news.cnet.com: 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.
[
read more]
03-06-2009 -
