Video: Google rolls out new search aide for mobile phones

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Google has unveiled a new local search option for mobile phones.

We know you're out there – the folks who haven't yet been overwhelmed by the glamour of the iPhone, or the BlackBerry Storm, or the Palm Pre. You've got a regular old mobile phone, with the spottiest of Web browsers, and you like it. You use it every day. You don't have any need for those fancy apps.

But chances are, you've probably been in the position where you needed to use your handset to connect to the Internet. Maybe you were lost. Maybe you needed the number to the nearest pizza joint. You pulled out the phone, and pressed a few buttons, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Luckily, the folks over at Google are aware of the problem, and yesterday, they rolled out a fix of sorts. It's called Local Search for Mobile, and it will arrange all those complex, rich search results into easily accessible categories. (See video below.) Already, the functionality is earning plaudits.

"I tested the new feature using a Nokia 7705 Twist and an iPhone 3GS. The app surprisingly worked better on the Twist's horrendous Polaris 6.1 browser than on the iPhone's mobile Safari," writes Sean Ludwig of PC Magazine.

This week, Google also unveiled a new range of features for its web-based search tool. Search Options allows users to filter data by hour and date range, or see results sorted by visited pages, not yet visited, books, blogs and news.

“We have spent a lot of time looking at how we can better understand the wide range of information that’s on the web and quickly connect people to just the nuggets they need at that moment,” Vice President of Search Products Marissa Mayer wrote in a blog post. “We want to help our users find more useful information, and do more useful things with it.”

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iPhone MMS update makes AT&T happy. The users? Not so much.

“We are pleased with the roll-out of MMS,” an AT&T spokesperson said Friday. Yet many ran into frustrating stumbling blocks trying to activate the service.

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