Filed under: Microsoft, Search
Ballmer says "search deserves a good feature war" as Bing nears release
When it publicly premiers on June 3rd, Microsoft hopes that what makes Bing different will also make it a success.
Eschewing Google's minimalism, Bing brings a different take on displaying results and added eye candy to the fight. Instead of a stark page with a dead-center search box, you'll find the input box hovering over brightly-colored full-page images. Hover over key spots on the image and factoids pop up - another nice touch that makes the search experience a little more "friendly."
Microsoft VP Yusuf Mehdi calls Bing a "more of a decision engine," designed to assist users in completing search tasks rather than making them sift through possible matches. Results are tailored to a user's query, presenting different views for searches for things like product reviews, travel information, images, and local queries. Bing also makes use of Powerset (who Microsoft acquired last year) to provide previews and snippets when hovering your pointer over results.
There will be plenty more for us to look at once Bing is rolled out. We'll check with you in a few days when the doors are fully opened and see what you think.
(update: watch MS poke fun at Google in the YouTube clip after the break)
[via TechCrunch]
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Crazy Serb said 2:11PM on 5-28-2009
Just checking out the promo video on:
http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html
makes me go giddy!
And I hate Microsoft from the bottom of my heart... however, gotta be honest, that search engine looks like a one stop shop for all your searching needs.
Can't wait to test it out...
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der_tuxman said 2:29PM on 5-28-2009
... the machine that goes Bing!
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Jamus said 2:37PM on 5-28-2009
"A good feature war" might indeed turn out to be a good thing for consumers, but given who it is coming from, I wonder how long before it requires Silverlight to access "enhanced features" or some other obscure addition.
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sitruc said 5:02PM on 5-28-2009
Some of the improvements to Live that were launched on Tuesday are pretty good.
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lecrackzor said 7:32PM on 5-28-2009
how many times a week can you guys used the term 'google killer'. google isnt going to die. microsoft isnt going to die. give it up
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Quikboy said 10:42PM on 5-28-2009
If you honestly think Bing is impressive based on the videos, then what you're basically looking at is already here. It's called Live Search.
Live Search pretty much does everything Bing does. Bing just seems to be more of a different look and layout approach. Maybe it will win people, maybe it'll lose people.
Personally, I don't like the logo to begin with, though I guess the name is better than Kumo, but I wish Microsoft would have a naming and designing contest (would be super awesome).
I think Microsoft is going on the right track by making their search engine more of a information-oriented results, rather than just millions of hits.
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sitruc said 8:23AM on 6-01-2009
and live is now officially bing preview.