The very first app that I reviewed on iPhone J.D. when I started this website in 2008 was Google Mobile. That app is now called Google Search, and it remains useful today because you can simply speak search terms to your iPhone and the app understands what you are saying and then runs a search on Google. If you turn on a setting called "Just Talk" you can even just launch the Google Search app, hold up your iPhone to your face, and the Google Search app automatically waits for you to say your search terms without needing to press any buttons.
Google does a great job with voice recognition, but Nuance is the king of voice recognition with its Dragon line of products. Dragon Dictation, for example, is a very useful iPhone and iPad app that is a favorite of mine and many other lawyers. A few days ago, Nuance released a new free app called Dragon Go. The app works like Dragon Dictation in that you start the app, press a button, and then say something to your iPhone. But instead of just converting your voice to text like the Dragon Dictation app, Drago Go examines that text and then runs a search based on the text at some of the most popular website on the Internet. For some searches, Dragon Go will guess that Google can provide the most relevant answers, and the app provides search results in Google. In this way, the Dragon Go app works the same way as the Google Search app. But unlike Google Search, Dragon Go also shows a carousel of icons at the top of the screen with alternative places to search. Just tap another icon to show the results in a different engine such as Wikipedia, Yelp, Twitter, Bing Maps, or many other sites depending upon your search terms.
For example, if I tap the microphone button and then say "24th Judicial District Court," the app knows that I am in New Orleans, Louisiana (because it uses the iPhone's Location Services feature) and runs a search in Google with the first result being the 24th J.D.C. in Gretna, Louisiana. But using the icon carousel at the top, I can quickly select the map icon and see a search run in Bing Maps that shows me the location of the 24th J.D.C. (just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans).
Another example: if I say "Mad Men episodes" the Dragon Go app defaults to the tab that gives me link to get episodes of Mad Men from iTunes, but I can also tap the Wikipedia tab to see the full entry there with descriptions of every episode of that TV series.
Adding the phrase "near me" is very useful. You can say "pizza near me" and find a listing on Yelp of restaurants selling pizza close to your current location. You can say "shoes near me" and find product listings from Milo, a website that acts as a front end for local stores.
For many popular websites with content such as newspaper websites, you can even tell the app where to run the search. For example, you can say "iPhone on CNN" and the app will run a search for "iPhone" on the CNN website and display the results. You can say "Harry Potter showtimes" and the app will know to run your search on the Fandango website. Food and restaurant related searches bring up results in Yelp. Click here to see a YouTube video promoting the app, but note that this is a slightly exaggerated commercial, not real life demo of the app. When you find something that you want, you can tap a button export the search results to e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, a text message, etc.
By directing you to lots of different sites that might contain relevant information, Dragon Go attempts to be the one voice-based search engine for all of your needs. I'll have to use this app for a while to decide whether I find it more useful than just using the Google Search app, but on a first look this looks like a very useful app. And since it is free, you'll definitely want to check it out and give the app — and carousel at the top of the app — a spin for yourself.
Click here for Dragon Go (free): 
