Entries tagged with live search - Channel 10

Live Search Now In Facebook

sarahintampa — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:16:00 GMT

In case you hadn’t heard, Live Search has just now been integrated into one of the biggest social networks in the world: Facebook. As Facebook announced on their blog, this is the “first step in giving you the ability to find content from across the web while using Facebook.” What this means is that when you’re doing a search on Facebook, you’ll now see the option to “Search Facebook” or “Search the Web.” This a big deal for those of you who live your entire lives on Facebook – now you can find the additional information you need without having to leave the site. One thing you may have noticed, as those over at VentureBeat did, the Facebook-flavored Live Search results appear somewhat different than the same query performed on www.live.com. According to a statement from Facebook, that’s because Facebook removes sponsored results (those results which people have paid for) in addition to using a few different filters, according to the company.

What’s really exciting, though, is that this is only the first step involving the integration of Live Search and Facebook, according to Agnus Norton, Senior Director, Live Search Product Management: “As we evaluate user feedback and results we'll explore additional ways to integrate Live Search more deeply into the Facebook experience.”

What do you think of the Live Search integration? You can communicate to the team directly on, where else? – their Facebook page.

Live Search Perks Launches

sarahintampa — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:26:00 GMT

To complement Live Search Cashback, the program that pays shoppers to search for products using live.com, there now comes another incentives program from the Live Search team: Live Search Perks. With this new program, available in the U.S. only, you simply download a program to your computer which tracks how many times you use Live Search. The program doesn’t track what you’re searching or any other info about your search habits, only when you use Live Search. As you search, you’re given “tickets” for using Live Search which can then be redeemed for prizes. Those prizes aren’t too shabby either: 525 tickets gets you 5 free music downloads; 1800 gets you 1,000 free air miles. You can also choose to donate your tickets to charity, if you would like. The program is being limited to the first 250,000 users who sign up through December 31. The program ends April 15, 2009.

Powerset Integration In Live Search

sarahintampa — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:54:00 GMT

Sometimes, when a bigger company acquires a smaller one, it’s the end of innovation for the little guy as they slowly fade into non-existence. That was definitely NOT the case with the Microsoft Powerset acquistion. According to this post on the Powerset blog, the Live Search team and the Powerset crew are already integrating Powerset-powered search results into Live Search. There are three areas where results have have been enhanced so far: 1) queries where Live Search shows Answers now incorporate data from Freebase, 2) improved captions for Wikipedia articles, and 3) related searches which now display related articles in the sidebar. All three of these enhancements are being “flighted” on Live Search, which means they are only being shown to a small percentage of users. This is done for testing purposes before they roll out new features to everyone.

Live Search For Blackberry To Get Even Easier

sarahintampa — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:09:00 GMT

Microsoft and Research in Motion (RIM), makers of Blackberry smartphones, have just announced a deal that will make Live Search even easier to use on Blackberry devices. Already available as a software download, Live Search will now be found directly within the Blackberry’s built-in web browser as well as in RIM’s mobile portal. In addition to integration of the web search within the browser, the new partnership will also bring integration of Live Search in Blackberry Maps, too. From there, Blackberry users will be able to perform contextual, location-sensitive searches as well as look for nearby points of interest. These new changes are expected later this year.

4 Unique Features in Live Search

sarahintampa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:27:00 GMT

Over on the Digital Inspiration site, Amit Agarwal discovered some lesser-known features in Live Search that are unique to the search engine. These little gems are worth checking out - click here to review them in more detail on his site. The four tips he came across include:

Watch Video Previews – right in the search results, you can click on the thumbnail to see a short preview of the video which you can watch without having to visit the video website
Find Web Pages that Link to Docs, MP3s, Videos, etc. – This is different than the filetype: search operator which searches the text within that particular filetype. Using contains:doc, for example will search for all pages that link to a Word document. Combine with site: to find all pages from a particular website linking to a particular file type.
Save Images As You Search – Live Image Search features a scratch pad that lets you drag and drop pics as you search.
Subscribe to Search Results – By appending "&format=rss" (sans quotes) to the end of search query, you can subscribe to any search result via RSS. (Oh yeah, I discovered that earlier this year, too). You don’t even have to append text if your browsers identifies RSS feeds on its own - it will display the RSS icon in the address bar for you to subscribe to.

Out of all these tips, it’s that last one that has the most relevance for me. As an RSS addict…err…user, being able to quickly and easily get feeds for search results is something that other search engines don’t provide for universal search results. Instead, RSS feeds elsewhere are isolated to specific verticals like news search or blog search. When you want a universal search feed, Live Search can be a useful tool.

Olympic Fever: Search, Widgets, and More

sarahintampa — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:38:00 GMT

With the 2008 Beijing Olympics now underway, a lot of people are infected with Olympic Fever. There seems to be million ways to watch the Olympics this year and keep up with the news. We’ve highlighted some of these ways already, including the Silverlight-powered NBCOlympics website, Olympics on your mobile phone, the MSN toolbar's Olympics tab, Olympics on the Go for Media Center, and even an Olympics Medal Count Vista Gadget. But that’s still not all the ways you can keep up with the games, so how about a few more?

On the Neowin website, they’ve broken down all the ways in which Live Search is delivering Olympics coverage as well as offering other Olympics-related features. This includes the following:

Olympics 2008 news scope, available in Live Search News at http://news.live.com gives readers up-to-date coverage with additional elements such as Olympics 2008 news images.
Olympian xRank, available at http://xrank.live.com gives fans a way to track the popularity of their favorite athletes.
Olympics Videos are available at http://video.live.com when customers search “Olympics.”
The Live.com Homepage will rotate Olympics images in the background for the duration of the games.
Athlete Instant Answer will feature profiles of Olympians as searchers type in the first and last names of the athlete in search queries. For instance, fans can search “Shawn Johnson” or “LeBron James.”
Medal Count Instant Answer will provide an “all up” medal count by country, sport, or by country and sport when searchers type in Olympics-related keywords in search queries. For instance, fans can search terms like “swimming” or “China gymnastics.”

Get Back-to-School Rebates With Live Search Cashback

sarahintampa — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:52:00 GMT

Live Search Cashback, the program from Live Search that pays you to surf, has just launched a program called “Back to School Deal Days.” With this new program, which will only run for a limited time during the month of August, you can get extra cashback savings from Live Search cashback. As you browse through either the cashback site or the participating online stores, the cashback savings you see listed have already been increased. Some of the participating stores include Barnes & Noble.com, Overstock.com, Sears, Foot Locker, TigerDirect, hpHome, Buy.com, newegg.com, Zappos.com, and many more. You can start getting deals now by visiting search.live.com/cashback.

Have You Seen The New Live.com?

sarahintampa — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:07:00 GMT

In case you hadn’t noticed, the homepage at Live.com recently got a refresh. The new homepage now features a scenic background (see image at left for an example) which includes areas called “hotspots.” These hotspots are interactive, hyperlinked parts of the image that help you to explore searches that relate to the area of the image that they are linked to. The hotspots are obviously just a clever way to get people to come check out the page at live.com while also pointing them to the various types of search that Live Search can do (like image search, health searches, video search, etc). It’s kind of crazy, but it’s also kind of clever. Similar to Ask.com’s skins, the backgrounds at Live.com deliver “the pretty,” but its really the interactivity that’s drawing the curious visitors who come to check it out. Well, at least it’s different. Along with other unique programs, like the innovative Cashback offering where you can get paid to surf (linked from the live.com homepage), the new Live.com is just one more example of how the Live Search team is thinking up ways to engage new users.

Live Search - Cashback: What is it?

Tina — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:43:00 GMT

Many of you may have heard Bill Gates announcing the new Live Search cashback program or even received the email in your hotmail inbox. Well, I spent some time chatting with Brad Goldberg from the Live Search team and he talks not only about the new cashback program but about a few other things that Live Search have been working on.

Here's how Live Search cashback works:

Search

Search for cashback deals at Live Search cashback. Each time you click a Live Search cashback listing, you'll find great deals on the product you chose. Your results will clearly list the cashback savings you'll receive off the store price, and your final bottom-line price that includes tax and shipping costs. Also look for this icon when you search for a product on Live Search to find great cashback deals.

Shop

Compare and sort products by the bottom-line price. Click the best deal to go to the store. Everything you buy during that store visit will be eligible for Live Search cashback. On your first time using Live Search cashback, we will ask you for an email address so we can tell you how to quickly set up your free cashback account.

Save

Keep saving money each time you use Live Search cashback. Every time you make a qualifying purchase, we'll send you an email to confirm your Live Search cashback savings. When your cashback account reaches a balance of at least $5, you can claim your cold, hard cash. Terms and conditions.

Expanded Wikipedia Results in Live Search

sarahintampa — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:23:00 GMT

The Live Search team has just announced a change to the search results that will now show more of a Wikipedia entry than before. This is a great new feature since many times when you’re doing a search, you just need a quick answer and Wikipedia is usually the link you click to read the info you need. So now in the Live Search results, there’s a good portion of the first paragraph available from the Wikipedia article under the link to Wikipedia. Do you love it or hate it? Let the team know. Personally, I’ve found it useful enough to make Live Search my Wikipedia search engine of choice.

Make Your Live Maps Collections Mobile

sarahintampa — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:18:00 GMT

The guys over at LiveSide have a tutorial on how to use the newly updated Live Search for Mobile to take your Live Maps collections with you when you're on the go by adding them to your mobile phone. The first step is to create the collection on your desktop PC. You could then simply make it a public collection and find it by doing a search on your mobile phone, but by following these steps, it's actually a bit easier to access it without having to search:

On your PC, go to Live Maps and create a collection.
Make the Collection a Favorite and then open your Favorite Collections.
Click the Subscribe button to subscribe to this collection. This is a one-time thing - now that you're subscribed, any updates you do to the collection will be automatically updated on the phone too.
Convert the URL to a TinyURL
On your phone, go to Live Search for Mobile, open Collections, go to the Menu and choose "Add Collection using URL"
Enter in the TinyURL you created and click "Done."

That's it! The collection will now be on your phone from this point on.

You can visit the LiveSide blog for even more details and watch a video they shot with Steve Lombardi from Live Maps where they check out the new features of Live Search for Mobile. (via/img courtesty of LiveSide)

Live Search for Mobile: Part Two

Tina — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:57:00 GMT

In part two of "Live Search for Mobile" I spend some time exploring Live Search with Andrew Bell.

Live Search for Mobile has just released the latest updates to our browser-based mobile search at m.live.com. One of our major efforts was to bring the power of product search to the convenience of a mobile phone. Think about how much time people spend shopping in brick-and-mortar stores — without the ability to do the product research they're accustomed to from their PCs.

We took the great product search features from Live Search and made them easy to use on your mobile phone. You'll see a list of popular products, user ratings, and price comparisons from online stores. You can also research products by reading a detailed overview or consumer reviews. Now the next time a consumer electronics device catches your eye in a store, you'll be able to get the detailed rundown on its performance, read the consensus wisdom of the Web, compare it with similar products, and even make sure it's being offered for a good price — all before you make that impulse buy. Now you can spend wisely, wherever you are.

Another of our favorite features this release was developed specifically for our friends abroad — those in the United Kingdom and Japan. Searching for nearby businesses is one of the most popular and most valued types of mobile search today. But most existing browser-based search services require the user to first type in their location — easy if you're always in the same place, but a chore when you're out and about, and a real challenge if you don't know exactly where you are.

With this new feature, users can simply click Find my Location, and their location will be set based on their proximity to cellular towers. Then they can get the most relevant nearby results for all their searches.

Search Share for Facebook

sarahintampa — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:36:00 GMT

A Live Search powered Facebook app called Search Share lets you search for all kinds of information that you can then share with your Facebook friends. Results for Search Share can include videos, images, web pages, news, and more. But Search Share isn't just a way to see traditional search engine results within Facebook, you can also preview the content and select the results you want via drag-and-drop in order to share them with your friends.

The items you want to share are dropped into a box at the top of the app and you can then choose to email those items to a friend or post them to your feed. What's really wild is that when you hover your mouse over a thumbnail of a video, it automatically starts playing. I wasn't expecting that - I figured you would have to go off site to watch videos, but it's all right there in Facebook.

On the main Search Share page, some interesting topics are already listed for you like Today's Hot Topics. For example, today's #1 topic is "polar bear status" (how sad!). There are also boxes showing Top Celebrities, Words of the Day, Your Friends' Latest Searches, and Your Saved Search History.

Search Share is somewhat similar to Zine, in that it facilitates you being able to share various items with friends, but unlike Zine, it's more of a tool that can be used as needed instead of an online digital magazine.

Live Search Spring Update Walk Through

Nic — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:14:00 GMT

I'm joined by Chris Rayner from the Live Search team as we walk through some of the new features in the latest spring update to Live Search. We check out xRank, News Search, Products, Live Search Health, HealthVault and Rick Astley... naturally.

Live Search is at www.live.com.

Customizing Vista's Search

sarahintampa — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:49:00 GMT

Remember how I told you that you could add Wikipedia to your choices in Windows Vista's default search? Well, there are other ones you can add, too, like these:

Live Search: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=%+

IMDB: http://search.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=%+

Dictionary Search: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=%+

Now what I need to know is how I can use all of them - the gpedit.msc section (see earlier instructions on this) only lets you pick one. I want them all! Any ideas?

Live Search Gets a Facelift

sarahintampa — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:47:00 GMT

The Live Search page got a new UI. I actually first heard the news from a quick post over at the Windows Live Chronicles blog, so I went to check it out. I think it's rather pretty myself. What do you think?

There's a post on the official blog of the Live Search team about the redesign. Apparently, the homepage wasn't the only thing that received a makeover. In fact, quite a few changes have been made recently, including:

Search box near results - the header is slimmer putting the search box closer to the results page
Room to breathe on the page - the page is centered, on a fixed-width page, which is great for widescreen users
Crisp, clean type - In addition to new colors, the team decided to use Arial improves readability
Intuitive video search - video search is simpler, streamlined
Health results integrated from many sources - in health search health information comes in from many different sources and is available all from one place

Microsoft has a growing design community that cares about figuring these things out. We even have some nice articles that will interest designers.

Live Search News Launches

sarahintampa — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:30:00 GMT

The Live Search team has just launched a new feature for finding news on the web: Live Search News. Here, you can find the latest news stories, categorized as "Top Stories," "World," "U.S.," "Local," "Business," "Politics," "Entertainment," "Sports," "Sci/Tech," and "Health."

The site has several really great features, one of which is the local news sidebar. Although you can access local news by clicking on the category page, having the sidebar there makes keeping tabs on your state's news even easier - especially when you just want a quick glance at the top stories.

Another cool feature is the "breaking news" bar at the top. You won't see this all the time, but when a big story is released, you'll see an orange bar at the top linking to the article.

When you're browsing the news, you can click "more on this story," to pull up a whole list of related stories about that topic while, in the sidebar, you are presented with options to refine by location or category or perform related searches.

Another unique feature to Live Search News are the "news videos" sections found midway down on most of the categories' main page. Here, you can access the days big stories in video format - and we're not talking videos from a user-gen site here - the videos come from Reuters TV, AP Video, Fox News, ABC News, USA Today, CNN, and other similar news organizations. What's even cooler is that you don't have to leave Live Search News to view them - just rolling over the video with your mouse will begin to play their stream.

The site also has a clean and well-designed look and feel and will certainly appeal to news junkies everywhere.

New Live Search Features for Windows Mobile and Blackberry

sarahintampa — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:05:00 GMT

Along with the announcement about the new version of Windows Mobile, version 6.1, it was also announced that Live Search for Windows Mobile and Blackberry is going to be updated, too. The updates include mapping contacts, Virtual Earth integration, voice input, and weather.

The ability to map contacts means you can see the locations of those in your address book on a map so you are then able to easily get directions to that location.

The Virtual Earth integration will offer you the ability to make "map collections," or custom maps that you or your friends create. The maps are made on your PC prior to viewing them in Live Search.

For Blackberry users, the new version of Live Search will offer voice input, something that previously only Windows Mobile users had the ability to use. With voice input, you only need speak a command in order to find businesses or get directions via Live Search.

Additionally, weather will be added to Live Search, so you can see both the current conditions and the 4-day forecast.

Left vs. Right

sarahintampa — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:00:00 GMT

A new Live Search promotional site, Left vs. Right, has been launched. The site features two new anchors, left-leaning "Patrick O'Neil" and right-wing "Britt Hayes," who represent both sides of the political spectrum. In the middle of the page is a search box which will perform Live Search queries. When you type in a keyword or question in the search box, the two characters will began a humorous discussion or debate about the topic. Or perhaps just insult each other. Even if you don't type anything in, the characters will begin a funny skit. Hilarious time-waster! (via Inside Microsoft)

Let's Discover Live Search

nuric — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 09:26:00 GMT

Live Search is a set of different search tools and options that shifts search experience. In this screencast we will cover basic search options and after text, image and video search we will look to the products search, health search, book search also. After 6 November 2007 the relevance of Live Search is increased tremendously; especially in Turkey. So I recommend you to use www.live.com for local and global searches.

Live Search työkalu tarjoaa nopean tavan omiin eri palveluiden hakuihin.

jukkaw — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:39:00 GMT

Live Search työkalupalkki tarjoaa näppärän tavan lisätä omia hakukohteita helposti käytettäväksi.

Olemassa olevia hakupalvelun tarjoajia voidaan helposti lisätä hakupalkkiin valitsemalla haluttu palvelun tarjoaja listasta. Lisäksi erittäin näppärä ominaisuus on luoda omia hakupalvelu, jolloin voidaan lisätä mikä tahansa url parametrejä tukeva hakupalvelu pikahaun piiriin.

Hakupalveluiden lisääminen on todella näppärää, kuten alla on kuvattu.

Työkalun alasvetovalikosta valitaan lisättävien tarjoajien haku(Find More Providers...),

josta saa helposti lisättyä valmiita palvelun tarjoajia hakupalkin hakukohteisiin.

Näppärää, eikö vain?

Mielenkiintoisena ominaisuutena on kustomoitujen hakupalveluiden lisäys mahdollisuus, jossa voidaan parametrien avulla ottaa käyttöön mieleisen palvelun hakuominaisuudet - suoraan työkalusta käytettäviksi.

Jos esimerkiksi halutaan käyttää webistä löytyvää ilmaista sanakirjapalvelua, voidaan sen hakutoiminnallisuudet tuoda yhden painalluksen taakse.

Uuden palvelun lisäyksessä tulee syöttää sivuston haku url siten, että hakukentän arvoksi laitetaan TEST -teksti, jolloin tässä esimerkissä URL tekstiksi tulee: http://www.ilmainensanakirja.fi/trans?Q=TEST&Q2=&P=12

Lisäksi hakupalvelulle annetaan tietysti nimi.

Tämä url vastaa sanakirjasivuston osoitetta, joka tuottaa parametrinä annetun sanan käännöksen englannista suomeen.

Kun tiedot on syötetty, hyväksytään lisäys.

Haettaessa valitaan vain haluttu palvelu, jota halutaan haussa käyttää ja se on siinä.

Palveluja voipi sitten olla niin työpaikat, keskusteluryhmät, autot, yms, mitä sitten tuleekin tarpeeseen.

New Live Search Features

sarahintampa — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:14:00 GMT

The Live Search team announced on their latest blog post some great new features for Live Search: Autospell and Stemming. They hope that these features will help to return the best search results for your intent, and not just the particular terms you searched for. The Autospell feature determines whether or not you've misspelled your search term and delivers you a page of spell-corrected search results as opposed to a "Did you mean _______?" link at the top. They promise that this feature will only be activated if they are "absolutely, completely, totally, 'no doubt about it' confident you misspelled one of your search terms!" The second big improvement is stemming. What stemming does is match the "stem," or root of the word, rather than the exact word. As an example, they reported that users had told them that the search "half price book Redmond" returned terrible results, but "half price books Redmond" was much better. Wtih stemming, searches for "half price book" will now also return the results of "half price books." Stemming is tricky because you can "stem" all the time - a search for "cable" could mean TV or some type of cord! So the challenge with stemming is knowing when to turn it on and off. Try some searches for yourself and then let the team know what you think!

Live Search for Blackberry

sarahintampa — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:01:00 GMT

OK, so you don't have a Windows Mobile device. Like many busy professionals, your mobile device of choice is a Blackberry. But now, that doesn't mean that you have to miss out on having Windows Live Search on your phone! With the recent introduction of Live Search for Blackberry (beta), you, too, can get the best of what Live Search Mobile has to offer - including local search, maps, directions, traffic conditions, and more, and all of it custom designed for BlackBerry. To get the download, visit wls.live.com on your Blackberry phone. On the page that displays, click on the "Download" link. If you don't have a Windows Mobile Device or Blackberry, you can use Live Search from your phone's browser at m.live.com.

Free 411 from Live Search

sarahintampa — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:22:00 GMT

On Monday, Live Search 411 was officially launched. This voice-activated local search service lets you do local searches right from your phone just by speaking. To use the service, call 1-800-CALL-411 (1-800-225-5411) from any phone in the U.S. and say where you are and what you are looking for. The service can also send you text messages, maps, traffic maps, and text-based directions. Live Search 411 goes a step beyond simply providing you with business information though - several handy features make this new service really stand out, including:

The ability to connect to any business listing you find for free
Receive SMS links to maps, driving directions and traffic conditions (just say "text me the info")
Get movie showtimes and even buy tickets over the phone (via a partnership with Fandango)
Share text messages of business details with friends so they can easily meet you there
Hear the current weather conditions and the forecast
Quickly access travel resources like airlines, hotels, and rental cars
Remember your personalized locations for movie theaters, weather and traffic, and your preferences for receiving text messages.

Learn more at: http://www.livesearch411.com

New release of Virtual Earth

Laura — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:22:00 GMT

This application just keeps getting better and better. My favorite part about this, is the 3D modeling feature in the authoring section. I love the way the tools we use to make our lives easier are more and more turning into mini-games. Besides that they've done a seamless blend of 3D imagery with Live Search. There's a ton more stuff to help you learn things and get from point A to point B in style. Take a look.