Webware

Article updated 6/5/09 at 8:05am PSTwith more information about countries of availability.

(Credit: Google)

Nokia S60 users can finally bypass the browser and start Google searches from the same application that most other smartphone users have been using for months. The free Google Mobile App has arrived on Nokia S60 phones.

As with CNET Editors' Choice winner Google Mobile App on BlackBerry, this Symbian build places a search bar at its heart. The search bar supports search suggestions, history, and edits to the history, all of which saves you typing on subsequent searches for similar topics. Submitted searches return results in the default browser.

The search bar is flanked on the top by icons for Gmail, Google Maps for Mobile, YouTube, and Picasa Web albums. Clicking either of the first three will launch each separate native app if you've got it installed, or will install it for the first time if you don't have it. A 'more" button fast tracks you to online versions of Goog 411, Google Reader, Google SMS, and Orkut.

The final feature in this approachable and endlessly useful app is the My Location feature that uses the phone's GPS or cell tower triangulation to guess your general neighborhood. With it activated, Google can automatically localize your searches, which takes typing your city or zip code off your hands.

You can launch Google Mobile App from Nokia's Today screen by pressing the phone's "back" key. Users can opt out by disabling the quick launch hot key in the app's Setting menu.

Get Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 by visiting m.google.com from your mobile browser, or mobile.google.com from a desktop. It is available for handsets used in Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Russian Federation, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Finland, Hong Kong, Macao, Norway, Portugal, Taiwan, and Sweden.

Despite Yahoo's latest efforts to defragment its mobile offerings, on Thursday the company released a mobile version of its Inquisitor search tool for the iPhone. Unlike its desktop version, which plugs into the search box built into Apple's Safari browser, this version exists as a standalone search application.

Before your eyes glaze over, it's worth a mention that this application is ridiculously fast. Search results stream in without chugging down the iPhone's processor, or slowing down your keystrokes. More importantly, it lets you start typing in a query less than four seconds after launching it, which in my testing was about two seconds faster than Google's voice-powered search app, and slightly faster than starting a cold search from Safari. Is this a huge difference? No, but if you're in a hurry to look something up quickly this is genuinely helpful.

Another big difference from some other search applications on the iPhone is that you can view the results in an integrated Webkit browser without it kicking you back to Safari. Google's iPhone search app doesn't do this and it drives me absolutely nuts, since if it's not a page you were looking for you have to start a brand new search from Safari's search box--which means more typing, or exit the browser and head back to the search app (Update: reader Commenter46 notes you can set the Google app to do this via a top secret settings menu).

You can see quick descriptions of search results along with site favicons. Results also open up in an integrated browser.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Each search result gets its own summary, complete with a favicon. If you come across a result from a site that has a notable favicon, it jumps out immediately. I also like how when it's loading a page in the integrated browser, it keeps the site's title and description in the lower half of the screen, which sure beats staring at a loading page.

In addition to standard Web results it also throws in related news stories that get thrown in at the top of the heap. It also provides suggested search results as you type, as well as sticking them on the bottom of the search so you can go back and revise your search without re-typing. These are both very user-friendly features which make it easier to make quick refinements or skip a few keystrokes.

Of course two big things missing from this application that iPhone search applications from Google and Vlingo have is voice-activated search and location-filtering. If you don't care about these two things, I think this is a really solid replacement, especially if you find yourself doing a lot of searching from your iPhone's home screen. Hopefully Yahoo's relaunch of its mobile service later this month will bring this same level of speed.

Previously: Yahoo plug-in gives brains to browser search

(Credit: Google)

Windows Mobile owners tired of opening their browsers every time they want to start a Google search can now put that habit to rest. On Wednesday, Google released a version of Google Mobile App for Windows Mobile phones (rate it here).

On Microsoft's mobile platform, the free, native application installs a home screen plug-in from which you can launch a handful of Google's mobile services. About two thirds of Google Mobile App is dedicated to its search field. The other portion is populated with thumbnail icons that open your Gmail, Picasa Web albums, Google Docs, and so on, in your default browser, except the Google Maps icon, which will open or install Google's downloadable map and directions application on your phone.

While Google Mobile App for Windows Mobile surfaces your history and search suggestions just like the BlackBerry and iPhone versions, the Windows Mobile version is the first not be a full-screen application. Even when you open Google Mobile App for Windows Mobile from the program menu, you'll see it as a strip floating at the top of the screen.

Treating the mobile app as a horizontal swatch is actually an asset, thanks to some time-saving tweaks Google added to this version--like mapping the app to a hot key so you can start a search without having to first open an app from the program list, and searching within a specific domain. These make Google's mobile application a quick-acting reference resource for anyone with a Windows Mobile phone.

Google Mobile App will work on Windows Mobile smartphones and Pocket PCs in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain.

We're guessing that they won't surpass iBeer in popularity any time soon, but this is big news for the App Store: Apple has quietly started allowing Web browser applications in.

According to MacRumors, a small bunch of browser apps were recently let into the App Store. They include the free Edge Browser, the historyless Incognito ($1.99), the tabbed WebMate ($0.99), and something called Shaking Web ($1.99) that attempts to make Web sites easier to read.

Previously, Apple had not approved third-party browsers for the App Store; its own Safari browser is preinstalled on the iPhone. Other browsers weren't allowed, citing "duplicating functionality."

The browser apps currently in the App Store all have some kind of quirk that sets them apart from standard browsers, ranging from a slant in design (Edge) to one in privacy (Incognito). They're all built using Safari as a base too. So it's not yet clear whether Apple will open the gates to iPhone versions of completely separate third-party browsers, such as Firefox or Opera.

Mobile-music discovery provider Shazam announced on Thursday that it has increased its music database from 6 million tracks to 8 million tracks, thanks to new partnerships with record labels.

Shazam, which provides the fourth most popular Apple App Store download of 2008, behind competitor Pandora, at No. 1, analyzes songs playing through a stereo or radio, and displays the song's title, artist, biographical information, and a link to purchase the track.

According to the company, the new tracks added to the library include additional North American, Asian, and European content, and will be linked to Shazam's existing products, which, in addition to an iPhone application includes one built for Google's Android mobile operating system.

"With our music alliances, we gain access to the most relevant music well before many other services, which ensures that users can discover popular and niche music all over the globe," Will Mills, Shazam's head of music, said in a statement.

With the addition of 2 million tracks to its discovery engine, Shazam has become even more compelling. Although it works extremely well, my single gripe with the application is that its library is too small, and at times, it isn't able to recognize songs. But now that Shazam has added tracks to its database, the company contends that those issues won't arise as often now.

The 2 million new tracks have been added to Shazam's database, and no additional app installation is required to access them.

The Food Network announced Friday that it has launched a new mobile application through its Web site that will offer visitors a listing of seasonal recipes, videos from its hosts, and cooking tips.

Dubbed Food Network Mobile, the company's new mobile application attempts to offer speed and usability for busy supermarket shoppers. The page features three links that allow users to browse all holiday recipes, Alton Brown's recipes, and a slew of videos from the network. A search box above the links allows users to search for specific recipes they can't find elsewhere on the site.

"Being in the store and having access to...recipes that feature your leftover items is an exciting feature of Food Network Mobile," Deanna Brown, president of parent company Scripps Networks Digital, said in a statement. "How many times have you stopped at the store but you don't have the recipe you want to make with you? Now with Food Network Mobile, it's no problem."

Whether users will want to use the Food Network Mobile page is another story. The interface is simple, which makes perusing recipes easy, but the app is clunky and I found it somewhat slow over 3G on my iPhone. On a Windows Mobile device where online apps don't necessarily scale well to the browser, scrolling through recipes and finding the right one may be extremely difficult, rendering the app's search feature practically useless. That said, the site's search feature is quick.

Food Network Mobile is free to access and, according to the company, it will be ad-supported as more people start using the service. Recipes will be updated "constantly" and the focus of the page will change depending on the season. Right now, most of the recipes relate to Thanksgiving Day leftovers.

Reporters were put into a frenzy this week when Google announced it was set to launch version two of its mobile search application for the iPhone that included the addition of voice-powered search, allowing you to skip the keyboard altogether. But now the question is, where is it?

My colleague Josh Lowensohn reported on the application on Thursday, and duly noted on Friday afternoon that it still wasn't available in Apple's App Store. But as of Saturday afternoon, the application was still MIA. A search on the App Store returned only the older version of the Google Mobile App.

According to The New York Times, Google planned to release the free application through the iTunes Store "as soon as Friday." The application, an update to Google Mobile App, is meant to allow you to talk into your phone, ask any question, and the results of your query will then be offered up on your iPhone.

One reason for the delay could be that it has been bogged down by Apple's App Store approval process, which can take days or even months. Indeed, the Google Earth app for the iPhone took several days to appear in the App Store after its release. And Buzzd CEO Nihal Mehta noted that it took three months for his company's application to arrive in the App Store after it had been submitted. In other words, it's difficult for third-party developers to determine exactly when the application is going to be made available.

Perhaps from now on, when developers release an iPhone app, they'll learn to add a caveat that while the application has technically been released, it may take several days or even longer for it to actually show up in the App Store.

Update November 18, 8:20 a.m. PST: The updated version of Google Mobile App with voice search is now available from the App Store.

The new BlackBerry app replaces the ungainly Google Mobile Updater and smartens up search.

(Credit: Google)

Current users of Google's Mobile App for BlackBerry will receive an unexpected benefit when upgrading to the latest update to the mobile app: a cleaner home screen.

Announced on Wednesday, the new Google Mobile App for BlackBerry replaces the Mobile Updater package before it, a hub for downloading and updating Google's native BlackBerry apps for news, search, e-mail, and photos that permanently lived on the home screen, along with the separate applications it downloaded and quietly managed.

The new application does away with the extraneous hub by folding its capability to download and update Gmail, Picasa, and so on into a new search app. The result is an application anchored by a search bar that marches a string of icons along the top for downloading or launching BlackBerry-specific apps or mobile Web sites for the panoply of Google apps.

The application's sharper interface and shrunken home-screen footprint are welcome, as is the new and easy way to scroll through search history and repeat it with a click, or to edit a misspelled search term without having to retype it. Google's new mobile app also offers to autocomplete your search queries. It is disappointing, however, that most of the Google apps remain Web-based and have not merited a native application of their own. Gmail, Maps, and Sync, which syncs Google Calendar to the BlackBerry, are each represented by a native download, but clicking Reader, News, and Picasa photos from the new interface launches the appropriate page in the BlackBerry browser.

While the Web-based method does indeed whittle down home-screen clutter and save Google engineers a heap of maintenance work on a software download for each Web app, it also puts users at the disadvantage of getting their news in BlackBerry's bare-bones browser with its questionable readability. I'd personally rather spare my eyes than a pocketful of memory, and am therefore less likely to use the quick access icons. Still, as the new app's more compact interface and smarter search and history push Google's BlackBerry app in the right direction, I'd recommend making the switch. Download Google Mobile App for BlackBerry by pointing your phone's browser to http://m.google.com.

Zkout, a location-based mobile social network has just released a new version that integrates both Twitter and Yahoo's Fire Eagle. The service, which first demonstrated its technology at last year's Le Web 3 conference in Paris, enables anyone with a compatible handset to write notes, take pictures, and chat with others based on where they are.

Not unlike competitors Brightkite, Loopt, and the now-defunct Meetro, the goal of Zkout is to discover and interact with people around you no matter where you are. However the big difference is that Zkout is remaining platform agnostic, and will work on almost any handset as long as it's got a data connection.

The service experienced a mass of new users earlier this year after being listed as a staff pick in Apple's Web app directory. In addition to the Fire Eagle and Twitter integration, it's also now optimized for both the iPhone and Blackberry. Christian Wiklund, the co-founder of Zkout, tells me a native iPhone application will be out later this year that takes advantage of the phone's camera and integrated GPS to improve the accuracy of where members are.

See what people around you are up to and befriend them either with messages or live chat.

(Credit: CNET Networks)