Microsoft just released a new version of their mobile Live Search client (V3.0). This new version adds a couple of pretty exciting features. It still has speech recognition, maps, movie times, traffic and gas prices but adds local weather and something called "collections".

Collections are location based searches that return results with anything from local Wikipedia entries to recently sold home prices. In the few places I tried it this afternoon, it worked brilliantly.

You can learn more about the "collections" feature here: Passthepoi.

WLS is FREE, and can be downloaded by pointing your Windows Mobile device to this link (A Blackberry version is also available, but it has not (yet) been updated with these new features). 

Here are some screenshots of the new application:

WLS main menu and the "my collections" feature showing some of the pre-loaded collections you can search.

Local weather and local gas prices (nice and cheap in AZ!)

Local results for recently sold homes and a local traffic map.