3GSM: Yahoo! Go 2.0

3GSM’s gathering in Barcelona this year had one of the greatest opening days of any conference to take place in the last month or so. Many of the main acts were coming out big with news of new products and services. It’s safe to say that there was no shortage of things to talk about. The city will continue to buzz for a few more days.

One of the biggest announcements Monday came from Yahoo!. The company, long suspected of having lost its steam for good, cast off by many as a could’ve-been, strutted onto the proverbial stage with Yahoo! Go 2.0.  The application is touted as “the internet on your phone,” and while many software vendors claim to offer the same, Yahoo!’s biggest investment yet in the mobile sphere is not going to disappoint many. For good reason, too.

The growth in mobile Internet applications is a main catalyst for the growth of Web 2.0, so you can bet that we’re all ears to the goings on at 3GSM. Most of our carriers are equipped with 3G, and parts of the world are already experiencing the amazing capabilities the next generation of networking technologies. We’re not going nowhere fast anymore.

Yahoo!’s latest deliver isn’t a tired and hobbled chassis with new panels attached glistening with fresh paint. It is as impressive a mobile application as we’ve ever seen, and while it doesn’t do everything, it brings nearly every aspect of the portal you want in one place while on the go. Better still, it’s actually a joy to use.

Instituting some of the latest technologies into Go 2.0, Yahoo! has decided to incorporate everything your My Yahoo! page does well – pick up RSS feeds, the weather forecast, your mail, and more – and includes beneficial services like smart search.

Smart search isn’t new. Keywords were around for many years, even prior to the first dot-com boom. But mobile smart search – at least to Yahoo! - is different than the traditional incorporation of keywords in search engines. What Yahoo! Go’s search feature does is cut out the random list of top hits you ordinarily see in your browser, instead returning items deemed relevant by Yahoo! Go to be of benefit for a mobile user.

Of course, you can dig down if you need to. There’s nothing cut out of Yahoo! Search in Go 2.0 per se, only by default it is programmed to bring you local movie listings if you enter the title of a picture currently running. But the application is quite a smart one, enabling you to phone for reservations to a restaurant or for tickets to the 8 o’clock from within. You need not attempt to memorize or bother to jot down the digits of a local diner or theatre. Of course, these things mentioned are little niceties, but rarely has the mobile world made leaps. Increments are fine by us, as long as they make products we want better at helping us find what we’re looking for.

Did we mention Yahoo! Go 2.0 is pleasing to the eye? Whether you’re looking at photos in your friends’ Flickr roll, checkin’ out the day’s closing market quotes, or want to be prepared for a day-long vacation with the latest temperature readings, Yahoo! Go 2.0 is genuinely an impressive sight.

Yahoo! only lists about 100 phone models in total that are officially compatible with Yahoo! Go 2.0, so you may have to hold off for some time. It would be a shame for Yahoo! to squander the renewed interest in Go by failing to expand its list quick enough. We expect to see the number grow, only how soon is the question.

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