Microsoft throws Bing into Hotmail mix
Hunting down the clicks
Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything
Microsoft has integrated Bing with Hotmail, a month on from the release of its fancy new search engine.
The company announced the new feature yesterday, which allows users to add Bing image and video search results directly into Hotmail messages.
Redmond had been piloting its “Quick Add” feature in Windows Live search. The software giant said on the Windows Live Wire blog that users could now easily add restaurant reviews, movie times, images and other stuff sourced from the interwebs with just one click of the mouse.
Search results are now streamed on the right-side of the Hotmail window and can be added into outgoing emails or replies.
However, it only pulls in a few results. If you need to run through an exhaustive list of images, for example, then the system will guide you over to Bing, which doesn't provide a useful button to add your result back into Hotmail once you've tracked it down.
Also, the Quick Add menu remains a static feature when composing email in Hotmail. Users can't minimise it, but those in the know can work around it with a special browser extension.
As for availability, Microsoft has only rolled out the new tool to Australia, Canada, China, India, the US and the UK so far. ®
COMMENTS
Bing name
Somehow the name Bing seems perfect for a MicroSoft product. From urbandictionary.com:
"bing - used to portray prison and/or solitary confinement. Derived from the sound the bars make. "
Annoying
Bing annoys me.
Now China has let me use it that is. Even when I specify English only, it still chucks about half of the results at me in Chinese.
I'll stick with Goo... er, Yahoo. Can't access Google most of the time either. Bloody Chinese firewall.
For me...
I think this is another great way for a predatory monopoly to be seen to be leveraging (hotmail) to grow search (bing). Ah well, it probably won't be seen as such, and hence won't contribute to the soap opera of the millennia that is Microsoft's odd presumption that they will rule the computing world forever.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
Cloud based data management
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
