Windows Phone Thoughts: Microsoft's 'Wild Thing'

"Microsoft is preparing a technology that will allow users to enter search queries by using only a few characters. The technology, dubbed 'Wild Thing', comes out of the Microsoft Research group and was demonstrated on Tuesday at the Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Road Show at the company's Mountain View, California office. Wild Thing uses 'wild cards' to limit the number of characters that users have to enter on a mobile device. The software assumes that a 'space' or 'asterisk' can be replaced with any number of random characters. A search for 'c rice', for instance, will give 'Condoleezza Rice' as the top result, and 'ar s*w m' will result in 'Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies'. Microsoft also demonstrated a local search option that lets users look for cinemas in a specific city by using only a few characters."

When using a mobile device, it's not uncommon to experience bouts of laziness when typing out long search strings, so a 'shortcut' such as this would prove useful. The 'Wild Thing' search technology has already been patented, and Microsoft will supposedly introduce it in MSN Search, MSN Mobile, and MSN Virtual Earth products within the next six months. Are any of you looking forward to this?