The Seattle-Search.com Blog

The Fareologists at Live Search Farecast have issued the 2009 Spring Break Forecast, which uncovers a much-needed break in airfare and hotel rates.

Live Search Farecast, which is known for telling travelers when to buy based on airfare predictions, is currently recommending “Buy Now” 29 percent more often than at this time last year for spring break flight searches. Similarly, premium hotel rates in U.S. spring break destinations have decreased 15 percent since last year. Savvy travelers can maximize their budgets and save more than 20 percent on the total trip cost by choosing the right travel dates, destinations and hotels.

Fares for spring break travel — Feb. 28 through April 5 — are down more than 15 percent from 2008, reaching roughly the same price points as spring break travel in 2007.

Microsoft has released a “Technology Preview” of its new Microsoft Recite application, which will officially be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week.

Recite is an application for Windows Mobile that uses voice search technology to let users record notes for themselves and then later find those notes by speaking back to the application. Here’s an example. You could first tell Microsoft Recite: “Emil’s birthday is February 23″ as well as “Emil wants a 16GB Zune for his birthday.” When you later want to figure out what to get me for my birthday and when it is, you can simply say “Emil’s birthday” into the search function. Saying “Zune” would also bring up the second message, as well as any other entries that also mention “Zune.”