Jun 12
Jun 12
If you thought the 215TB of satellite imagery Bing Maps added last year was hefty, think again. In what is the largest installment of Bird’s Eye shots yet, the mapping folks in Redmond piled on a whopping 270TB of high-res flyover images to their database yesterday. Some of the more notable (read: gorgeous) additions include overviews of Rome and Milan in Italy, Stavanger in Norway and Kaanapali in Hawaii. Aside from the new visuals, Bing also added a couple of improvements to its Venue Maps with an expanded points of interest list and a new “Report a problem” system so users can inform Bing if a location is marked incorrectly. So go on, head over to the source, select any of the amazing locales and take a little free trip to the other side of the world.
Source: Bing Maps blog
Jun 11
In an effort to keep competing with Google Maps, Microsoft has updated Bing Maps with nearly 270TB of new Bird’s Eye imagery, which is Bing Maps’ largest Bird’s Eye update ever. Microsoft also expanded its Venue Maps to over 4,700 locations in 59 countries. Venue Maps allow users to see indoor maps of certain buildings.
Jun 07
Microsoft has been rolling out updates to Bing Desktop on a fairly regular basis, having added support for Windows XP and more languages back in December, and having integrated Facebook content in March, among other features. Now that has been taken a step further with the latest update, which tosses Facebook notifications into the mix,
Jun 07
Microsoft wants Bing Desktop to transcend the limits of web-based search, and that’s especially clear with a newly posted app update — it’s all about doing what most browsers can’t. The software brings inline searching that lets users run Bing queries on websites, PDFs and Word files just by selecting text. Newshounds also don’t have to wade into every article now that there’s both at-a-glance previews and a trending stories section. We suspect most users won’t mind the real-time weather forecasts and live Facebook notifications, either. Existing Bing Destkop users should automatically receive the new features in the days ahead, but those who refuse to wait can grab the upgrade straight from the source.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft, Facebook
Via: Bing Search Blog
Source: Bing
Jun 06
Jun 06
The Bing Translator app has been available on Windows Phone for some time, but today it’s heading over to Windows 8. According to a post on the browser’s Search Blog, the program was built “from the ground up” for Windows devices, and it utilizes the Share Charm to let you translate text from within any Windows 8 app. Otherwise, it works much the same as on other platforms: by using your gadget’s camera to parse more than 40 languages (of course, you can type text to translate as well). The Translator app also includes offline support, so you can download language packs for use without a WiFi connection. Check it out for yourself by heading to the download page in the Windows Store.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Source: Windows Store, Bing Search Blog
Jun 05
Yahoo has been a busy little bee recently, updating its various properties and snatching up new ones. Now its giving its Bing-powered search page a facelift. The redesign is actually quite subtle. The color scheme remains the same and there’s still a sidebar, though, the various search tabs have all been pushed to the left rail. The look is flatter, boxier and more modern with quite a bit of empty space. In fact, the padding on the right side has been expanded, leaving much of the screen strangely bare. In addition to the updated aesthetics, the company has introduced a new navigation bar that sits glued to the top providing shortcuts to the homepage, your mailbox, Flickr and other Yahoo-owned properties. The nav bar will also be rolling out to these other services soon, providing a Google-esque way to quickly hop around. Now Yahoo just needs to figure out how to serve up actually useful results. When our search for sushi on Staten Island turned up only one restaurant actually in the borough and a query for “old fashioned recipe” spit out a pile of pancake plans, we knew that there was still quite a lot of work to be done.
Source: Yahoo
May 24
Microsoft’s Bing may be a boy among men in the search-engine wars, but that’s not stopping it from piling on new features. The latest are in its news search, where it just added a “trending topics” carousel that shows timely info in the same category as your query (see the above image), along with a sidebar that displays personalities “you might also like.” Clicking on either will bring up further news results, and Bing also said it’s now extended the article index several years back in time compared to the curt two-week period it had before. It’s an interesting change-up over Google’s Knowledge Graph, and Microsoft needs all the help it can get in search, given recent survey results.
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Source: Bing blog
May 23
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.