Computers shouldn’t be unusable. You don’t need to know how to work a telephone switch to make a phone call, or how to use the Hoover Dam to take a shower, or how to work a nuclear-power plant to turn on the lights. — Scott McNealy (via Usernomics)

Contrary to popular belief, one of the biggest challenges we face when developing an application isn’t deciding what features to put in. It’s what features not to put in.

At least once a month, we get some of our users together to play with the latest prototypes we’ve created. But guess what? Few of those actually make it out of the lab. And that’s a good thing, if we put every feature in, you’d need a user manual bigger than the phone book just to get started!

So why do we hold back on all those funky features? As Kathy Sierra puts it, we want to make sure you can kick ass without having to spend too long below the Suck Threshold. In other words, keeping it simple means you can have a fun, enjoyable experience right away.

Even if we liked complicated, whizzy things with lots and lots of buttons, it just wouldn’t make sense to attempt it on mobile. We want fast, easy-to-digest content when we’re on the move, right?

With this in mind, we still want to add the features you’re most interested in. Is it the ability to post your search results to Jaiku or to send them by SMS? What would make your experience more fun? We’re always listening and we will put the best ideas in place.

If you want to make a suggestion, you can…

What would the mobile search engine of YOUR dreams do? (Other than telepathically order the right flavour of ice cream just when you want it, of course. We’re working on that one.)

Having been in Austin, Texas for a few days now, I’ve witnessed one of the greatest social gathering of tech-minded people to ever happen, once a year at South by SouthWest Interactive.

The killer app this year is undeniably… the same as last year. It’s Twitter through and through. In the context of a conference where thousands of people are milling around between panels, looking for each other and the Next Big Thing, Twitter is the killer app. It’s assumed and expected amongst all attendees that, just as we have a little heart pumping on the inside of our ribcage, we all have a Twitter username.

However, the observation that I found most interesting is the energy everyone put into communicating what they were hearing. The Zuckerberg keynote got the room buzzing and, in no time, even bloggers who were nowhere near the event were getting the echos of a poorly led interview. In previous years, it would have at least taken a few hours until someone did a write-up of the keynote, but with these social devices and the perfect system to communicate short snippets of information, it was broadcasted as soon as the sentiment arose amongst the crowd.

I’m at risk of pointing out the very obvious here but the Blackberry - probably the most common phone here at SXSW - is mindblowingly business-focussed. Even the font is dry, harsh and doesn’t make the faintest attempt at being visually pleasing. It is a stark, utilitarian device in contrast to the iPhone’s soft, rounded curves and swish user interface - the other baby of the conference. While each device has its pros and cons - attempts at typing while walking on an iPhone very much results in an epic failure - it’s fascinating that this geekfest brings together the two polar opposites, the functional and the creative, in one place as the two most used devices.

What they have in common is that they bring people together socially. From Ballroom A to the depths of Room 19-B, and from Austin to the rest of the world, they make communication easy. Comforting to know that even geeks need to be social too, no?

Twitter is, at its core, an amazingly simple tool. We really like simplicity and were drawn to it quite some time ago now. Its simplicity also makes it quite powerful, as we witnessed early this morning when the UK earthquakes were first reported via Twitter. It’s also just a hugely mashup-friendly environment, as proven by the smarty-pants at Botanicalls who gave their houseplant a way to call out for help (and water) by twittering. Awesome!

Howard Rheingold from Smartmobs was waxing lyrical about Twitter a few days ago, which got me thinking about why I’m such a fan of it, having posted on average 3.46 tweets a day since December 23rd 2006, when I first joined. (Phew, putting it in those terms, I’m more addicted to Twitter than I am to coffee. Oh dear!)

Howard cites openness, immediacy, variety of content and free-form reciprocity as some of the reasons for his Twitter fandom, all of which I agree with. I really love the quirky morning comments, the whispers surrounding the Apple Store being closed before the next Mac update or the unplanned get togethers over coffee after reading a friend tweeting from down the road.

As a result, a few weeks ago, we launched a new sharing feature on Taptu that allows you to broadcast your search results to your Twitter feed. It’s really easy to setup and it’s a single click to share an item once you’re logged in. Amongst others, Mike Rowehl sounds excited about sharing to Twitter, but as you can see, we’re still polishing things a little, so if you try it out, drop us a line and let us know what you think.

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!

[Update 8:32pm: Google Maps also offers its support by showing the state of the fires, as well as the emergency services and evacuated areas. Via Digg.]

Reading about the Californian fires from across the ocean, reading Tweets and looking at Flickr pics, I feel sick and wish there was a way to stop it all. But at the same time, I’m fascinated to see what use people make of technology that’s available.

Chris Messina has been throwing around the idea of hashtags to help identify relevant content on Twitter and other social networks for some time now, and while Twitter hasn’t implimented the hash-based tags per se, they’ve enabled users to track all discussion on any given keyword, whether it’s “NYC”, “Steve Jobs” or “earthquakes”.

In time of crisis, people organise quickly, and this one seems to have picked up. Really, what a useful tool to catch the latest news when you’ve been evacuated from home and want to keep a check on your loved ones as well as the evolution of the situation?

Even Wired’s Compiler blog covers the situation:

Social networks and mobiles form such an ideal way to quickly organise vast numbers of people, a Twitteresque emergency service should exist everywhere, as some universities have started making compulsory. Some will shout and scream about privacy and Big Brother, but personally, if it means I get advance warning and can pick up my husband and my cats before the fire’s on my doorstep, the SMS will be a very welcome one.