Working on Bing.com for the last 9 months or so has been exhilarating. Finally, we can show the world the great stuff we’ve been doing. Here is (I think) the first TV commercial about Bing.com, running as of today.
I kissed Google goodbye more than a year ago and haven’t looked back. I think once people start using Bing, they’re going to do the same.
Popularity: 7% [?]
I’ve been meaning to highlight a few of the cool things we’re doing in Live Search. I don’t have any direct involvement in the development of any of these—I just think they’re cool.
IE8 is awesome, so go get it. Live Search has these things called Instant Answers where it can respond with succinct answers to your question, rather than just web pages that may have the answer. Good examples are weather and numeric conversions—you just want to know the answers, not necessarily follow links to find it.
You get normal search suggestions of course, but the cool thing is that the display of the instant answers is built right into IE8. You can type into the search box and have the answers returned right in the drop down as you type. Here are some samples:
Weather:
Solve math equations:
There are a whole lot more kinds of answers. Maybe someday I’ll detail them.
Firefox users haven’t been left out either. While there isn’t a full instant answers integration, Firefox does support search suggestions. You can download the plugin from the Firefox plugin directory.
This is something I think really needs more publicity. I have a Samsung Saga i770, which I love. One of the first things I put on it was Live Search Mobile.
First of all, this thing has had speech recognition built-in since way before Google’s similar tools.
It can easily find directions, gas prices, movies, traffics, maps, local businesses (by categories), and general web info. I use this app all the time.
There is custom software you can install for both Windows Mobile and Blackberry. It will work on the web for any other mobile phone that can get on the Internet.
And, by the way, it supports auto-suggest as well.
On your phone, you can go to wls.live.com to get it.
Related links:
Popularity: 10% [?]
Live Search has recently released some great new features that I want to highlight. The first is from the Webmaster center, which is the team I was hired on.
With the new Webmaster Tools, you can now see which pages on your site are infected with malware (aka drive-by downloads). The links are clearly highlighted and disabled so that you won’t accidentally click on them.
Not only that, but you can also see what pages that your site links to are infected with malware. This is great if your site allows any user-generated content and it’s possible that some link spam has made it on.
In addition to these improvements in Webmaster Tools, the general Live Search engine is using the same malware detection to notify users of bad pages in the general search results. To see this, click on the link as if to visit it and you’ll get a pop-up instead.
If you run your own site, get signed up in Webmaster Tools and make sure you’re not contributing to the malware problem. If you do find that your site has malware on it, once you’ve removed it you can request that your site be reanalyzed.
For more info, check out these other blogs and articles:
Popularity: 11% [?]
I first saw this video at the Microsoft Company Meeting 2008, and looked for the song everywhere, but couldn’t find the Magneta Lane version. They recorded it just for Microsoft. Nevertheless, the original Ash version
Magneta’ Lane’s MySpace page does mention the song, and maybe a release is on the way.
Update: Forgot the music video from Ash. I like it.
Popularity: 11% [?]
I’ve been having a great time at Microsoft over the last couple of months, but the ramp to full productivity is very steep. Recently, I’ve been working on an important improvement to some monitoring software, which requires a fairly good understanding of part of the system. It can be a little overwhelming trying to design something to handle all the nuances involved. Add to that the time crunch, and things get a little interesting. Last night, I ran into a little wall where I was uncertain about how to proceed. This kind of situation is always a little precarious. I was worried because today and tomorrow I have full-day training and won’t be able to dedicate a lot of time to solving this problem.
Half way through the training, while discussing something tangentially related to my problems, I realized the technical solution to the specific issue I was facing.
Sometimes you just need to ignore the problem for a while, and come back to it from a different angle.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Judging, by the blogosphere’s reaction, I’m one of the few people who liked the Gates-Seinfeld ads by Microsoft. They were odd, sure, but it got people thinking, talking, going WTF? – and that can’t be bad.
But I definitely like the I’m a PC ads better. I was at the company meeting when they debuted, and they immediately sparked a rumble in the audience—a positive one.
The cool thing is you can upload your own picture or video with your “I’m a PC” acting debut.
There are some interesting ones: a guy singing in the shower, for instance. Steve Ballmer’s is worth a look.
The greatest thing about these ads, though, is that they essentially take all the wind out of the obnoxious Apple ads that have been on for years.
Popularity: 8% [?]
It has been an insane first couple of weeks at Microsoft. In actuality, though, I don’t know if I can count it as two weeks of experience. I’ve had two days of orientation, one day for the company meeting (which was awesome, by the way), and two more days for training in Live Search specifically. So really I’ve had only a week of work.
The team I’m working in is great. Everybody really knows their stuff and it’s fairly intimidating trying to comprehend all the knowledge (both project and organizational) that you need to drink from the fire hose. Supposedly, it takes an average of 6 months before most people feel like they’re contributing 100%. That seems like a really, really long time, given how fast things move in the Internet age. So far, I’ve mostly read code (fixed one small bug, and found another), and done online training (of which there is a LOT–you don’t have to do everything, but there’s a an awful lot there to choose from). It’s easy to start feeling caught between wanting to contribute as soon as possible and not wanting to screw up other people’s work.
I’ve also got to come up with my yearly commitments this week–a daunting task when you don’t know anything. 
Thankfully, my lead is a lot of help. There’s a nice big section for personal development and I’m planning on reading Scott Meyer’s Effective C++
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it explicitly before, but I’m working on the Webmaster team as part of Live Search. The Webmaster tools are the interface between web site owners and the Live search index. If you have a web site, you should definitely create an account with our tools so you can see how your site is performing.
About Live Search in general…
Over a year ago I briefly tried Live Search as my main search engine, but quickly moved back to Google. About 6 months ago (before I was contacted about the job at Microsoft, incidentally), I decided to look at Live again–HUGE improvement. I have very rarely gone back to Google since then.
There are also some really exciting new features coming for both Live and the webmaster tools, so give them a try now and again in a few months. I can also personally attest to the fact that the Live Search team takes feedback seriously. If you have any issue with your site, or the results of your query–write up a little note and send it to the feedback page, or even send me an e-mail and I can make sure it gets sent to the right people.
P.S. My blog entry about my interview experience did make the rounds and a number of people commented to me on it….weird feeling…more infamous, than famous. Lesson: Make sure you never writing something you wouldn’t mind other people reading back to you. (I don’t think I did…)
Popularity: 8% [?]
The folks on my future team at Microsoft have released a presentation about the diagnosing search engine issues with the recently released Live Search Webmaster Tools (it was out before, but in beta).
If you run a web-site, you should check out the tools and the presentation (even without narration, it’s worth a look).
Popularity: 6% [?]
My last post was well and good (definitely read the comments), but I think I should be serious about my new employer because I really am excited to work there. Here are some reasons why:
What will be more interesting is to compare this list with what I come up with in a year.
Popularity: 8% [?]
(I kid, I kid…)
Popularity: 9% [?]
