Dan’s Blog (2.0)

Moconews published a good summary of the panel on mobile search that I sat on at 3GSM. One thing not covered in the article: mobile web skepticism still rampant. A guy from the audience still didn’t believe you could have a compelling Web experience on a phone, let alone a good search experience. I told him he might need a new phone. After the panel, I sat down with him and took him through the mobile search app that was bundled on my N73, then through a Yahoo! search using Opera Mini on my Blackberry (since he was using an older Blackberry). He left a convert, I think and he might not need a new phone after all if his existing phone can run Opera Mini.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 23:21 under Mobile Web
Tags: 3gsm, MobileSearch, MobileWeb, operamini

4 Comments

Christmas seems to have come early this year for Nokia N73 owners. When I downloaded and installed the latest software build yesterday, I was surprised to find a new application - a search application that allows you to search Yahoo! and Windows Live as well as local directories (such as Yell.com in the UK). The search results are provided quickly and clicking on each result brings up a quick summary of the page before offering to bring it up in a browser (the Series 60 Open Source Browser) or bookmark it. It’s a great, simple UI for mobile search that’s well integrated into the phone and the browser. And it allows you to download updates over the air. It reminds me a bit of Apple’s Sherlock application. The update, by the way, also seems to speed up the phone UI and so far it also seems more stable (no phone crashes yet, but I’ve only had it installed for 24 hours or so).

The only issue I have here is about the phone update process itself. I had to somehow know that an application (PC only) exists, download it, and then connect my phone via the USB cable in order to update the software. There is no over-the-air update available, even though it seems like this should be feasible with a big enough memory card to store the image. But the bigger issue is just getting the word out about this update — this could be a major quality of life improvement for N73 owners, but the only reason I know about it is because I’m in the industry. It seems like Nokia needs a better way to get these updates out there into users’ hands.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 21:44 under Mobile Web, mobile 2.0
Tags: mobile2.0, MobileSearch, MobileWeb, NokiaN73, Search

2 Comments