New interface from Ask

No, no, not that Morph. This Morph. I've been stuck in front of a load of page proofs in the office this morning, so missed Ask's presentation downstairs in IWR towers' TV studio, but apparently the bods have been in to tell us all about it. (Actually, Vodafone were just in to show off their new mobile portal, too, but more that later).

First thing that strikes me? Ooh, you can change the background image. Well, until you actually enter a search term.
Ask has done a good job of creating context around a search (see the
left hand column - it's very easy to refine searches and branch off
into interesting areas) - and it's now presenting all kinds of extra
information and links in the right hand column, as well. There's some
pretty interesting little bits and pieces in there. 

 

Will it make me step away from Google, or abandon searching using the search bar in my browser? No. As has been pointed out,
Ask is taking a risk, and it's worth taking because it's in fourth
place with three percent of the search market. On top of that, it's
very different to peel people away from using a service that already
works very well, thank you. At the very least, I suppose, it's an improvement on their last desperate attempt to get attention.

I did say I'd talk about Vodafone, so I shall. The marketing boffins there have dished up a new portal, and introduced flate rate data at £7.50 a month for 120Mb, a fairly paltry sum compared to T-Mobile's £6 per month for 2Gb, but it's a start.
Users can add their own shortcuts, and that they've got together with Novarra to vastly improve - as far as I could see - the browsing experience. Pages now load faster and look better, in much the same way that Onspeed and Opera improved the mobile experience, too.
The really interesting bit is that Vodafone has done a deal with content providers, including YouTube and Google, Myspace, and Multimap to improve the experience for their users. Sadly, the lovely people from Vodafone wouldn't give any details of these deals - for example, who paid who for the privelege.