Need a mobile search engine? Just Ask.com

Jeeves the butler is long gone, but perhaps Ask.com should get "Mini Me" from Austin Powers as the next face of Ask. The search portal now has a mobile-friendly search interface that you can find at http://m.ask.com. Ask's portal gives you several categories to search within, including Directions, Images, Business Listings, Maps, Area Codes, Weather, Bloglines and of course, a generic web search.

Two nice features jump out at me. First, Ask is using Skweezer for mobile content presentation, which is great. Second, the category or menu system can be quickly used with keypad devices. Let's say you want to search for a map, which is number 5 in the high-level menu: you simply press "5" on your keypad to use that category. Looks pretty quick and usable on a web-enabled phone.