Hasta La Gadget!

Bing News has received a “modern” makeover. The new layout is built for touch, it puts trending topics from Twitter, Facebook and Bing in the spotlight. Since today’s news is propelled by “likes and tweets,” according to Bing, they’ve refreshed Bing News so that users can stay on top of stuff that they care about. The design is adaptive, meaning that Bing News will automatically adapt to fit the browser of the device being used to access it, be it a tablet, phone or PC. The news carousel at the top showcases latest headlines from categories including U.S., world, local, sports, entertainment, politics and more.

Recent news headlines about a particular personality generating buzz will also be placed in the carousel if a query related to that person is made. The right side of Bing News displays news that is trending on Facebook and Twitter, popularity is judged by the number of likes and tweets they receive. Bing announced the expansion to its Satori technology earlier this year which allows people to view answers at a glance for certain things, places and people. The technology is harnessed in the refreshed Bing News to identify people with trending news, thus allowing users to view people and places related to trending headlines without having to open a new page.

Bing News Gets A Makeover original content from Ubergizmo.

Microsoft’s Bing department has just announced that they will be rolling out a completely re-imagined search experience for video on Bing. Specially designed from the ground up, the video search experience will boast of streamlined navigation that showcases larger and higher resolution previews in order for you to browse, discover and view videos on the web in a faster manner.

With Bing, they hope that you are able to discover great videos from YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo, in addition to other content from the likes of Dailymotion, Vevo, MTV, CBS, and MSN among others. There is a Pop-out Hover Preview which allows you to check out the video there and then instead of heading to the site itself. Improved filters will also take into account common video sizes such as 720 and 1080, where the source filters will end up being more specific to the segment that you are searching for. Alternatively, you can opt to sort by date so that you know you would end up with the most relevant results. Are you pleased with the latest amendments made to Bing’s video search, or do you think that other search engines do it better? Share your thoughts with us in the comments. [Press Release]

Bing Video Search Updated original content from Ubergizmo.

If you can’t even remember when you’ve last used Bing, you’ll find a deluge of new features next time you visit. The latest among these perks is a more elaborate result page for product searches, making the engine a potentially dark and dangerous place for chronic spenders. When you look up a product term such as “DSLR cameras” or “smartphones,” you’ll now see a list of the most popular models in that category. That’s not the deepest end of the rabbit hole, however, as searching for a particular model rewards you with a summary of its specs, links to reviews and a list of alternative items. Microsoft will also equip the page’s ads with product images in case none of the things in those lists wins you — or your credit card — over. Unfortunately, you’ll need to rein in the call of your inner shopaholic for now — the update’s not yet available for everyone, but outgoing CEO Ballmer and Co. will roll it out in the coming months.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Bing

Microsoft has decided to make the jump to the realm of education with the official launch of Bing for Schools, which happens to be a new initiative that intends to increase the level of digital literacy among students through the intended input of technology – the Surface RT tablet in this case, making an appearance in classrooms. First previewed in June, Bing for Schools is ad-free, and would come with enhanced privacy protections, adult-content filters, and enhanced specialized learning capabilities.

The pilot program has just kicked off, where Microsoft had begun to recruit schools from all over the country, where among them include the Los Angeles Unified School District, Atlanta Public Schools, Fresno Unified School District, and Detroit Country Day School, so that the ad-free Bing experience will be able to reach over 800,000 students. If a particular school district happens to be facing budget cuts, Microsoft will transform Bing Rewards into Surface RT tablets. Just an overview on what Bing Rewards is all about – it will basically enable any Web user to earn credits as long as they surf the Web. These credits can then be redeemed for gift cards as well as other items, although there is also the option of donating it to altruistic projects such as Bing for Schools. 30,000 Bing Rewards credits will enable a school to receive a Microsoft tablet and Touch Cover, now how about that?

Bing For Schools Launched, Goes Ad Free original content from Ubergizmo.

Microsoft previewed its Bing for Schools initiative back in June, an opt-in program for educational institutions that allows schools to sign up to offer a version of Bing to their students that drops advertisements and increases privacy protections. The Bing for Schools program launches for K through 12 schools today, and as an added bonus, using it will earn users points that their school can redeem for free Surface RT tablets.

Students, parents and anyone else who wants to contribute get credits via Microsoft’s Bing Rewards program for using the search engine, and can add those to a general pool for a specific school. Once a school hits 30,000 points, it gets a free Surface RT tablet, complete with a Touch Cover (the one with the capacitive keyboard built-in). The conversion is roughly such that about 60 users contributing to a school and using Bing as their default search engine can earn a school a Surface RT per month, which actually sounds pretty good.

Of course, the Surface RT is not the finest of all devices under the sun, and some argue that it probably shouldn’t exist to begin with. But at least they’ll do some good in schools, as opposed to sitting around on store shelves. And for Microsoft, the benefit is getting more hardware in the hands of educational institutions and students; that’s a highly attractive market to any computer or software maker.

The Bing for Schools pilot project launches today in a number of districts that have signed up to take part in the pilot project, which covers over 800,000 students going into the new school year. In addition to the benefits listed above, the program also offers automatic strict filtering of adult content, as well as lesson plans based on the Bing home page, broken up into three categories targeted at grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12.

If you’re already Binging, you might as well sign up and support a school, no matter where you happen to be located – turning your searches for cat gifs into tech bonuses for kids is never a bad thing.