We first revealed Taptu’s new mobile search engine last month and thought it sounded extremely promising. And so when Pocket Picks was invited to take part in the limited-access Taptu beta testing, we jumped at the chance.
How does it work?
Taptu is accessed via a weblink on your mobile’s web browser, launching a home page with a search box. When you enter a search, Taptu will show you the headline results — and the neat bit is that each link is identified as being an MP3 track, video or text (almost all text links are from Wikipedia). From here you can click on the links to take you directly to that web page, or picture or music file to download to your phone.
First impressions
Taptu is so simple you wonder why no-one thought of this before. Most mobile searches work like normal internet searches, simply listing links to pages that might only have a vaguely mention what you’re looking for. This is fine on a desktop PC, but on a mobile you don’t want to spend ages scrolling through hundreds of links.
By showing results under different categories, Taptu narrows searches and takes you directly to the page, image or MP3 track. It’s easy to quickly get what you want in just a few clicks — just like a mobile web search should be like.
Ease of use
Put simply, using Taptu is a doddle. You enter your search terms and voila, your results are sorted into separate sections in which you can narrow your results.
For instance, in our test we looked up Seventies avant-garde musician Captain Beefheart. The results came back separated into Song, Video, Artist, Wiki, Lyric. Each was a link taking us to the results under each category, making it easy to look up an image for a screensaver, download a particular track, or find biographies.
Good points
- Taptu is very simple to use, finds relevant results and lets you search and download music tracks or pictures in as few as two clicks
- You can send links to friends’ mobiles via SMS simply by entering their mobile number
- All you pay are your standard web browsing charges
Bad points
- A few technical kinks need ironing out (such as difficulties entering mobile numbers)
- To get the best out of the image searches and text-heavy web pages you really need a mobile with a full internet browser
Overall
A promising service that is streets ahead of most other mobile internet search engine – not least because it’s specifically designed for mobiles rather than a modified web search. Once the technical hitches are sorted, Taptu promises to be an straightforward service that’s free and easy to use and perfect for using when browsing the web on your mobile.
[Taptu]
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