If you’ve heard about Bing but haven’t visited yet, let us introduce you. Bing is a new search engine from Microsoft that finds and organizes search results in an attempt to make it easier for the user to make decisions on where to visit online. Calling themselves a “decision engine”, Bing takes over from Microsoft’s previous search engines: Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search.
It is visually enticing, with a new homepage image every day that contains special hidden hotspots that lead you to more information about the image. The images are chosen to be artful, not newsy and to strive for subtlety and poetry without hindering searches. And last week, the NY Times Bits Blog told us that Bing unveiled fresh updates to its search abilities.
These updates include:
• accurate weather updates when you search by city, which is tracked for accuracy
• “entity cards” - information boxes that appear at the top of search results, containing relevant information on topics like cities, musical artists and medical conditions
• blending of its search, map and photo technology.
• plans to roll out deeper links to Facebook and Twitter
Earlier this year, Wired.com had already given Bing a positive review on several points, such as finding a good restaurant, shopping or travel information.
“With Bing, Microsoft has shown that it understands that different kinds of searches require different kinds of answers and interfaces. They’ve shown too they understand that a search is often only the beginning of a decision such as what Indian restaurant to try or what kind type and model of water filter is best.”
So even if you have checked it out before, you might want to take a new look to see if these improvements are helpful in your quest for information delivered with internet speed.