It stands to reason. On Tuesday I wrote on mobile search services, on Thursday, one of the big’uns changes their interface. No surprises, of course.

At any rate, per the Google Blog, Google Mobile has created a new interface. It’s fundamentally similar to what they had before, but not identical. They’ve got a new quick interface giving easy access to Google Search, Google Maps, and Google SMS, rather than jumping straight to the meat of Google Search.

And they’ve also heavily revised their informational copy as well: a good thing, since it was very cluttered and difficult to use now.

I’m sure it’s all because I suggested they needed a usability consultant – right?

What’s the difference between these mobile services? What special services do they offer; what limitations do they have? Here are brief reviews of the 8 most major services currently in the market (in no particular order):

1. Google Mobile

   Well, of course Google has an entry in the mobile search market. Google’s mobile search rewrites your page in order to, ideally, best display it on your device. Of course, this system has a few flaws: rewriting the XHTML doesn’t necessarily result in a usable site. On at least one example, the page actually failed to render at all…

   What else does Google currently provide?

   • XHTML Mobile Search or WML Mobile Search (Restricted index)
   • Mobile Google Maps
   • Mobile Google News
   • Gmail for Mobile (No separate URL)
   • Local Search
   • Google SMS

   Google has the major advantage that they have dozens of services which they can convert into mobile-friendly formats.

2. 4Info Mobile Search

   4Info is a mobile specific search engine. Of course, their search is usable from their website, but it’s not a significant target market. A much more limited search index than Google’s, searches are focused on information immediacy rather than the entire web: default searches are likely to turn up stock information, news headlines, sports scores, yellow pages information, or other similarly immediate need information.

   This seems on first blush like an advantage: but not necessarily. If you’re searching for information not available in their index, you simply get irrelevant information (based on word similarity.) Services from the major search engines are designed to return the types of data that 4Info returns, but also have the possibility of returning other websites. Still, 4Info’s limited scope helps ensure that a query will only return certain types of data. And a full web search is possible by visiting their main site, as well.

   Other services from 4Info:

   • SMS text messaging information: text messages addressed to 44636 (4INFO).
   • Text alerts: define events which should automatically trigger SMS messages. Sports scores, stock quotes, weather – sent to your phone based on specific criteria you’ve set.
   • 4INFO Mobile application: provides access to channeled content and saved searches.
3. Ask Mobile

   Ask uses a service called Skweezer to process web pages searched on their mobile site. Unfortunately, at the time I’m writing this Skweezer seems unable to "skweeze" anything. The service provides searches through Ask.com, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Looksmart, compressing and reformatting their pages for optimal display in handheld devices. So, a service not dissimilar to Google’s compression methods: except with the added benefit that you can go to Skweezer.net and set your own preferences. (And the detriment that it’s not apparently working for me…)

   Regardless, Ask has a nice straightforward mobile interface offering a number of services:

   • Driving or Walking directions
   • Image search
   • Business Listings
   • Mapping Service
   • Weather
   • Bloglines blog search
   • Area codes (wondering where that phone call came from?)
   • Currency Conversion
   • Horoscope
   • Time zones
4. Yahoo! Mobile

   Yahoo!’s mobile search directs you to Local, Image, or Web search by default – reasonable offerings. SMS searches are also available, providing much the same kind of data available from other SMS serivces.

   Yahoo! also provides mobile web services including Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, games, and a wide variety of services from their collection of mainstream services. The specific services available, however, vary widely depending on your specific phone: somewhat of a disadvantage.

   Oh…and the information site for Yahoo!’s mobile web offerings is really annoying. Left me cold.

5. MSN (Live) Mobile

   Live Mobile brings us back to the nice and simple interface. Unusual for Microsoft, but welcome. The search provides access to web search, local, mapping, news, and spaces search.

   Additional services include:

   • Windows Live Messenger for mobile (seems pointless to me…)
   • Customized home pages
   • Email access
   • RSS content at Live.com

   Live Mobile wins the award for most confusing services listing…

6. AOL Mobile

   AOL offers Web search, Local search, Shopping, and "Surf the Web" as their search options. Trying out the Surf the Web option (whatever it’s supposed to do) resulted in an internal server error for me, so that’ll remain a mystery.

   In addition to the basic search options which are pretty commonly available, AOL provides:

   • AOL and AIM Mail
   • CityGuide (allows you to set your location and find a variety of services in that area.)
   • MovieFone
   • AOL Feed Reader
   • MapQuest
   • AOL Pictures
   • News/Weather/Sports
   • Entertainment

   Same ideas as everybody else, for the most part – although the incorporation of MovieFone seems like a nice touch.

7. Nokia Mobile Search

   Nokia, of course, is a mobile phone company rather than a search company. As such, their service offerings are a little different from the others. Nokia provides a downloadable application (only for Nokia phones, of course) which provides a search interface for users. Searches are provided by a variety of service providers, depending on your location: in the United States, it’s either Windows Live or Yahoo! – in Canada, you’ll also get searches from Yellowpages.ca.

   Nokia’s search software gives you the choice of Web, Local, or Image search to begin your search process. In local search, you can have the immediate choice to call a found service immediately, add their number to your contacts list, or map the location – a handy way of taking advantage of their service integration. In addition, the local search automatically detects your location, providing local results wherever you happen to be.

8. Technorati Mobile

   Well, Technorati Mobile search doesn’t really have any extra features: Technorati searches blogs, and that’s exactly what their mobile search does. If all you want is to search Technorati’s blog index, come here.

   Unfortunately, Technorati Mobile doesn’t give you the ability to log in to your Technorati account, view your favorites, or any of the other possible benefits you might get from it.

So that’s mobile search in a nutshell. Lots of services, lots of common features, and the odd custom feature. For myself, interface makes a big difference: and the winners (to me) for interface were Ask.com and AOL. (I can’t believe I’m favoring AOL…). Why are these interfaces preferable to me? They’re providing basic lists of their services in very straightforward list form. They don’t segregate their services into different web addresses, inaccessible from each other.

Google was pretty good, as well – but still not quite appealing. 4Info incorporates all of their search tools into a single search box – except for web search, which is located at a different web address, with no link. Live Mobile tries to make you download a .dll file when you visit it…not very appealing.

With the inevitably sprawling nature of government, this has potential to be a really handy service. I’ve certainly occasionally found myself searching for a piece of government information having only a vague idea of what agency I might be needing to look at. Hopefully, this will make that kind of search a bit easier.

I’m particularly intrigued by the option to create personalized feeds of information from government agencies – so few agencies have jumped on board the syndication bandwagon, and it’s very challenging to keep up on their activities.

A little uncertain whether I want to sign in to personalize
my Google government search, however. On the offhand chance that Google does someday have to give up their search data, how do you feel about the government having a catalog of your searches on the government?

Hmmmmm…..

As the world of alternate media grows, the likelihood of greater audiences and notice grows alongside. The variety of nominees for this award is incredible – everything from the TV offshoot of a popular drama series to a video blog describing the day-to-day events of "Jerry" to unique online adventure game/story.

The Emmy awards are no longer exclusive to television. But that’s only fair – popular media is no longer exclusive to major media publishers in general! If you have a brilliant idea and a little time, you can publish your thoughts, opinions, stories, and video or audio recordings online at minimal cost.

And, of course, so can everybody else.

I suppose that this is the core reason that internet marketing exists. As long as only a few thousand tech geeks were using this strange new technology "online", the world of internet marketing was irrelevant. But today, when major corporations are producing web-only or mobile device customized media, you’re going to need a lot of thought and planning to make your own online presence viable. Yes, anybody can publish – but publishing is not the same as success.

It’s important to think of the internet as having a relationship to the world of vanity publishing. It’s always been the case that anybody could publish a book if they had the money and the desire – the internet has merely rendered this task easier and cheaper.

Once you’ve taken your business online, you need to spend the time and effort to convince the world that your venture is more than just a vanity affair – do the work involved to create valuable content, useful tools or provide a great product.

In itself, this isn’t exactly related – but he also referred back to an earlier patent, Visually-oriented driving directions in digital mapping system, which included a discussion of a related advertising scheme where businesses may "bid or otherwise pay to be included as a waypoint." Fundamentally, this is what I was discussing. It’s not quite as, well, free as what I had in mind – but it would serve the purpose.

Unfortunately, if the system comes forward as a purely advertising supported service, it’ll inevitably be incomplete. It may depend on cost – if priced the same way as the yellow pages, most business may well jump on that bandwagon very quickly. There will always be those small businesses which I’d love to support if I could only find out about them, however.

One question that frequently occurs for me, as a regular user of public transit, is whether I’d be able to get X or Y on my trip – it would be very handy to be able to find out in advance whether there was a flower shop along the route, or a grocery store, or a place I could pick up a bottle of wine. I’d love to be able to incorporate this kind of search into Google Transit.

It seems a fairly straightforward incorporation between the two systems, and in fact Google Local does include a feature similar to this – the "service near location" search. The advantage to a local search with transit data would be that you wouldn’t need to know a particular location or address to find information near – just a route. Perhaps there’s no grocery store near either your destination OR your departure point – but if you take the 35A you’ll pass just a block away from one, for example.

Perhaps I’m dreaming; but to ME this would be a great service. Although Americans tend to be biased heavily towards private transportation, I can’t help but wish for a change. Anybody else think this would be useful?

I also use GMail as a quick go anywhere word procesor. As long as I have internet access it doesn’t matter what computer or OS I’m on.

Comment by beaglebot on Lifehacker

The comment above suggests to me just how thoroughly the internet is taking over the
world of computing. Where 20 years ago you may have fought for access to
your university or corporate mainframe, today you can access your own documents anywhere in the world, provided you can access the internet.

You don’t even need to have a computer handy – if you’ve got your cellphone or your PDA. You don’t need to "plug-in" if you’ve got satellite access, bluetooth, wireless access . . . the list goes on. How critical is it to get your business online? Well, it’s pretty important – and getting moreso every day.

I remember, perhaps only 7 or 8 years ago, when I would routinely go to the store to look for a gift, a book, or some tech gadget. If I found it, I was satisfied. I also know that today my shopping starts online. If your store doesn’t have a website – it’s out of the running. It’s not that I won’t go to a "real" store – it’s that I want to learn as much as I can about your store before I walk in the door. I want to have looked at your products, compared their prices, read reviews, and decided whether I want to buy before I EVER talk to a salesman.

But the issue isn’t just whether or not you have a website. It’s also whether I’m impressed by your website – and I’m not impressed by a beatiful, complicated, fascinating website. At least, not when I’m shopping. I don’t like shopping, so I want to find the information I need as fast as possible.

You wouldn’t design your store so that a customer had to go through some kind of maze of mirrors for each product they want to look at, would you? Consider that when you’re building your online store.

Your potential visitors may be anybody. They may access your store from anywhere. They might be using any number of different devices – and it’s all useless if your store doesn’t help them find and use its services.