Written by Nowire on Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Review – GoogHelper for Windows Mobile Smartphone

That’s exactly what Googhelper is. It’s a utility to do your searches in the shortest possible manner. I find this tool very handy especially when I’m on the go.

Meet Goog – the little helper for your Smartphone.

Just recently I got a hold of a new phone from T-mobile. Since this is a Smartphone, it only means one thing: I have to rebuild my library of applications. Having been a Pocket PC user for quite some time now, I have accumulated a staggering number of applications, which unfortunately won’t work with my new Smartphone. No complaints here though, this just means that I need to gear up my wallet and put on my meanest shopping face.

One of the first few applications that I came across is Googhelper. A little utility that looks so simple that it actually catches my interest. Since I do a lot of searching when I’m online I figured this would be something that might come in handy.

Read on to find out just how handy it is …

Installation:

Installation is the basic click, click, press button kind of thing. The installation file is less than 400k and can be installed on the main memory or storage card. I installed mine on my storage card and it runs without any problems. The program is so small, you can probably afford to install it to the main memory.

You will need to do the on-line registration process in order to register the product. Each device generates a unique ID that you need in order to continue with the registration process. I personally don’t like this kind of registration, as I love to “tweak” around with my device, and sometimes (okay, most of the time) my device will crap out. And when that happens, that means I have to go through the process of re-registering again. That said, I’m still impressed by how smooth the registration process went through without any hiccups.

What is GoogHelper?

Here’s some of the description from GoogHelper’s product page at Iambic:

GoogHelper is a snappy utility that helps you quickly launch various Internet searches using mobile friendly sites such as Google, Yahoo! Finance, Amazon, Wikipedia and much more.

Being a stand-alone application, it can be mapped to any external buttons on your device, or added as an icon to your current Today-screen utilities. GoogHelper is very convenient and time-saving for those of you who love to search the web on your Smartphones.

That’s exactly what Googhelper is. It’s a utility to do your searches in the shortest possible manner. I find this tool very handy especially when I’m on the go.

How it works:

You enter your query in the text box, and click on the appropriate preset categories. Again it’s the simplicity that makes this program work. So simple that it would make you go “duh” the first time you use this program. Why didn’t I think of this? Good question.

GoogHelper gives you preset categories that include: Web, Images, Gmail, Shop, News, Stocks, Maps, Groups, Software, Mobile, Books, and Wikipedia.

So, for example, I want to find out more about “ape”, I simply type in the query in the text box, and then click the appropriate categories. The search result will open in your default browser. In my case, Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) is launched. The answer you get will depends on the category that you have picked. If I pick “web”, it will give me the standard Google search results in “mobile” format. Again, the results depends on what categories you pick. If I choose to pick “Wiki”, I will end up with the definition of ape, based on the popular Wikipedia dictionary. Now that is very cool, very cool indeed.

It would’ve taken at least 3 steps for me to get the result the same using the standard method of doing online searches using PIE. So why not just make it a favorite on your PIE? Well you can, but it will still take you a couple more steps than Mr. Goog. And that’s the idea behind GoogHelper. Results in the fewest steps possible.

You can also click directly on the categories without entering any query on the text box. Leaving the text box empty will launch your default browser and opens the site based on the category that you have chosen. It acts just like the “favorites” on your browser.

Pros:

It’s a lean, mean, very capable little utility.
Simple and easy to use navigation
The price is right ($4.95).

Cons:

Some problems doing the updates.

Final words:

A very useful utility that does what it claims to do. Its no nonsense approach to making searches more efficient and productive is top rated. I highly recommend this little utility to anyone with a Smartphone. For less than a BigMac, this program won’t even clog your arteries!

Rating: