Mobile computing devices are increasingly being adopted by mainstream users. The combination of easy portability, increasing network availability, and large local storage capabilities will result in mobile devices becoming the primary data repository for users. This use of mobile devices to carry the user's core data is a natural evolution of varied uses of previous generations of mobile devices. For example, cellular phones, media players, navigation devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and the like, were used to carry specialized data related to the device's primary function, e.g., contact data, music/video, maps and geographical data, notes, task lists, etc. Mobile devices have evolved that are capable of performing all of those functions on a single apparatus, and as a result the data related to those functions is also stored on the device.
As mobile devices have gained these various capabilities, the devices are called upon to access a wide variety of local and remote content. Local content may include any files stored on a device's persistent storage or directly accessible via a peripheral interface. Remote content may include data that is accessible via networks, including infrastructure or ad-hoc networks accessible in the home, office, and/or the Internet. As a result of the ubiquity of networking, many uses now blur the lines between local and remote content. For example, a music subscription service may offer music downloads and/or streaming, and be set up in such a way that the user need not know whether a currently playing song is locally stored or streaming over a network.
Even though there may be convergence between local and remote content for a given user application, the way that a user searches for such information may be still be configured to search for a particular type of data in a particular domain. This can lead to confusion in cases where the user is not particularly sure in which domain the target may reside. Further, such specialized searches may be inefficient, particularly in a reduced interface mobile device. Having to type in a query in different programs and in search contexts may be tiresome with a mobile input device. Similarly, trying to view and assimilate results on a small screen may be difficult.