As of last night, part of our Taptu image search has gone walkabout. You’ll see that thumbnails are all visible, but that when clicking to view the larger version, the image might not show up.

We’ve identified the problem and have our engineers on the case to hunt down the missing images. We hope we can resolve this as quickly as possible, but please bear with us while we print out “Missing: Have you seen this image server?” posters to put up around the neighbourhood and get our pocket change together for the reward (will 2 lollipops and a button do?) to thank you for your patience.

Today, we’re in Austin, Texas. It was an interesting, somewhat snow-laden journey, but now, we’re here for South by Southwest Interactive, the True Spring Break for Geeks. It’s only just getting started, but already, I’ll spare you the Texan hat and rodeo jokes, and I’ll only say that the hospitality of people here is larger than life.

Over the next few days, we hope to meet as many fellow gadgeteers, usability rockstars and design geeks as possible, by attending panels and joining conversations on topics we all love, then sprinkle the lot with a few heated discussions over beers in the evening. (See how much we sacrifice ourselves for you, our users?)

This is, of course, a call to anyone attending SXSW to get in touch so we can meet, but also an invitation to join us on Monday night at Mobile Monday Austin, where we’ll be giving a little Taptu demo, in the company of James Pearce from dotMobi, Brian Fling from Blue Flavor and David Gill from Nielsen Mobile. It’s all happening at Austin City Hall, within spitting distance from the Conference Centre so why not pop by? (RSVP recommended)

Ready for more networking, learning and exchanging of ideas than ever before?

The past few weeks have been extremely busy in the Taptu offices, as we put the final touches to a whole heap of new features. It’s far more than just a lick of paint, as the search engine becomes a search and share engine. What on Earth does that mean, you must wonder?

First, let me dispel a misconception about Taptu. Tons of people during MWC asked me what phone they needed to be able to download the latest version of Taptu. Even after repeating that it’s entirely web-based, requires no installation and can therefore be used on just about any phones, some looked incredulous. At that stage, I promptly (but politely) yanked their own phone out of their hands to show them that Taptu was already on their phone, waiting for them. So there you go. No downloads, ever. Just a simple URL!

Now, back to those new features we’ve cooked up…

We now index far more content than before, in many more categories above and beyond the original music, video, images, wiki range. You’ll find news, sports, blogs, lyrics, travel and many more! Each search result is neatly labelled (a bit like the linen in that overly organised friend’s closet, “single sheets”, “double sheets”…) to help you find what you need faster and without any extraneous clicks.

When you click through to a single result page, rather than throw you out in the cold straight to the destination site, we give you a summary page, big on information but teeny in file size. This means you can decide whether it’s the right destination without waiting for the complete site to load. Quicker and simpler.

Once you find the information you’re looking for in the search results, it’s time to unleash it into the wild. Share what you’ve found to Gmail contacts, email it to anyone or broadcast it to your Twitter stream. When you next check Taptu on your phone, your past shared searches will still be around if you want to view them again.

So try it out and let us know what you think!

We’re now all home after an eventful week at Mobile World Congress, spent meeting new and interesting people who love the mobile web as much as we do, looking out for new phones and services, and eating great Spanish tapas.

Since launching many new features on Monday, we’ve made the news a few times.

TechDigest says “We’ve been getting excited about Taptu for months now, so it’s fantastic to see they won the Global Community Award at the MoMo Peer Awards last night at the Mobile World Congress, rewarding our confidence in this small English start-up to no end.”

Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK agreed that “if the future is social search - as many think it is - then the future must also be mobile social search, since the mobile is such a social device.”

Fritz Nelson from Information Week writes about MWC and the lack of innovation since last year. However, he highlights Taptu as one of the mobile service that have caught his attention. “Taptu, a startup based in the U.K., also has a compelling story — perhaps even more so. It builds not only relevance into its results, it brings those results to within a click of accessing. It presents results based on a ranking of social popularity, provides categories (like blogs, news stories, videos), a nifty little summary of the item, and then a one-click way to share it.”

Susi Weaser from Shiny Shiny, writes “It’s good to see that there are people out there who haven’t just accepted Google as the only option when it comes to internet searches. In particular, Taptu have vowed to take on mobile searching, with their easy peasy service.”

Peggy Ann Salz from MSearchGroove posted an article on the new features we launched at MWC, but also interviewed Steve, our CEO, in a podcast about where he thinks mobile search is heading.

The Dutch Cowboys interviewed Steve at the stand, also capturing a bit of the atmosphere of the conference in their video, and Heise Online congratulated us on the Mobile Monday award we received and are very excited about!

Here’s a translation of the Dutch Cowboys’ text for those who, like me, may be Dutch-impaired (kindly provided by Raimo from Mobile Monday Amsterdam)

“The readers of Dutchcowboys know that Search is one of our favourite things. Moreover web 2.0 and Social media play more and more an important role in things we are involved in. For this reason it is a pleasure to hear an entrepreneur and visionary talk about all this even more so that it is happening on your mobile. Closer it cannot get.

Some will think that this is however the millionth promise that search on a cellphone will make it entirely. While the device manufacturers still struggle with the (business)model around mobile search Taptu might have the correct answer. Listen to the passionate Steve Ives who speaks about his social mobile search application Taptu.”

Last night, we were invited to the MoMo Peer Awards, as we had been nominated to represent the London chapter in the Emerging Startups category. I’m thrilled to say that we won the Global Community Award, which Jari Tammisto, CEO of Mobile Monday, handed to Bob who’s our Biz Dev guy.

We’re chuffed to bits about the reception we’re getting here, and we’ve met some really lovely people since we’ve been here. If you’re also at MWC, come say hi at the stand!

This morning, votes have opened for the Mobile Monday Peer Awards for the London area. We’ve been put forward as one of the companies for which you can vote.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/momolondon/surveys?id=1986312

For those who aren’t familiar with the awards, it’s a great opportunity to give Taptu some visibility since colleagues and press will be at Mobile World Congress when the awards are handed out. Got friends who are also part of MoMo? Why not point them to this link and get them to support us? And if you’re at Mobile World Congress, why not pop by our stand since we’ll have a fabulous pink and white bar in Hall 7!

Fingers crossed!

Vero
Chief “Drum up some love for Taptu” Officer

Our mobile search engine has now been live for a few months, and since then, you’ve given us great useful feedback, as well as enough positive press to make us blush a little.

In December, New Media Age magazine’s Stuart Dredge published a year-end look back at 2007’s most memorable ventures in mobile, from AdMob’s rocketing growth to the advent of services like Blyk, targeting 16-24 year olds.

NMA also published a list of Ten to watch in 2008 and I’m thrilled to say they’ve included Taptu.

We have some awesome features lined up in the coming months, and we hope they’ll blow the socks off NMA - and everyone else!

The full article in NMA is available here (Registered users only).

Yesterday, the team thought the bottles of bubbly were to celebrate 100,000 users for our Music Wall Facebook application…

But little did they know, we were only just beginning our own Ballmer Peak experiment…

Original xkcd cartoon: http://xkcd.com/323/

We’ve just completed a first version of a Taptu Mobile Search API. It gives mobile site owners three main benefits:

• First, it will provide an easy way for mobile sites to get their content indexed by Taptu.
• Second, mobile sites will be able to present their content within Taptu search results as easy-to-browse, screen-sized summaries in the same way that Taptu does for all other content.
• Third, your mobile site will be able to access the Taptu engine to perform searches carried out by your users, creating a private search channel that shows only your content.

It uses the same high-performance, fault-tolerant clustered architecture as the main Taptu service, so it’s going to be super fast and super reliable. We’ve implemented this API using a standard SOAP-style interface, and we’re just beginning to trial it with mobile site owners. When we’ve got enough feedback from early users we will turn it into a full public API available directly from on www.taptu.com.

If you’re a mobile site owner and you’re keen to work with us on this, please contact me via Facebook or LinkedIn, or contact Vero via Facebook or Jaiku, or email us at api@taptu.com.

This morning, Bob and I met at Waterloo Eurostar station in London on our way to tonight’s Paris Mobile Monday get together. Over coffee, we looked at the building, which is now two days from being shut down for good, since the Eurostar will be leaving from St-Pancras International from this Wednesday.

I’ve lived in the UK for over 5 years now, but only vaguely remembered the Channel Tunnel being opened at some point in the 90’s. Jokingly, I suggested to Bob that we should check on Taptu what year the tunnel actually opened. He picked up his mobile and typed taptu.mobi in. Full 3G signal, but latency meant the site wasn’t even loading. I grabbed my N95 - on the same T-Mobile network as Bob’s phone - and tried to access the site. Ok, fair enough, busy mobile cell on a Monday morning doesn’t get such great 3G connection.

Being cheeky, I pulled my brand new shiny iPhone out of my handbag. Sure it’s on O2 (No, I’m not hacking it, thanks). Sure it’s on EDGE. But it gave us an answer instantly. And I didn’t even cheat and use The Cloud’s WiFi either. Turns out the Channel Tunnel was open on 6th May 1994.

So please accept this as a pied de nez* to those who say that a phone without 3G is hopeless. It all depends on the conditions, the network load and the phase of the moon, clearly!

Tomorrow, I’ll be returning to Waterloo International from Paris and bidding farewell to the big clunky metal and glass structure. Next trip will begin from St-Pancras in a - hopefully - shiny new station.

As an aside, if you’ve attended Mobile Monday Paris this evening, thank you for being such a welcoming audience! More on this tomorrow, but Bob and I can’t say thanks enough for inviting us to join the event.

[* To make a pied de nez, put hand upwards, fingers apart, with thumb resting against nose. Point towards the person you are mocking and wiggle fingers. Preferably avoid making this gesture to your evening hostess when she's about to offer you a glass of champagne or you may remain without a drink a whole lot longer.]

[tags]Taptu, Mobile Monday, Paris, MoMoParis, iPhone, Apple, Nokia, N95, phone, mobile, technology, gadgets, mobile search, Channel Tunnel, La Manche, Waterloo, Eurostar, Ha ha 3G lost to the measly 2G[/tags]