Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft has teamed up with Paramount Pictures to bring Trekkies a translation tool essential for interplanetary communications: support for the alien language Klingon on Bing Translator. The feature was added in honor of the latest installment of the movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness, which hit theaters today. As with other languages, translation works both directions.

Users can type an English phrase and receive its Klingon translation in the proper alphabet, and for those times when you need a Klingon translation, you can reverse the process and enter the alien phrases, in turn getting the English translation. The feature is available via the Web version of Bing, and via the Bing Translator app for Windows Phone 8 with the update Microsoft rolled out.

Microsoft went into detail on how the translation process project was performed over on MSDN, offering an explanation in both English and another in Klingon, for those fluent among us. The project was done in partnership with the Klingon Language Institute, and was particularly difficult because of the lack of substantial texts in the language, let alone transcribed texts.

That is where the fan community came in, providing feedback and corrections. The translation engine was trained with an initial bought of transcribed Klingon texts using the Microsoft Translator Hub. Over time, the combination of these two things resulted in more accurate results as the project progressed and was refined, and finally the finished project, which is now available.

You can get a translation in either Latin script or in its native plqaD script, but Microsoft advises that you must manually select the language rather than relying on Auto-Detect. If the translation option isn’t enough for you, there’s also a widget that can be added to websites, allowing visitors to translate the pages into the Star Trek language. And just for the record, this is how you say SlashGear in Klingon:

SOURCE: Bing

Bing Translator gains support for Star Trek language Klingon is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While the Klingon language might be considered fictional to some who follow the Star Trek series, due to the dedication of fans around the world, the language has come into its own with dictionaries and online translators being created to […]

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Microsoft is continuously adding new features to its Bing search engine, and this time around the company has added integration for Facebook that allows users of the social networking site to comment and Like stuff directly in Bing search results. Microsoft has been researching ways to distinguish itself from Google, and it seems social is the way to go for them.

After you log in with your Microsoft account and connect your Facebook account to Bing, you will discover that you can view comments on Facebook posts in the sidebar inside of the search engine. From there, you can comment and “like” posts without having to visit the Facebook homepage. Whenever you search for something, Bing will automatically bring up any relevant Facebook posts from friends, whether or not they’re recent.

The social sidebar that’s included in Bing has been a feature for a while now, allowing users to connect their Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, or Klout accounts to receive relevant posts from friends on social networks regarding search queries that you make to Bing. Google has a similar sidebar, known as Knowledge Graph, that brings up any third-party relevant info during a search.

This is just another example of the close relationship between Microsoft and Facebook. The social network’s new Graph Search tool, for example, includes results from Bing search on top of Facebook’s own results, so the relationship and integration between the two services goes both ways.

VIA: PC World

SOURCE: Microsoft Bing Blog

Microsoft’s Bing integrates Facebook Likes and comments is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Albert Shum, Windows Phone Design Studio General Manager, and Todd Simmons, Creative Director at Wolff Olins, announced at the Design Day 2013 Event in Norway that there will be some rebranding coming to Microsoft soon. There will be logo rebranding for several of Microsoft’s services, including Bing, Yammer, Skype, and Xbox. They figured that since Windows 8, Microsoft, and Office all got new logos, why shouldn’t these services?

All of the logos seemed flattened out, matching the design scheme that Microsoft is currently going with. The approach that Microsoft was trying to go for was to create products that feature similar looking logos, but are still identified as their own brand. Simmons, whose company has been working with Microsoft for quite a while, says that while coming up with Microsoft’s new look, they were influenced by Nike’s design. He says,

“We thought about Nike. When you experience the Nike brand in whatever form you may experience it, there’s always a Nikeness right… you can certainly see it without the logo.”

The focal point of this rebranding has to do with the consumers. According to Shum and Simmons, “people, reach, and choice” were the prime reasons for this change. They both want to align design, marketing, product, and branding all into one “harmonious” package. They wanted to stray away from Microsoft being just a big business with products, and be more of a business that represents the consumers that use its products.

In the presentation, Simmons and Shum provided sketches of what some of the new logos may be. In the video above, you can see the concept logo that they have for Bing. These new logo rebrands are all part of a process Microsoft calls “re-imagining” itself. Simmons says that the entire project is a huge risk, especially since they’re rebranding products used by millions of people, but that you can’t be innovative without taking a chance.

[via The Verge]

Microsoft set to rebrand Bing, Skype, and Xbox is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft sees Windows 8 as a prime delivery vehicle for its online services, so it’s rather important that the company polishes the Bing apps at the heart of its experience. Accordingly, each and every one of them is receiving a tune-up. We’d argue that the biggest upgrade is coming to News: the information app now supports both RSS feeds and offline reading, quite possibly to catch newshounds who need a home once Google Reader goes dark. The refresh also introduces livelier content across the board, including dynamic maps in Weather, real-time US stock updates in Finance, 29 new leagues in Sports and live traffic updates in Maps. Travel users may be equally happy to see new content from Fodor’s, Frommer’s and Lonely Planet. With the exception of the soon-to-come Weather release, all the app updates should be ready and waiting in the Windows Store — get cracking if you live in Microsoft’s online world.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft

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Source: Bing Search Blog