bing

Microsoft is kicking Bing Maps into a higher gear, announcing a beta version of Bing Maps that uses Silverlight to display 3D images and its own version of street-level images.

The company announced the new beta Wednesday amid a discussion of other improvements to Bing Thursday at its San Francisco offices in a presentation for the media. Bing Maps Beta is rolling out Thursday along with several other new features in the main Bing search results.

Bing Maps Beta requires Microsoft Silverlight to deliver very smooth three-dimensional transitions between satellite and street-view imagery. Like Google Street View, Microsoft has driven … Read more

The death of Michael Jackson in June launched a frenzy of Web activity and propelled the late pop star to the top of the search charts for 2009.

That's the word from Google, Yahoo, and Bing, all of which have revealed their popular search terms for the past year.

It's not too shocking to see Jackson leading the searches for the year. Following the pop star's death in June, Akamai found that worldwide Web traffic had surged 11 percent over normal levels. Even Google--which in the initial going thought the Jackson-related traffic was an attack of some … Read more

It was inevitable that someone would seriously consider taking Google's dare.

For years, Google has all but dared traditional media companies trying to develop online businesses to live without the traffic it sends their way. The folks at the Googleplex make it clear that content owners who believe Google is unfairly indexing (or stealing, depending on your point of view) their content can easily remove that content from Google's massive corner of the Internet.

There's a tradeoff for that independence, of course: Don't expect the advertisers that have signed deals based on site traffic to pay … Read more

Yahoo continues to lose share in the search market, as Google and Microsoft pick up the difference.

Comscore's measurement of the U.S. search market in October shows that Google--as usual--still dominates the search landscape. It now watches 65.4 percent of all searches pass through its servers, up 0.5 market share points from September of this year.

Yahoo, on the other hand, is going in the other direction as new friend Microsoft reaps the benefits. Yahoo lost 0.8 market share points in October compared to September, now down to 18 percent of the market. … Read more

Bing has taken over MSN video and it has videos from every network. Why isn't Microsoft trumpeting this? We also get really confused by Verizon's unlimited plan that has a limit of 5GB. Does it? Doesn't it? What the hell? And we debate the way Twitter retweets.

Microsoft disconnects Xbox gamers http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8354166.stm

New Microsoft Project Natal details leak, coming next year for cheap http://dvice.com/archives/2009/11/new-microsoft-p.php… Read more

Unlike when you stand over your coworker's desk, Microsoft's Bing search engine actually works better when you hover.

One of the key features of the would-be rival to Google is that when you hover to the right of a result, you can get a preview of what to expect. As part of an update this week, Bing's hover result will now feature more information including a thumbnail preview of the site in question.

One of the ongoing challenges for Bing, besides just getting more people to use the site, is letting them know that the hover feature … Read more

Microsoft said on Tuesday that it is merging its video search efforts with its MSN Video site into a new page that will bear the Bing moniker.

Bing Video, Microsoft said, will serve as a site for watching everything from viral videos to full-length TV shows and video, drawing on content deals with sites such as Hulu, CBS, MySpace, DailyMotion, and YouTube.

Microsoft notes that video is now a mainstay of the redesigned MSN home page and says MSN will continue to create original programming, such as its "Last Night on TV" effort.

The branding remains a challenge … Read more

We all know the mathematical adage detailing how many words a picture is worth. The principal applies equally to search results. Search for anything in Google, Bing, and Yahoo and see how long it takes your eyes and brain to max out on all the written input. (The concept of text fatigue also applies to blog posts, which is why we've included a nice, large picture near the top of ours.)

If you browse the Web with Firefox (Windows | Mac), the free extension SearchPreview (Windows | Mac) breaks up text blocks by inserting thumbnail images of the site's homepage … Read more

Just days after Microsoft cranked out a touch-optimized Bing search page for touch screen phones comes another announcement for mobile searchers. Microsoft on Monday reported that Verizon will roll out the first Bing mobile app to BlackBerry Storm 1 users. The Bing mobile app already comes preloaded on the BlackBerry Storm 2.

After Verizon pushes Bing for mobile, Storm owners should be able to click the icon in the program list to get started.

In addition to search are features carried over from a former incarnation of Microsoft's search app, Windows Live for mobile, such as voice search, and … Read more