the best tool. This app is well designed for what you want to find and do on the move, and it’s easy to use one-handed.