Entries tagged with search - Channel 10

Sobees Launches Real-Time Search Platform

Sarah Perez — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:11:00 GMT

Sobees, the company known for their desktop and web-based social media tools, has just launched a new real-time search platform powered by Silverlight and running on Windows Azure. The new platform lets you search the real-time web including images, news, and videos. It pulls from sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, OneRiot, Bing, YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Flickr, and the New York Times.

Its columnar based interface lets you customize which services are displayed while trending topics appear at the top for one-click access. Also at the top is a search box that lets search across the services for the topic of your choosing.

International users will appreciate the service’s drop-down box that lets you choose from a number of languages. For added fun, you can also share the results of your search on Facebook or Twitter using the buttons provided.

This new search engine is a free, web-based application available now from search.sobees.com.

Bing Reference Updated with New Sidebar Features

Sarah Perez — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:50:00 GMT

The folks over on LiveSide noticed an undocumented update to the Bing Reference search vertical, the site that offers semantically indexed Wikipedia content via the company’s Powerset division. Here, you have a better interface for searching through Wikipedia than what the Wikipedia website offers itself. On Bing Reference pages, related searches are only a click away as are links to related videos and images. The Wikipedia article outline is also available as a floating box that moves with you as you scroll up and down the page instead of being a static box stuck at the top of the page, as it is on Wikipedia.

Now the right-hand side panel of Bing Reference pages has also been improved with a new search box, highlighter, and other features. The related images and videos have been integrated into this box instead of being links elsewhere on the page. You can also use the provided search box to search within the article or click on the “highlighter” button to highlight specific text. When finished highlighting, you can then copy and paste the text into another application like your email or IM program, for example.

The new sidebar panel also houses the article outline and, as before, it stays with you as you navigate up and down the page. Another new option, “locations,” pulls out the referenced locations found in the article and displays them as pushpins on the map. Below the map, you can see details about each location listed and can click “zoom here” to go directly to that city or locale. The locations are also hyperlinked to their own Wikipedia article, too, also hosted in Bing Reference.

The new sidebar isn’t showing on all Bing Reference pages yet, but it showed up on 9 of the 10 pages that I pulled up. LiveSide points to the page for São Paulo as an example, but you can likely use your own hometown to see the sidebar in action.

EntityCube Ready to Define and Connect Entities

Larry Larsen — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:03:00 GMT

MSR recently released an "entity search and summarization engine" that in short builds a dynamic wikipedia page for the entity or person you search for. The types of information you'll find include biographies, a social-network graph, relationships between people (mouse over the link to see how they are connected), and titles of people.

You can give it a try at http://entitycube.research.microsoft.com/

Bing Gets New Mobile Interface

Sarah Perez — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:52:00 GMT

As promised earlier this month, the Bing mobile website was going to get a new interface sometime this fall. As it turns out, “this fall” apparently meant right now. According to a post on the Bing Search blog, a new mobile interface has now gone live. The new UI looks different than the preview we were shown earlier – across the top are search verticals for directions, map, weather, and movies and not web, news, local, and maps as seen before. That actually makes more sense because the mobile site lets you set your location by clicking a link below the search box. That means everything you access will automatically be “local” - you don’t need a separate “local” vertical search link taking up space at the top.

However, I’m wondering why the app doesn’t feature Bing’s background image as the previous screenshot showed - perhaps it took too much bandwidth? Also missing is the icon in the search box that seemed to hint at a voice search feature – another clue that makes me wonder if perhaps the interface we’re seeing now is some intermediate step between the old UI and the final, finished product we were shown earlier.

That’s not to say that the new mobile Bing site doesn’t have some great features – it’s now optimized for touch devices, for one. And the new “movies” feature lets you quickly find local theaters and browse current movie listings by flipping through movie poster thumbnails...even using your finger if on a touch device!

The blog post also highlights a couple of handy Bing features like the ability to check on flight status or look up an NFL player – but these aren’t necessarily new – you can do those things from the main page at www.bing.com, too. It's just that they've now been ported over to work on the mobile site.

The updated version of Bing currently works on the iPhone, Zune HD, T-Mobile G1, Verizon Imagio, or Samsung Omnia. Future devices will be added in the next couple of months.

You can try the new mobile site now at m.bing.com.

Facebook and Twitter Come to Bing Search

Sarah Perez — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:03:00 GMT

Did you hear the big news? At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft announced that Facebook and Twitter are being integrated into the Bing search engine. Through partnerships with the social networks, Microsoft now has access to Twitter’s “firehose” of real-time data and will soon be adding public Facebook status updates, too.

The Twitter search vertical, already live at bing.com/twitter, allows for a real-time view of the activity on the popular micro-blogging site. For all those out there who still think Twitter is just a place where people tweet what they had for breakfast, think again. Through Bing’s new interface, complete with tag clouds for hot (trending) topics, you’ll be able to see the power of Twitter for revealing breaking news, online chatter and opinion on various subjects, and details on other major events. (Case in point: check out the Twitter results for “Windows 7” which launched today).

When searching tweets via Bing, the interface has an advantage over Twitter’s own engine at search.twitter.com. That’s because Bing’s Twitter search gives you the best of both worlds – Twitter results and web links – links which are parsed from the tweets themselves. Twitter, on the other hand, only returns the raw tweets.

In the top part of the screen, a real-time view of tweets are presented and they will refresh on the screen as more come in. That’s also an improvement over Twitter’s search, which forces you to manually refresh the page yourself. However, you are able to turn this feature off temporarily thanks to an included “pause” button.

Below the actual tweets are links to web sites which the tweets contained. This is especially helpful for tracking hot topics as Twitter is more of a communications network where link exchanges comprise a majority of the online interaction. Beneath each web link provided, often pointing to a news article or blog post of some sort, the tweets from those who mentioned the link are provided. This makes it easy to engage in conversations with others who you may not even know about a subject you’re both interested in. That feature alone has a lot of promise since one of the hardest things about Twitter is finding like-minded users to friend and follow. Small “RT” (re-tweet) buttons are included next to these links to facilitate joining in the conversation.

As for the Facebook integrations, those have yet to launch but are said to include content from Facebook accounts marked as public. That’s not the default setting in Facebook, by the way, so you can breathe a sigh of relief – your profile and News Feed aren’t all of a sudden going to be indexed by the search engine. Instead, only those folks who have specifically set their profile to public will be indexed – a group that likely contains public figures as well as those with fan pages. Facebook also plans on introducing additional controls that will allow those whose content was previously marked as public the ability to change that to private if they desire to keep it out of the search engine.

No details on how exactly the Facebook integration will work have been revealed, but we’ll keep you posted.

For more details on the Twitter integration, check out the Bing community blog post available here.

Cooliris Takes Bing Searches 3D, Offers IE Enhancements

Sarah Perez — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:06:00 GMT

Cooliris, the browser add-on that takes ordinary websites and makes them rich, 3D experiences, has just announced support for Microsoft’s Bing search engine, specifically for its Image Search feature. Although Bing itself launched its own 3D-like search only last month at www.bing.com/visualsearch, the Cooliris plugin operates a bit differently. Instead of a 3D-like grid of images which you scroll through vertically, the plugin displays a 3D wall of images which you can scroll through horizontally while also interacting with the content itself. It’s more focused on providing a visual experience while Bing’s visual search is still more focused on helping you find a specific image thanks to its filters and sorting options.

In addition, new enhancements have been added to the Cooliris Internet Explorer plugin to improve performance. According to the company, image searches’ performance have improved up to 30% with the updated plugin.

The company also reports that they will soon support Bing Video searches, too, but have not revealed an exact date yet.

To download Cooliris, visit the company homepage here: cooliris.com.

Bing Usage on the Rise

Sarah Perez — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:44:00 GMT

According to multiple research firms including comScore, Nielsen, and Experian Hitwise, usage of the new Microsoft search engine Bing is still steadily on the rise. Although the firms differ a bit as to what the exact market share for Bing is, it’s clear that they’re all seeing continued increases.

Currently, comScore qSearch is reporting that Microsoft sites picked up 0.4 percentage points in August 2009 at the expense of Google and AOL which translated to a 7% gain in searches. Nielsen Online agreed with comScore on some points, but put Bing’s search share a little higher than comScore’s 9.3% – they showed Bing at 10.7%. That represents an increase from 8.8% in June and 9% in July. The third firm to weigh in, Experian Hitwise, pegged Bing at 9.6% in the four weeks measured from August 9th through September 5th.

While clearly measuring search share isn’t an exact science, the overall growth trends look good for the new engine, which is decidedly being helped along thanks to the media campaign whose clever commercials feature “victims of search overload.”

James Colborn, director at Microsoft Advertising, also recently told MediaPost that, in addition to query share increases, the company was also seeing a nearly 40% increase in click-through rates on ads, another positive sign of growth.

If you haven’t already, try switching your browser’s default engine to Bing. Here’s how to do it in IE and here are steps for other browsers.

Looking for Emmy Info? Try Bing

Sarah Perez — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:01:00 GMT

In just a few days the annual PrimeTime Emmy Awards will be broadcast live from Los Angeles’ Nokia Theatre. On Sunday, September 20th at 8 PM, American viewers can tune into CBS to watch the coverage. In the meantime, you can get all the scoop on the show thanks to Bing’s Emmy Awards “Instant Answer.” Instant Answers are special search results which appear at the top of the page featuring a quick description of the subject and relevant links.

In the case of the Emmy Awards, the Instant Answer provides info about the show, links to nominees and celebrity reactions, photos, videos, and a 2008 fashion flashback. After the show ends, the Instant Answer will be updated to include links to the winners, photos, videos, and more.

(via the Bing Community blog)

Bing Launches Visual Search

Sarah Perez — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:17:00 GMT

Today the “decision engine” Bing.com added a new feature to its interface: visual search. To access the new interface, head to www.bing.com/visualsearch and install Microsoft Silverlight (if you haven’t done so already). When that’s complete, you can then use the new visual search engine to return results which appear in a stunning 3D-like grid of images which you can scroll though, sort, and filter.

Obviously, a visual search works better for some queries than for others. In the Bing blog post, for example, they showed examples of visual searches for products, books, and cars. But that’s only scratching the surface. You can visualize almost anything – from dog breeds to sports teams. In fact, there are over 100 visual categories already enabled for the new interface. The Visual Search homepage offers up a few “featured galleries” to get you started.

As you re-sort and filter your results using the links provided on the left side of the results page, the images fly across the screen, moving into their new positions. It’s a beautiful example of what Silverlight technology is capable of doing.

Visual search engines have been around for some time, but never has a major search company integrated visual search like this into their own engine. Surprisingly, the end result isn’t just a page of visual eye candy, but an useful interface that actually makes finding what you needed quicker and easier than before.

U Rank Update: No Login Required

Sarah Perez — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:26:00 GMT

Remember U Rank? Microsoft Research’s experimental search engine? The service is still around although it has probably been overshadowed by the much slicker Bing as of late. With U Rank, searchers can reorder search results, add notes, create lists of search results and share those lists with others. Although U Rank may not replace your everyday search engine, it’s still a good tool for doing web research projects where you want to record, save, and manage your results.

Recently, Chun-Kai Wang of Microsoft Research let us know that you can now use U Rank without first having to log in. (Previously you had to sign in with your Windows Live ID.) When using U Rank anonymously like this, your edits are only saved for that session. This actually makes it easier to use U Rank as an everyday engine for quick searches since it removes the extra steps involved with signing in. It also makes it easier for anyone who just wants to play with U Rank from time to time to give it a try. You can try the new U Rank homepage here: urank.viveri.com.

Bing Reference is the Semantic Web in Action

Sarah Perez — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:44:00 GMT

Thanks to Microsoft’s acquisition of semantic search startup Powerset last year, the new “decision engine” Bing has access to semantically indexed Wikipedia content which is used to deliver special types of search results for faster answers. A recent post on the Bing community blogs delved into these semantic features in a bit more detail to explain how they're used

When you’re searching for something which has a Wikipedia entry, for example, you’ll notice a “one box” result for Wikipedia at the top of your search results page. The result provides a snippet of text from the Wikipedia article along with links to the article subsections, too. However, clicking the link “Enhanced View” actually takes you to a special kind of search result right within Bing.com – the Bing Reference result. Here’s an example of a search for “Albert Einstein:

When you click the “Enhanced View” link, you’ll end up on another Bing.com page which is actually just the Wikipedia page framed within Bing.com. You’ll still have Bing’s search box at the top of the page and the “Explore” sidebar to the left. However, the sidebar here may link to other verticals (like image search, for example) but also to related queries. To see an example of related queries, check out the Bing Reference page for “Facebook.” In the Explore sidebar there are links to applications, services, developer platform, proxy, and history. Click on any of those links to be immediately taken to a new set of search results for that term.

So why are these Bing Reference pages better than simply hitting up the Wikipedia article itself? Well, for one thing, related searches as described above are only a click away. Or if you need to move on to a specific vertical like “news” or “videos” those links are not just up at the top of the page, but they’re pinned above the article itself:

Plus, the page displays the Wikipedia “Article Outline” in a box to the right of the content which stays with you even as you scroll up and down the page. That’s really handy! And it has a “top” button attached to it that moves you back up to the very top of the page whenever you’re done reading – quite helpful for when you’re navigating around a long article:

To search within the Bing Reference vertical directly, you must start your search from within one of these “enhanced” Wikipedia pages. But when you do, you’ll have another powerful feature at your disposal: highlighting. For example, look at this query for “who acquired Texaco” to see the highlighting turned on. Thanks to Powerset technology’s ability to understand natural language, Bing also knows that’s a much different query than say “who did Texaco acquire” even though other search engines would not.

I still wish there was a link to go to Bing Reference directly, like say Bing.com/reference, (hint, hint!), but overall, these features make for a much better way to research topics than doing a typical web search. Next time you need to quickly “look something up,” try Bing.com instead and see what you think. Or better yet, set Bing as your default search engine so you don’t even have to remember to make the switch.

Page Hunt: This New Game Makes Bing Better

Sarah Perez — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:17:00 GMT

From the Microsoft Research Labs in Redmond, Washington, there comes a new online game whose goal is to improve the algorithms powering Microsoft’s search engine Bing. The game, called Page Hunt, shows you various pages from around the web and then asks you to guess what queries would make Bing display that page within its first five search results. If the query you enter returns the page as the number one result, you’ll get 100 points, if it’s the number two result, you get 90 points, and so on. But basically, if the page is in the top five results, you win.

To make the game fun, Page Hunt includes timed responses, score keeping, a top-scorers list, taboo queries, and bonus points…like those received for avoiding frequently-used categories.

Page Hunt was developed by Chris Quirk and Raman Chandrasekar at Microsoft along with colleagues from Georgia Tech and was debuted at the recent SIGIR09 conference in Boston. Their research paper describing the system can be found here.

Already, the researchers have discovered some interesting information from the data collected: the longer a web page’s URL, the harder it is for users to match the page to query words.

They don’t speculate as to why that happens, but it demonstrates how the game can provide data that will uncover interesting insights into how search works.

Two Bing Contests Underway

Sarah Perez — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:56:00 GMT

There are currently two contests promoting the new Bing “decision engine” going on right now. The first one, the Bing Home Page Photo Contest, is in its final stages. This contest allowed photographers to submit their photos to become the main homepage photo featured on Bing.com. There were a ton of great entries but the pool of photos has now been narrowed down to the 8 finalists. You can go and vote for your favorite of the 8 here. Voting closes at the end of the day on July 26th and the winner will be announced the following day on Bing’s Facebook page. The winning photo will appear on the Bing homepage on August 3rd.

The other contest, which just launched, aims to help parents and kids with their back-to-school needs. Thanks to Bing Cashback, seven lucky winners will receive a Bing-branded backpack that includes a $500 Visa cash card which can be used for new school clothes, supplies, or anything else you want. This contest, which begins on July 23rd, is being held exclusively on Twitter. The @bingcashback Twitter account will tweet a Bing-related trivia question daily for a week and everyone who answers correctly via an @reply will become eligible to win. All the correct answers are easy to find using Bing, specifically Bing Shopping and Bing Cashback. To participate, follow @bingcashback on Twitter.

Bing Tweets

Larry Larsen — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:34:00 GMT

Sometimes when you do a search, you're looking not just for definitions and answers (and of course decisions), but you're also looking for what the community at large is saying about the subject. Well there's a site called BingTweets.com that will do just this.

It lets do you a Bing search, but along with the results you see a dynamic column that shows you what people are saying about the subject on Twitter as well. It also will show you some search tags based on what's popular now, and the people, places, and products that are currently popular.

Track FedEx in Bing

Sarah Perez — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:28:00 GMT

Well, would you look at that? Bing has a FedEx package tracker right on the search results page (and so does UPS and DHL!) I don’t know why exactly I searched for “FedEx” instead of just hitting Ctrl + Enter to append the “www” and the “.com,” but I find myself searching instead of entering in URLs these days. Even though it’s an extra click, it’s faster somehow. And since Bing is my default search engine now, the link returned was a one-box result for FedEx. It was also an excellent example of what they mean when they say Bing is a “decision engine.”

Instead of cluttering up the results with every webpage that mentions FedEx, there’s just the one result (to see other web results you can click a link below this). Within the search result itself are deep links to main pages of the FedEx website (rates, contact us, careers, etc.). There’s also the FedEx customer service number – often the very thing you were searching for in the first place.

But in this case, it was package tracking I was after, so imagine my surprise to find the package tracker right there on Bing.com. (Hey, Google doesn’t do that!) That was certainly convenient. I wonder what other little tricks like this Bing has hiding up its sleeve?

Bing Gets All Twittery

Sarah Perez — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:31:00 GMT

I have to admit, I’m personally thrilled to hear this latest bit of Bing news: the new search engine is now incorporating actual tweets into their search results. No longer do I have to find some Greasemonkey-powered workaround or rely on an IE add-on to see what’s being said on Twitter – it’s just baked into the search results themselves.

However, Bing isn’t indexing all of Twitter at this time. Instead, they’ve identified some of the “more prominent and prolific Twitterers” - only a few thousand people to begin with, actually.

When you search for one of these folks in relation to Twitter, you’ll see their latest tweets appear in the Bing results. For example, search for “Kara Swisher Twitter,” “Kara Swisher Tweets,” or even “@karaswisher” and you’ll see something like this:

Only adding a small group of users to the index may be disappointing to some, but the Bing team says it’s just the first step toward using Twitter’s public API to bring tweets into search. They’re now looking for feedback as to how they should proceed in the future.

Here’s my suggestion: index it all! If someone actually takes the time to search for @sarahintampa using Bing, why not reveal my tweets? I also wouldn’t mind seeing a new vertical added to the top navigation specifically for Twitter…that would be really helpful when tracking a breaking story, for instance. But those are just my ideas. What are yours? Tell the Bing team here.

Want to Compare Search Engines?

Sarah Perez — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:21:00 GMT

Ever since Bing’s launch, there’s been a lot of talk about which search engine is doing a better job. Can Bing compare to Google? Does it do a better job? Or does it do well with some queries and not others? If you’ve had trouble making up your mind about this, there’s a new site that can help you figure it all out. The site is called “Bing vs. Google,” and, like it sounds, it’s a comparison site that pits two sets of search results against each other. Like any other search engine, Bing vs. Google has a simple homepage with just a search box in the middle of the screen and a bit of text explaining what it’s all about. To use the site, all you have to do is enter in a query as usual and hit “search.”

The fun part, of course, is the search results page. Bing vs. Google shows the results in a split screen, bing on the left, Google on the right. Squashing the screens like this can lead to a bit overlapping text in some cases (see, for example, how the results overlap Google’s sponsored links in the image), but it’s still a good way to easily get side-by-side results.

Using the links at the top, you can change the layout of the page to a horizontal split, if you so desire, or you can switch off one engine entirely and show just the one set of results. Either way, if you were having trouble making up your mind (or just making the switch to a new default search provider!), Bing vs. Google can help you put things in perspective.

Now on Bing: Find Out How Much that Job Pays

Sarah Perez — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Microsoft has partnered up with Seattle-based PayScale, a company that tracks the current market salaries for numerous professions worldwide. The new partnership brings immediate answers to anyone performing a Bing search query which asks a salary-related question. (For example, search Bing for lawyer salary). In a one-box type of result that appears at the top of the search results page, information about that profession’s compensation levels are provided including a base salary range, a bonus range and percentage reporting a bonus, as well as a chart that provides an at-a-glance summary of this information. There are also links to major metropolitan areas, a link to click for more cities, more details, and a link to click to compare your salary, all of which redirect you to PayScale’s website.

In testing this feature, I found that most of the common professions I could think of came up, but a few less common ones did not. One that was missing? “Blogger salary” of course. I guess none of us have those!

Photobucket Launching Silverlight-Powered Visual Search

Sarah Perez — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Photobucket, one of the world’s most popular photo-sharing websites, is preparing to release a new tool for finding photos on the site: a visual search engine. With this feature, Photobucket users can search the site’s 8 billion photos by keyword. The images will appear as search results, and you can then select any of the photos to jump into another search for related content based on that particular photo. You can also quickly access the library of the user who uploaded any given photo as well.

Not only is the new visual search feature powered by Silverlight, it taps into another Microsoft technology, too, with its Windows Live Messenger integration – a move that connects Photobucket’s 70 million users with the 320 million Live Messenger users around the world. With a single click, you’ll be able to share the URL of a photo in your search results with anyone you have in your Live Messenger contact list.

At the time of writing, the visual search feature had not yet gone live on Photobucket.com, but it should be arriving soon.

Instant Translation Comes to Bing

Sarah Perez — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:04:00 GMT

Besides being a decision engine that helps you find health, travel, or shopping information, the new search engine at Bing.com can now also help you translate between different languages on the fly. Instead of having to load up a specific site that does translation, you can just type in what you want to translate right into Bing’s search box.

For example, if you wanted to translate “I love you” into Japanese, you could enter the query: translate I love you to Japanese. The results would look like this:

Or if you wanted to just know several different ways to say “I love you” in other languages, you could enter the query: translate I love you.

Don’t worry about the semantics of your query either, it doesn’t have to begin with “translate.” You can also ask Bing “how do you say…” and Bing will know you’re looking for a translation. For example:

Search Summit: Chris Sherman- opinions from a Search Engine Expert

Laura Foy — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:38:00 GMT

Chris Sherman is Executive Editor of SearchEngineLand.com and President of Searchwise LLC, a Boulder Colorado based Web consulting firm. With over 25 years experience in interactive technologies, he is frequently quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Business Week, USA Today and other publications, and has appeared on CNN, NPR, CBS and other television and radio networks.
Check out this clip to hear what he think of the Microsoft Search Summit and, of course, Bing!

What is the Search Summit?
Search and Advertisers

Search Summit: Protecting the Advertisers rights

Laura Foy — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:30:00 GMT

While online advertising offers important improvements for targeting and measurement, it also challenges norms about relationships between advertisers and ad platforms. Ad platforms differ in the information they share with advertisers – not always disclosing where ads are shown, how much each placement costs, or how fees are computed. Platforms also vary in their approaches to dispute resolution – sometimes imposing onerous terms that limit the options available to dissatisfied advertisers. Ben Edelman presented to Microsofts Search Summit and offered thoughts on proper division of rights and responsibilities in advertisers' dealings with ad platforms.

More about the Search Summit
Words from a Search Engine Expert

The Microsoft Search Summit

Laura Foy — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:45:00 GMT

Mel Carson was one of the visionaries who put together the Microsoft Search Summit. It is an invitation only event, but we were allowed to bring our cameras inside and get the scoop. Take a peek.

More:

Search and Advertisers
Words from a Search Engine expert

WebMynd Attempts Real-Time Web Integration with Bing

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:42:00 GMT

WebMynd is a browser plugin that delivers real-time web search results in a sidebar whenever you do a search query on the web. Previously only available to integrate with Google, the latest version of WebMynd now supports Bing integration as well.

Once the plugin is installed, after doing a web search on Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, a search sidebar appears on the right side of the results page above the sponsored sites listings. Here you’ll see the most recent news and videos from the real-time web as powered by OneRiot, a company whose technology crawls social sharing services like Twitter and Digg for the latest news.

At the moment, WebMynd works OK, but it could use a little tweaking. I found the real-time news search box would cut off portions of the text descriptions (see image) and the sidebar would also mess with the CSS of some of the search results, too. Also disappointing is that the plugin is currently only available for Firefox users. Still, I like the concept of a real-time sidebar, I just would like to see a smoother implementation.

In the meantime, a better alternative may be adding Twitter search to Bing using the Greasemonkey script Twitter Search Results on Bing. (For a how-to guide, click here). This adds Twitter search results above the Bing results whenever you enter a query…and the implementation is much cleaner than WebMynd’s.

Then again, perhaps the best option of all for those of you interested in the real-time web is to simply download the IE8 real-time browser (or at least its addons).

Check out the Bing Community Site

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:16:00 GMT

Did you know that Bing has its own community site? I just happened across it over at bing.com/community. Here, you’ll find a ton of Bing-related info, including blog posts, media, events and forums.

The blogs in the left-hand sidebar include the official Bing search blog, the webmaster blog, the developer blog, the travel blog, and the maps blog, all of which have their own RSS feeds. There are also specific forums set up with focuses on search (for general questions), development, and one for webmasters, too. The events section lets you keep track of places where Bing is being demoed or where members of the team will be speaking. Finally, the media section will feature photos and videos of Bing. Although that area is a little sparse right now, it’s sure to grow in time.

Overall, it’s a great place for staying up-to-date with the latest info about Bing.