Connected applications are specialized apps tailored to the small screen of your device that grab data from current online sources and present it to you in a convenient package. The major players (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and others) are competing hard to create extremely useful connected apps—for free! Of course, to take full advantage of them you'll need to have a phone plan that includes data, and this certainly can add to the expense of using your device. Also, it helps considerably to have a 3G device with a fast Internet connection.


Maps/directions/local search


Windows Live for Windows Mobile


gowindowslive.com/Mobile/Landing 


Point mobile browser to wl.windowsmobile.com


Touch and non-touch screen


Windows Live for Windows Mobile offers local search, maps, directions, Web search, and "instant answers" to questions you might have. The local search feature lets you search for local businesses, points of interest, restaurants, hotels, stores, and more. Search results include address and telephone number. You can save the information to contacts, get map directions, place a call, and more.


You can use voice input when you're doing a local search. Instead of typing in the name of a business, for example, you can simply press the Speak button and say the name (U.S. only). And you can also specify what city that business is located in, saying for example, "Starbucks Missoula," and it will return listings for Starbucks in Missoula. Or you can say, "bicycle Fairfield Iowa," and it will return listings for bike shops in that small Southeast Iowa town.

Yahoo! Go 3.0


mobile.yahoo.com/go


Point mobile browser to get.go.yahoo.com


Touch and non-touch screen


Yahoo! Go offers extensive local information, including weather, local news, movie theaters, and city guides for restaurants, lodging, parks, and shopping. It also includes a range of other Web sources related to your location, including Flickr photos, Web images, Wikipedia articles, mobile Web sites, and more.


Yahoo! Go does a great job of giving you information about places. You can, for example, get an overview of traffic either as a list of problems or as a map with traffic "blackspots" and accidents. The local information for businesses not only includes location and phone number, but also ratings and reviews, and you can easily add the phone number to your Contacts.


While Yahoo! Go has a strong maps and local search component, it's also a mobile widget platform that you can customize with your favorite widgets. (See below for more information on widgets.)


Google Maps 


google.com/mobile/default/maps 


Point mobile browser to m.google.com/maps


Touch and non-touch screen