Kinect Voice Search by Bing–Throw your remotes!

Check how Bing works on Kinect for Xbox 360. Who needs remotes when you are the controller.

You say it, Xbox finds it ! Dashboard update and Kinect Voice Search (available with select Xbox Live content) coming this Holiday.

(Source)

The first Bing Image of the Day !

Do you know which was the first Bing image of the day ? This interesting Tuesday Trivia tweet from Microsoft answers this.

The first Bing Picture of the Day was a hiker standing in Polychrome Pass overlooking the Alaska Range Denali National Park.

Many of us thought the answer was "Marines standing in formation at Arlington National Cemetery." While this was used for the first public demonstration of Bing, it was not the photo used when Bing launched on June 3, 2009. The hiker was the first.

Look for stunning images daily on Bing  and learn about it from its hotspots.

Add a Bing Box to your Blog, site

You can now put a Search Box powered by Bing on your Blog or site. You may already have put a Search Box powered by Live Search which though provide results using Bing Engine only but its interface is of Live Search. So you can change that by putting this Bing Box.

Just go to http://www.bing.com/siteowner/ and follow the instructions by clicking on ‘Get started’ button-

I have used advanced search box which will allow you to customize the search Box- Fill up the required details, customize its width, pane dimensions,color

and in the next step it will provide you with the code , which you can put it in your site or blog.

After that you can see the Bing powered search box – Bing Box on your Blog-

You can try some query and check what results does it return. Chances are it will not return any query for your site. If your site does not appear on Bing, you can submit the URL by clicking on ‘send the address to us’ link  that appears on search result pane.

And this will not be reflected immediately and may require some time.

And that’s how you can put  a Bing Box on your blog. I hope instead of just displaying the plain search box with its orange logo, let bing put a ‘Bing’ text as default for all Bing Box like it does with Microsoft Connect and other sites .

Live search Home Page features Holi – Festival of colors

Today’s Live search Home page features Holi – the Indian Festival of colors. Its nice to see Live search homepage featuring something related to India. Anyway, I hope these stunning photographs with Hotspots gets featured world over as at present it gets featured only for US market http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-us . Try this link to discover something new daily with Hotspots on these amazing pictures.

Wishing all a very colorful Holi !!!!

Mumbai featured as Live Search background image

With Slumdog Millionaire sweeping Oscars, City of Mumbai also is in highlights. Few days back (11th Feb.‘09) city of Mumbai was shown as the background image in Live Search  also.

I hope many more background images of city of Mumbai and other images related to India will be shown in future also as background Image in Live search.

Its nice to see daily a new background Image with Hotspots being shown in Live Search . Using these Hotspots one can learn new things daily exploring the World with Live Search. If you have not yet seen these check out the Stunning Images provided as background and move the mouse over these images to discover Hotspots. But this is available only for US region, so you have to make use of http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-us link if you are outside of US.

Live Search, Google and the Oscar Awards

Now that the Oscar Awards have been announced yesterday, everyone everywhere is talking of the Awards only. Slumdog Millionaire which swept the Oscar Awards is everywhere, on the front pages of Newspaper and elsewhere. Its special for India, as many of the Indians are involved, the Story based on the Novel written by an Indian and city of Mumbai where the story is set around. And A.R. Rahman winning 2 Oscars and Resul Pookutty another one. So its the Indian connection making it more special.

Even these have been already depicted in Amul Ads:

(A.R. Rehman wins numerous awards for 'Slumdog Millionaire" ) 

(This was after Slumdog Millionaire winning 4 Golden Globe Awards and getting 10 Oscar Nominations)

(Amul Ad cartoons, courtesy Amul)

 

Now coming to Oscar Awards searches, I had posted yesterday  before the start of Oscars Awards,  Live Search and Oscar Awards , I now again checked as these awards have been announced and wanted to see how it provides results comparing it with Google. This is what Google front page shows:

 

And this is what Live Search front page showed: 

Live Search provided the results in a neater way, all the major winners being shown at a glance, while Google gave the results in a plain way with some description. I liked the way results presented by Live Search. Hope it keeps on improving. Now the only problem with Live Search is - to get Optimized results, one has to make use of US market Live Search Link http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-us if one is outside United states. AS here in India if I use the local Live Search link http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-in, one does not get the optimized results. Hope this will be looked into and all search results made uniform.

Live Search and Oscar Awards

In few hours, 81st Academy Awards - Oscars will be announced. Many of us will be searching more information about the nominee. In how many categories Slumdog Millionaire has been nominated ? Who else are there in those categories? A.R. Rahman is nominated against whom?  And many such questions. And you don’t have to waste time searching and scanning from bunch of site summaries. Just go to the Live Search  and type Oscars to get all the nominees related links. And after the awards you can again come back and search for Oscar winners and you will be given every information about the Oscar Winners.

Check out and find out all about Oscar nominations, winners etc.

But again these Live Search has been optimized for United States and you will not get the same results if you are searching from other countries. So make use of this link http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-us wherever you may be. I hope soon Live Search Team address this issue.

Search and Win with Live Search

Microsoft has started a fun way to use Live Search. Do your search from www.winwithsearch.com and start winning. When you do a query, it will roll the dice and those who can get to show 6 and 6 on the dice, wins. Each search query entered is considered one throw.

Each session is of 10 min., if someone has won in that session, one has to wait till another session starts. The Contest shall be open for 18 hrs a day from 0700 hrs IST to 0100 hrs IST during the Contest Period. So there are lots of sessions for winning. The Participant can play once or multiple times during the Contest period.

So what are you waiting for search your query using www.winwithsearch.com and start winning (Free talktime). Just now I have won !!!!

So once you enter the query, 2 dices will roll and if you get 6 and 6 you win. 

 

 

And you will be asked to sign in with your Live ID. And you have to fill up the phone number etc. to claim your prize.

After that one will get the message on the mobile number.

The Contest will run from December 04, 2008 to January 03, 2009 and is open to India only. For more details check the site.

So hurry up search your query with www.winwithsearch.com and start winning.

Live Search: Search images using images

Live Search has been improving continuously and coming up with new features since some time now. They have introduced another feature where you can search for images using another image. Say I do a image search for KapilDev (Indian Cricketer) It provides various KapilDev’s image results:

So, from these images I wanted to see more images of Kapildev with the World Cup, so just hover the mouse over that image and you’ll see an option ‘show similar images’. Click on it.

 

And when you click on it, you will get a new set of image results with Such images.

 

This option is being available for US region, so if you are not getting the option in your region and want to try this, use this link http://www.live.com/?mkt=en-us

I would like Live search to improve it more, as sometimes I am getting some irrelevant results. And I would also like to put a limit to such results, so that more near similar results are obtained.

In future how about providing an option in Live Search where we upload an image and Live Search will provide us similar results.  That will be very nice as one will be searching an image provided by user.

I also noticed that I am not getting the ‘Scratchpad’ and ‘Related people’ options which were available earlier.

(source)

Today’s Live Search Home Page displays Barack Obama

Since sometimes Live Search Home page has been displaying stunning pictures with Hotspots daily. Today’s Live Search Home Page displays US President-Elect Barack Obama. Congratulations !!

MSN India WAP Portal has a new look

The MSN WAP Portal now has a new design. So take your MSN with you, visit http://m.msnindia.com from your GPRS phone.

Click here to check out the live MSN Mobile site on your PC.

Get Driving Directions Map Weather for your location and lots more, check the site for more details.

To get MSN Mobile Site on your phone:

• Go to the Phone Menu
• Select Web Browser
• Enter http://msnmobile.in in the address box and start surfing
• If in doubt, refer your phone's instruction manual or visit your service provider's gallery.

Note: You need a GPRS enabled SIM on a GPRS compatible cellphone to view the MSN Mobile Site on your phone. Please contact your service provider's customer care executive for information on getting GPRS connection.
To get MSN Mobile site on your Windows Mobile Device:

• Select 'Start '
• Select 'Internet Explorer'
• In the address bar type http://msnmobile.in and select enter.
• Press enter (green arrow next to address bar or enter key on your keypad)
• To set this as your default home page.
  • click on 'Menu'
  • select 'Tools'
  • select 'Options'
  • select 'Use Current'
  • select 'OK'

Note: You need a GPRS enabled SIM on your windows mobile device to access the MSN WAP Site. Please contact your service provider's customer care executive for information on acquiring GPRS.

Check http://specials.msn.co.in/sp03/mobilesms/index.asp for more details.

Live Search 19th Aug 08

Here are Live Search background images for 19th Aug. 08

 

Live Search 18th Aug 08

Here are the Live Search background images for 18th Aug.

Yesterday the background image change for Live Search for the evening had some kind of caching issue for me. Actually the home page with image I was getting was an image which had already occurred earlier. Thanks to LiveSino , I have taken the below image from them.

Live Search 17 Aug. 08

Here are the Live Search background images for 17th Aug. 08

 

Follow the Olympics

The ongoing Beijing Olympics are in center of World these days, everybody wants to know what’s happening at Beijing.And many of you must be following it in many ways. Microsoft technologies are also present in the Beijing and bringing it in many ways. Let us see how,

Silverlight powered NBC Olympics site www.nbcolympics.com NBC site in partnership with Microsoft where you can have hours and hours of video. But sadly due to international broadcasting rights regulations its only available for US. Still its usage statistics are very impressive, it attracts over 6 million users daily, who have already watched nearly 3.5 million hours of video content. Some details providing amazing statistics for first four days which appeared on eweek : 8 million Silverlight downloads per day, 13.5 million video streams active, On August 11th Silverlight delivered 250TB of data.

Also you can find NBC Olympics channel through your Windows Media Center.

Live Search is bringing the Olympics by providing many new features, You can get all your Olympics related queries answered,

*Medals Count - search for ‘Olympic Medals’ and you'll get up-to-the-minute tallies by country

*Medal Count by Country

*Medal Count by Sport

*Medal Count by Country and Sport

*Athletes

Then there’s new Olympics xRank category added in Live Search which provides ranks to athletes according to their Popularity.

Apart from that Live Search Home Page is providing Stunning Pictures from Beijing Olympics as its Home Page background which changes twice, daily.And I am also posting those beautiful pictures here on my blog on day-to–day basis.

Also Live Search Home Page at Bottom right provides a link to get the latest happening at Olympics ,

You can install MSN Toolbar for your IE about which I had posted Few days back, MSN Toolbar updated with Olympics, Stocks buttons. The Olympics Tab gives lots of Olympic related information starting from Medal count, News, photos, videos and game specific news.

You can also follow the Olympics On Your Mobile Phone. Thanks to a partnership between Lenovo, Intel, and Zumobi, Windows Mobile users now have access to an app called the “Olympic Zoom Space,” which is available via a free download at http://lenovo.zumobi.com. This four-tile zoom space, like other Zumobi downloads, lets you quickly and easily view news and photos from the web without need of your web browser. (source:Get The Olympics On Your Mobile Phone)

There’s Olympic Medal Count Vista Gadget Beijing 2008 Olympic Medal Count Gadget (source)

So it is time to enjoy the Olympics wherever you are.

Live Search 16 Aug. 08

Here are Live Search Home Page backgrounds for 16th Aug.

 

Live Search 15 Aug. 08

Here are background images of Live Search for 15 Aug. 08

 

Live Search 14 Aug. 08

Continuing with my series posts regarding Live Search Home Page Olympics backgrounds, here are some more of the amazing pictures.

 

Try Live Search Now !

Live Search 12 Aug. 08

I thought of posting various Live Search Olympics Home Page changed during the Olympics Games. So I’ll be posting it regularly, almost daily till Beijing Olympics closing ceremony . Here’s a set of beautiful images put up recently.

And if you have not started using Live Search, start using it, give it a try. It has improved a lot with great features, try the image and video search.