Yesterday, we sneaked out the latest version of Taptu when you weren’t looking.

Mainly, we released a new version which caters better to low end phones. Some phones, like Motorola RAZRs and previous generations of Sony Ericssons need smaller, simpler pages, tweaked for their limitations. Every time you access Taptu, we detect what mobile phone you’re using and give you the version of the service that will provide the best experience. What’s the point of sending the high end version to your phone if it’s going to crash your browser?

We’ve also released a metric ton of bug fixes and tiny tweaks to improve the service, some of them based on bug reports you’ve sent in - so thank you all for your useful feedback, your comments never go unheard!

*Shifty look around for the boss* I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but we’ve also released a few extra small features, which are very beta. Shh! You’ll just have to go play around with the service to find those out for yourself…

The past few weeks have been extremely busy in the Taptu offices, as we put the final touches to a whole heap of new features. It’s far more than just a lick of paint, as the search engine becomes a search and share engine. What on Earth does that mean, you must wonder?

First, let me dispel a misconception about Taptu. Tons of people during MWC asked me what phone they needed to be able to download the latest version of Taptu. Even after repeating that it’s entirely web-based, requires no installation and can therefore be used on just about any phones, some looked incredulous. At that stage, I promptly (but politely) yanked their own phone out of their hands to show them that Taptu was already on their phone, waiting for them. So there you go. No downloads, ever. Just a simple URL!

Now, back to those new features we’ve cooked up…

We now index far more content than before, in many more categories above and beyond the original music, video, images, wiki range. You’ll find news, sports, blogs, lyrics, travel and many more! Each search result is neatly labelled (a bit like the linen in that overly organised friend’s closet, “single sheets”, “double sheets”…) to help you find what you need faster and without any extraneous clicks.

When you click through to a single result page, rather than throw you out in the cold straight to the destination site, we give you a summary page, big on information but teeny in file size. This means you can decide whether it’s the right destination without waiting for the complete site to load. Quicker and simpler.

Once you find the information you’re looking for in the search results, it’s time to unleash it into the wild. Share what you’ve found to Gmail contacts, email it to anyone or broadcast it to your Twitter stream. When you next check Taptu on your phone, your past shared searches will still be around if you want to view them again.

So try it out and let us know what you think!