Facebook is set to hold a press event later today, and it appears the whole thing’s going to be a massive kick in the teeth for Google. Not only is the social network expected to unveil its own smartphone, possibly powered by its own platform, but it’s also expected to hit Google where it really hurts — in search. Rumor has it the company will unveil its own search engine, which will rollout to users “very soon.”
More pictures, more finger-friendly
Izik is a new web search app from the makers of Blekko, a web search engine for people who are looking for a change from Google.
You could be forgiven for saying “Blekwhat?” there. Although it’s been around for a few years now, Blekko isn’t what most people think of when they go looking for somewhere else to search.
But that doesn’t mean you should dismiss it without trying it. Blekko does search pretty well in your browser, and this app is a decent attempt to do search differently on your iPad too.
We all have too many apps, I’m guessing. As an app aficionado, I have hundreds of apps across several pages, many of them buried within folders. iOS is organized for visual memory; I’m usually flipping through pages and looking for the app I need based on where it is on the page, how the icon looks, and what other apps it’s near.
Once past the first page or two, however, and especially in folders filled with a bunch of apps, that visual strategy starts to break down. Typically, I’ll swipe right from the Home screen and type in the name of the app, then tap on it to launch it. This works fine, but eventually takes more time than just knowing what folder the app resides in. Here’s how to find out.
![Google Gets Spoken Search Right With Latest Update [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/gsearch1.jpg "Google search with voice")
Speak and you shall find
No matter how long it spent waiting for approval, Google’s updated search app for iOS was worth the wait. Is it a shameless Siri-clone for web search? Yes, pretty much? Is it fast, instantly usable, and useful? Oh yes. Oh yes it certainly is.
![Liquid Helps Information Flow Smoothly [Review]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/liquid2.jpg "Liquid for OS X")
Copy text and act on it
Liquid is a productivity helper for OS X. It comes in two flavors – free and paid. The idea is to speed up your information seeking workflow. You find something you need to research, and a few key presses later you’ve got some data. Or a unit conversion. Or, in the paid version, a language translation. It’s got a lot of features.
Google’s updated search app adds lightning-fast voice-controlled search, just like you get on Android. It’s simple, impressively fast and will run on just about any iDevice you might have, not just the latest hardware.
But it has a long way to go to compete with Siri.
Google has started to index the contents of your e-mail attachments, and you can now search on them in the Gmail interface. This is new, and pretty great.
But if you’re using the iOS Mail app to wrangle your Gmail accounts, it works there too. I discovered this in the process testing out the browser version and — as you might expect — Apple’s version is both more elegant and less useful.
Apple isn’t a company known for silly blunders, but its website is revealing a host of unreleased products today. As we reported just moments ago, the Cupertino company already has links to its iPhone 5 and new iPod touch press releases set up, which can be found by searching for the devices on its website. But that’s not all: a “new iTunes” has also been discovered.
Dolphin is one of the best third-party browsers you’ll find on iOS, and it just got even better on the iPhone, thanks to a new design and user interface, new features, and lots of improvements in version 6.0.
The most noticeable change in the way Safari works in its latest version is in the way it allows you to search. Just like Google’s Chrome web browser, Safari now includes an integrated search in the previously URL-only address bar at the top of the browser.
There are some tricks to narrow down search results, as well as a couple neat ways to save specific searches for later use. Let’s check them out together, shall we?
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![Use Spotlight On Your iPhone or iPad To Find Apps In Folders [iOS Tips]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/SpotlightSearch.jpg)
![Apple’s Website Also Confirms ‘New iTunes’ Will Be Coming Today [Updated]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/new_itunes.jpg "new_itunes")
![Search Smarter With Safari 6 In Mountain Lion [OS X Tips]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Search-Smarter-in-Safari.jpg)
