The best mobile news and discussions for the week ending 26 January, 2007.

User Experience

1// An interesting video Q & A session with Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience at Google shares her thoughts about Google as a “swiss army knife that is closed.” She suggests that all the tools are there, but they don’t throw it all at you at once. There’s a nugget of simplicity there that mobile “portals” could benefit from.

She also suggests that Google engineers, sales people and even lawywers are user focused. She pontificates on the dangers of overdoing Web 2.0 to the detriment of usability.

2// On the voice search front, Midomi has announced a music recognition service (alas not yet for mobile). Users can sing or hum a song and get results. Pretty impressive results, according to ZDNet. What the news sites failed to mention is how much more natural it will be to do a voice search on a voice-centric platform like mobile.

3// On the mobile voice search front, I have to suggest those of you heading to Barcelona in a couple weeks to make sure and check out Promptu’s voice search, nominated for 3GSM’s Global Mobile award.

Mobile news

4// In the clamor of the Apple Keynote, Nokia and Visa’s announcement of mobile Visa payments in the US snuck under the radar.

Mainstream media digs at the iPhone

5// Colbert is a voice of finger-wagging, syrupy, in your face, um, reason and he is on a roll this week. If you missed the episodes, here are a couple of clips featuring commentary on the Cingular and AT&T merger and he pans the iPhone release.

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