• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 8, 2014

Microsoft has brought its Torque Voice Search app to the Android platform from Android Wear devices with the latest 2.0 update.

The user accesses Torque with a shake of an Android handset. Microsoft calls it a Shake Anytime, which can be disabled as a default. The wearer turns their wrist forward and backward to initiate a voice search. The "okay Google" voice search alternative is one of several experimental projects from Microsoft’s innovation lab The Garage.

The Microsoft Shake and Search feature lets users search for what they want, never leaving their browser, by shaking the phone. For instance, someone reading a news article about New York on the Wall Street Journal Web site can shake the phone while on the publisher's site and give it a command. Users can open the page by tapping the title of the information or article, and left or right swipe to see more answers.

The information serves up in a widget that users can easily reposition on the page. Users can tap and hold the frame to move the widget around the screen, press the "B" button insight the widget to give another voice search command, and tap any area outside the widget to complete the search session.

The 2.0 release made available during the weekend on Google Play includes flight status reports and info on local events. All answers and other features are powered by Bing search.

Torque was developed by the Microsoft Garage group, which explores and experiments with cross-platform applications. The organization grew out of Office Labs in 2009, connecting Microsoft engineers and its engineering projects with customers, technologies and use.

Another Garage project focuses on photos. AutoTag 'n Search My Phones uses photos tagged in Facebook accounts to learn face models of friends. It automatically tags faces in personal photo collections in the Picture Library like OneDrive. It lets users search for people tags across the photo collection, per a description on the site.