Google Improvements on Nokia devices

As seen from a Google press release, improvements have been made to Google's search application on all N-series and E-series phones. If you have own one of these phones, you can download a small search shortcut directly to your phone's home screen by pointing your mobile browser to mobile.google.com.

Take a look at the video below where Google showcases the improved speed using its new application. The best part of the video aside from the functional explanation is the side-by-side comparison between the new and the old search. The new search function can shave off half the time it takes to get search results.

Yahoo GO 3.0 Beta Released

Got an email from Yahoo! today. Annoucing the beta version of Yahoo! GO 3.0. It is compatile with iPhone, WM5/6 and Nokia S60 devices. Yahoo! GO is composed of an array of web services designed for your handheld device (Maps, Mail, Messenger, etc.). In addition, there are some 3rd party mobile widgets available for download (MTV News, eBay, etc.) I'll give it a go and report back shortly. (Note the Nokia N95 8GB used in the photo... sweet!)

Gmail/m Updated Mobile Interface (For the Better!)

My 8525 is a must now days for me to kill the time in between waiting for the NY subways or an appointment. I am always using its 3G data connection to check my emails, news, scores and etc.
I noticed Gmail has a much cleaner and user friendly interface. Prior to this screen shot, the inbox was difficult to manipulate using WM Internet Explorer. Now it has a nice display to differentiate emails from each other and a check box allows you to quickly move, or trash messages. Not a crazy update but much easier to use for users without a really nice GMail integration.

Google Mobile Search Preview Tool

Google’s mobile search must have reached a new point of maturity as they have released a handy tool to emulate a mobile phone browser to preview your shorter-mobile-text-ads. Check out the tool here. I remember when I was working on the agency side, I had to bust out the old BlackBerry browser to take a digital picture of a mobile text ads to convince a client. This tool will obviously make it much easier for marketers to preview their paid search effort.

Related News: Download Squad found a Google Search portal that will not display sponsored ads. Not that it benefits me anymore than the standard product, just thought it’s a bit interesting that Google provided this.

MSN and Sprint to Serve Mobile Ads

In an interesting move, Sprint (the 3rd largest carrier) and Microsoft (the 3rd largest search engine) have partnered up to serve Sprint PCS wireless subscribers mobile search and mobile advertising. Windows Live Search will be the default search tool that can display pay-per-click ads while another partner, Ingenio, will provide pay-per-call advertising. Sprint has done very well in the past year in marketing their data services; they have also recently upgraded their 3G EV-DO network for faster performance.

Ask Mobile Search Engine

Out of curiosity, I decided to check out if Ask.com has a mobile search engine and I found out they do. Most of my search results and news entries are dated mid-October so I am going to assume that is when Ask Mobile Search was launched. Ask Mobile Search can be accessed by pointing your mobile device's web browser to: http://m.ask.com/. Since SearchEngineWatch Blog has done a tremendous review on this topic, I will skip a full review. Overall, Ask Mobile Search has a clean UI with very similiar menu structure as Yahoo and MSN mobile. As a mobile user, I am glad to see more companies bringing their free services to the mobile space. I have added Ask.com Mobile Search to my PDA Friendly Bookmark.