ANTenna Blog -- Apple

How often do you need to search through lists of things? A list of bookmarks, a list of addresses, a list of files, a list of songs, a list of restaurants. Searches are easy to a desktop PC, thanks to scroll buttons on your mouse. But they're a pain on handheld devices. That's about to change, says kannuu.

kannuu (pronounced "can you") has created a software development kit for programmers working on the iPhone. It's intended for you to build a more intuitive type of search into apps that need any sort of look-up capability.

The company is hard at work on some sample applications that use this SDK. one of the first will be a Contacts app for the iPhone. kannuu says it offers "a precisely intuitive interface that relies on the easy to control four-way directional controller (up, down, left, right and center,) provides powerful abilities to search multiple fields with in an address book, and presents the user with exact and correct results in only a matter of clicks."

Sounds interesting? Then you'll want to check kannuu's Web site on Tuesday, July 22, when the search SDK becomes available. It'll include sample code, and the SDK is ready to deploy on both native and Web apps for the iPhone. kannuu says that it's kinda like using Spotlight on the Mac — but it's on the iPhone.

A few more details, from kannuu:

• The interface eliminates the frustrating and lengthy scroll and miss through big long lists.

• The SDK indexes the entire content database within the iPhone (the more content, the more efficient the technology) by all fields, so the user doesn’t have to choose only first, last, company name, city, state, area or zip code etc. All are presented, with one query. This also alleviates having to track-back to multiple and superfluous menus and settings.

• No more fumbling through the A-Z search, or the ever-frustrating autocomplete functions. kannuu takes you directly to the content you are looking for, error free. If it is in the database you will get to it in only a few clicks.

It seems like a cool idea... and an example of what the iPhone's advanced user-interface technology can enable.