10.13.06
Ask For And Get Mobile Search
 By
David A. Utter
Ask.com has unveiled its mobile search platform, which includes directions, maps, images, and the ability to "skweeze" web pages down to mobile size.
"It's bigger. It's badder. Ladies and gentlemen, it's too much for Mr. Incredible!"
-- Syndrome rolls out the Omnidroid, a creation that can take on just about any challenge, in The Incredibles
Ask.com has rolled out its creation for searching from a mobile phone. Called Ask Mobile, the service combines several Ask features into a platform accessible from portable devices.
The sleepless Emanuel Bettelheim, Product Manager, Mobile, posted more about the launch of the Ask Mobile service:
Ask.com Mobile includes numbered shortcuts to access tools more quickly, remembers your recent queries so you don't have to retype them, and "swkeezes" (sic) web pages down to fit your phone's screen so you can actually access and read them.
You'll also find mobile-optimized Smart Answers and Zoom Related Search within our mobile web search results to help you find exactly what you are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. We've even made room for our popular Image Search, Weather and Area Code Lookup, Currency Conversion, Horoscopes, Time Zones, not to mention (ok, I just did) a link to Bloglines Mobile.
That web page skweezing takes place courtesy of Greenlight Wireless' Skweezer application. Skweezer takes a typical web page and renders it into a format that is viewable on the small screen.
At SearchEngineWatch, Barry Schwartz liked what he saw of Ask Mobile, but wasn't real thrilled with the release date. "My main complaint that this was expected in 'sometime in 2005' and it is already 10 months into 2006," he wrote.
Greg Sterling tested out Ask Mobile and found it "stack up very well" against competitive offerings from AOL, Windows Live, Yahoo, and Google. He would like to see Business Listings receive a name change, though.
"The latter is a not very intuitive naming alternative to 'Local,' which is the category on Ask.com. I would recommend a name change unless user/focus group testing came out in favor of 'Business Listings,'" Sterling wrote.
Both issues noted are very minor quibbles, considering what Ask has been able to accomplish with the launch of the new mobile service. Everything works well. If Ask could make a deal with a big handset maker for default placement on new mobiles, they would become very competitive in short order with those other Internet players in the mobile space.
About
the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
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