If there's one person at CeBIT you don't want to not recognize, it's German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, we can only assume that Vodafone booth workers were left with their tails stuck between their legs after said figure gave its recently announced picture-based search engine a go. Upon Otella returning nothing after a picture was presumably snapped of Merkel, she quickly asserted: "I am not in the database." Better still, she continued by proclaiming: "That's a major gap." Heck, maybe she should be happy -- after all, Vodafone's set to trial the service with Europe's "best selling tabloid," and not being in there would most certainly be a good thing.

We've certainly seen some clever methods of searching from one's mobile, but Vodafone's latest idea is quite the stroke of genius. Showcased at CeBIT, the Otello search engine simply uses images as input; in other words, handset owners just snap a picture of anything -- a landmark, DVD case, unidentified flying object, etc. -- and Otello then "returns information relevant to the picture to the mobile phone." Reportedly, Vodafone is expected to conduct a trial with German paper Bild in which readers can "find out more about specially-marked articles by photographing them with their mobile's camera and sending the image to [the aforementioned paper]." Unfortunately, the carrier is being tight-lipped with its plans for Otello beyond the trial, but if this stuff functions as advertised, we can't see it remaining a secret for long.

[Via Pocket-lint]

If you've been enjoying Google's (free) GOOG-411 service, but felt that it would serve your needs infinitely better if it just included some pictorial delight, you're in luck. The voice search service has undergone a recent update, and now you can simply say "map it" during your GOOG-411 call to receive a text message "with the details of your search plus a link to a map of your results." Leave it to Google to remove the need for, um, anything else in the world one application at a time.

These days, it's just not good enough to offer some form of search engine on your phone, as the marketing dollars of search giants are finding their way into phones as providers attempt to dictate your searching and clicking habits. Alltel is finally joining the gang as it unveils the "world's first carrier-branded mobile search application to be pre-installed on handsets with a dedicated search key." The button will activate a BREW client that allows users to search for whatever they please without thumbing through numerous menus, theoretically getting you your answers in a hasty fashion. By partnering with JumpTap, Alltel will reportedly start rolling the "feature" out on its mobiles here in the near future, with the colorful line of AX8600s being the first to "have the search application preloaded."

[Via MocoNews]