Those folks at Bing have been very busy recently and they let the whole world know yesterday what they have been working on.
Blog Post- Bing’s Fall Update- More Helpful, Local, Social and Mobile
- A visually organized experience that is free of seams –where and how the information, services, multimedia, or real-time updates come together should be transparent. The information should self-assemble on the page in a logical order that moves searchers from idea to action.
- A focus on tasks by analyzing user interaction models on the web to drive user intent for a query and presenting the right web resources to enable getting stuff done more quickly and easily.
- A socially relevant experience that uses Facebook and other social networks to provide Bing with the intelligence to start using your network of friends to help make decisions, just as you would ask your friends for advice in real life.
- Device intelligence that uses ‘signals’ (like location on mobile or time of day on the desktop) to shape the results, dynamic presentation of results based on the capabilities of the device, and a recognition of typical user behavior patterns on devices. For example on mobile devices, people’s queries are more locally focused and much shorter in duration than on a desktop.
Blog Post- Announcing New Bing Maps & Local Features
Throughout the last few months, Bing Maps & Local has focused on how our product can help with everyday decisions and deliver innovative experiences to a wide audience. The end result is a more functional, easier-to-use, and differentiated experience. The theme for this release has been around three areas: i) Delivering new types of visual detail, ii) Simplifying local tasks, and iii) Improving maps on mobile. With that in mind, today we’re announcing four new features we’re really excited about:
· Interior Views: Provides users with immersive 360-degree panoramas of local businesses
· OpenTable Integration: Lets users interact with OpenTable directly from restaurant pages
· Real Time Transit on Mobile: Gives users real time info if a bus is on-time or delayed
· Streetside for Mobile: Brings users street-level imagery + some mobile-exclusive enhancements
Blog Post- Bing Feature Update- Bing and FanSnap are your ticket to the best seat in the house
- View ticket results for more than 15 million tickets to 75,000 events from 57 ticket companies.
- See ticket selection and price ranges at a glance, and zoom into a row- level view to check out offers from multiple providers.
- Use the “Best Value" feature, to quickly highlights to find ticket offers that are priced significantly lower than surrounding seats.
- See "view-from-seat" feature for many venues that will be rolled out over the next month.
- Compare ticket offers from multiple providers in a simple list format to quickly see the best deal.
Blog Post- Bing Feature Update- New UX streamlines finding the perfect image
Whether it’s introducing completely new ways to browse pictures with things like “Infinite Scroll” or helping you filter images by color and composition, a more intuitive and visual image search experience has always been a big focus for us.
To that end, this week we’re excited to introduce improvements in how Bing presents and organizes your image results.
Blog Post- Bing Feature Update- Discover more things your Facebook friends like
Starting today, if your search results include a specific link that has also been “liked” by someone in your Facebook network the link will be highlighted as “Liked” within Bing. This gets especially interesting for a query like "Xbox" where my friend “Liked” the "Kinect" site and while our algorithms didn’t feel it was relevant enough to make it the ‘answer’ we reference above, we are still able to indicate that my friend liked that link that happened to show up within the results.
Blog Post- Bing for Mobile Updates Launch Today
Last month, Windows Phone 7 hit store shelves showcasing an intuitive implementation of Bing, organizing search alongside the most common things that you do every day. The excitement continues today with the launch of updates to the Bing for Mobile iPhone and Android Apps. The updates streamline how you discover relevant local information, allowing you to do more while on the go.
Blog Post- Announcing V1.1 of the “New” Map Style
A few months ago, we launched our new map style which provides a unique backdrop for information delivery and helps content “pop” on the map, allowing people to find what they are looking for more quickly.
The initial feedback was positive but we were given great constructive feedback – users appreciated the new style’s uniqueness and loved the clean, calm look; but, some felt it made aspects of our maps more difficult to read.
Make sure you visit the sites an dread more in depth on what the different changes are. The folks at Bing are really listening to your feedback so keep it flowing.