Ask For And Get Mobile Search

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 Mobile, the service combines several Ask features into a platform accessible from portable devices. The sleepless Emanuel Bettelheim, Product Manager, Mobile, That web page skweezing takes place courtesy of Greenlight Wireless' 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. Tag: Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl Bookmark Murdok: David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.