Taptu for iPhone/iPod Touch Goes Live
Taptu is a unique search engine designed to be run on the small touchscreen. Taptu tunes its search engine to provide search results consisting of web pages that are optimized for mobile device screens and especially those easy to use with touch. The folks at Taptu claim the search index now consists of over 3 million web pages, so searches should provide good results.
The new iPhone/iPod Touch version is now available in the iTunes App Store and is free.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
I own a Touch Pro, but I don’t have a side in the raging fanboy wars* between the various mobile platforms. I’m just curious: How many of the thousands of apps in the App Store are simply repackaged web pages? I visited the taptu.com site on Opera and it looks useful. What does a dedicated application bring to the table that the website doesn’t? I’m interested in general terms, not just as it relates to Taptu.
When I see those “There’s an app for that” commercials, I think, “Yeah, it’s called a web browser.” I can’t believe the Are the All Things D app and its ilk are anything more than dedicated feedreaders for people who don’t know what a feedreader is.
Thanks,
Rob
* Long live OS/2!
Hey Rob
(disclaimer – I work @Taptu)
It’s a fair question. The dedicated App does allow us to add in a few more features which aren’t as easy/ or able to achieve on the HTML version – e.g. the flick viewing of search results, saving results for offline viewing which we think improves the overall experience.
We’d love to standardise our offering (and UI) across all platforms- that day will come in the future but at the moment we have to optimize for lo phones like the razr, mid, hi phones and unique platforms like the iPhone/Touch. It’s hard work!
Hope this helps. Chris
@taptu