Twitter Posts added to Search Results by Microsoft Bing Search Engine
The new Search Engine launched last month by Microsoft is gaining momentum in its strides, towards popularity. This Wednesday, users found the competitive Search Engine to Google has started adding Twitter Posts in its search results.
While writing on a company blog, Sean Suchter, general manager of Silicon Valley Search Technology Center of Microsoft quipped that for the time being Microsoft is indexing “few thousand people, primarily based on follower count they have and their volume of tweets”.
It appears that the company is not working directly with Twitter, towards delivering this capability. Suchter wrote that this is their first step in using Twitter’s public API, to bring up Tweets for the people while searching.
As it reflects popular public sentiment, there has been an increased interest in the content value of Twitter, from the search community worldwide. Wednesday’s launch of this new capability in Bing seems to be a coup, albeit limited, because the other major search engines are not indexing recent Twitter messages anyway.
The practice is most of the existing search engines, at best, turn up old Twitter messages and a link to a Twitter page of the concerned person is displayed. This has been changed by Bing of Microsoft, by listing recent individual messages along with other search results. However Suchter cautioned some users may not see the messages in Twitter now, as the new future is scheduled to roll out gradually.
Incidentally, the arrival of this new capability of Bing falls on the same day, when a new study showed Bing’s growth chart is steady upwards, at the expense of most popular Google search engine. According to Researchers at StateCounter, Bing has definitely increased the share of Microsoft in the search market, by 1 percent in June in the United States. This shows Bing is still behind Yahoo search engine and way back in the lead by Google though. StateCounter found Google still has a market share of 78.48 percent, although shedding some market share to Bing during the month.
A Comparison of two Search Engines – Google vs. Bing
What an irony – even for searching facts and figures for comparing the popular Google search engine, with that of an upcoming one from Microsoft, the Bing, I had invariably typed on Google “Bing versus Google” and not on Bing. Habits die hard.
Microsoft has recently unfurled a new and attractive alternative to Google search engine. And people want the two compared for performance appraisal.
Almost the usual thing happening is your web browser may contain Google’s Search box prominently on top. And yes of course Google is thorough in tendering search results in micro seconds with such a great speed.
To compare Bing, Microsoft’s new prop up just a month ago, although it is very impressive, with a Live Search Engine like Google would be – comparing two champions in two different leagues, unfairly.
On aesthetics, Bing seems best than Google. The Google Search button is prominent in otherwise clean and sparse Google Home page and links for videos, images, news, shopping, maps, Gmail and a lot more.
In contrast, the Homepage of Bing attracts with breathtaking travel related photographs being pasted daily. One day on this week, an amazing image of Mexico’s manta rays appeared at Bing homepage, with a beautiful description when your mouse crawled over the image “These curious creatures are gentle, sociable and playful”. And what fun these brief digressions make! Actually Bing offers facility to click on images to take you to shopping, videos, news, travel and maps.
Thinking of searches made in search engines like Google, there is more to it rather than a wild manta chase and you want comprehensive, relevant and also fast results. On this aspect, Microsoft holds its grounds more, particularly in the fields Bing is concentrating initially – health; travel; shopping and finding local businesses. What is more, you get on certain items a cash-back program when you buy through Bing.com.
For example if you type “New York Mets” on Bing, it shows on top of its results – most recent scores of the team and upcoming schedules - whereas Google will only display the score of their last game and when the next game will be played.
Similarly if you type a company name in Bing, what you get is the telephone number of the company’s customer service, which you can hardly get through Google.
Another charm of Bing search engine experience is, when you make a search you get the right snippets of only the information you want and not more leads. On moving the cursor to the right of the search result tendered by Bing, there appears a window containing excerpts derived from the site underlying it. This will enable you decide instantly whether or not to go into the full site.
Videos like YouTube, Hulu etc. start playing at once, when you crawl over a video thumb nail with your cursor and there is no need to click “play”. And you will watch the video in a larger window, when you click the thumbnail, not necessarily leaving Bing.com. Also hovering on an image will show the same to you in a larger window.
There is one more plus – on the down left side “the quick tabs” appear on the results pane and assist you in refining a search. Simply when you enter “Charleston, South Carolina”, category-wise results are shown – restaurants; hotels; real estate; local weather and so on. For the same thing on Google, you need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and see “related searches”, although you have the choice to a side panel “show options”.
In real-time searches also Bing excels. For instance, when you make a search for a celebrity such as “Al Gore Twitter” adding Twitter to your search – you are able to get a full list of their recent tweets.
Following is the illustration as how Google and Bing fared on some sample searches:
Cataracts: Bing search engine showed at the top of the search results, a full description of this eye condition, taken out of a Mayo Clinic article. It was an advertisement sponsored by a lens manufacturer Transition, showed at Google at its top result. But both Bing and Google showed many relevant listings from same sources though. Google showed 3.3 million search results, whereas it was nearly 2.3 million in Bing.
Hilton, Paris: When searched with an intentionally vague query, Google results had a sponsored listing for Hilton.com as the starter and followed it with a news result for the socialite. For Bing it was hotelreservations.com at the top, followed by the site of The Hotels by Hilton and the “official” website of Paris Hilton.
Travel is Bing’s forte and if you click “Travel” you get a site resembling Expedia, where you can further search for hotels, flights, cars etc. Another help from Bing is its prediction about airfares and their fall or rise for certain cities, whereby you can decide whether to buy the ticket now or later.
Michael Jackson: For this search of the legendry Pop King, both Google and Bing tendered news stories about him first. Google linked first to Wikipedia entry for Michael Jackson and led to his official site – michaelackson.com over images and videos about him. All other related searches of jokes, songs, kids not his, came at the bottom. On Bing search, similar sites were listed but putting images and videos higher up. The pane on the left of this Michael Jackson search enable me to narrow my search by songs, news, downloads, biography, merchandise and so on. It was only 85 million search results at Google, whereas it was 101 million at Bing.
Ford Fusion: When searched for this automobile, it was Bing that got relevant statistics at the top – user ratings, fuel economy, and price range. More help was available in the side panel for categories of reviews, dealers, manual, forum, recalls as also images. Google needs poking around a bit to get these details.
Accurate searches can be Google’s strength but Bing is for more elaborate and relevant searches readily.
Summing Up the Comparison:
Google = www.google.com – Gets two stars out of four.
Pros: Comprehensive and fast in searches that seldom go wrong.
Cons: Some search tools which are powerful are shadowed.
Microsoft Bing = www.bing.com – Gets two stars out of four.
Pros: Functioning is attractive to give voluminous information instantly, with no need to look elsewhere. Excels on resources of travels and plays videos within Bing.com site. Presentation of related searches is good and additional attraction is cash-back discount program for shopping through its links.
Cons: On some particular searches, not as exhaustive as Google and not strong on news items. Video glitches are experienced occasionally.
Microsoft’s Upstart “Bing” Projects its Homepage Photos to many markets out there and announces a Photo Contest too
Bing – the new search alternative to Google from Microsoft, enchants its users with a daily image of a photograph in their Homepage. Bing is yet to be made available in many countries – possibly next month. When all such new markets like Canada, Australia, Japan, China and the United Kingdom would also fall in line to begin customizing Bing’s Homepage images for their countries’ audience and adding “hotspots” of their own.
Talking of hotspots – please understand they are the little squares you notice, when your mouse scrawls over the photographic image of the Homepage. They are there to tell you more particulars about the photographs you are watching.
And when you crawl over the photo in the bottom right corner, a quick caption appears to show these particulars, including the name and agency of the photographer. This does not end there – if you click the arrows – you can find the home page images for the last 7 days. For this all you need is to install Microsoft’s “Silverlight Version 2” open source facility.
If you see a nice photograph and want to share it with your friends? No problem – just go to Bing Photo sharing application on Facebook – and you are done. Want to see previous Bing Homepage images? – here is Long Zheng – a private site, which brings the Bing Image Archive. This site enables you to see all background images presented at Bing, on a calendar format of the day, when that image was displayed originally.
About the Photo Contest announced by Bing.com
While you indulge about images, please note that Bing.com team has announced their first ever photo submission Contest on Facebook. They have chosen the theme “Summer Travel” for this Contest and the winner selected out of this Contest will have his or her photo get displayed on Bing Homepage, on August 3rd, Monday.
For obtaining more details about the Contest and participation terms and conditions, you can go to Bingo photo contest on Facebook. Accordingly you can upload your photos and plunge head on in the contest….. who knows?
Michael Jackson – World Famous “King of Pop” is Dead
The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office officially announced the death of the Pop Star, Michael Jackson, and 50 years. He was pronounced dead around 2.26 pm PDT (2126 GMT), after admitted in a Los Angeles hospital for full cardiac arrest. An autopsy is due on Friday.
The world renowned Pop singer and dancer has been ailing for some time and lived in complete recluse at his home, and was rushed to the hospital when he was not found breathing.
Michael Jackson reached the top from child star to Mega Star and occupied the centre stage in the Pop music and dancing world. The popularity of Michael Jackson, fondly called by his millions of fans, in Europe and other continents as “Wacko Jacko”, is legendary in contemporary world of stage arts. He was known as the “King of Pop Music” and released several hits, which included “Thriller” and “Billie Jean”. The sales of his music videos were believed to be 750 million and Jackson won 13 Grammy Awards.
Michael Jackson was born as one of the nine children to his parents as the seventh child, in Gary, Indiana, on August 29, 1958. When he was 6 years old, he performed a music talent competition, along with four of his brothers and the team walked away with the first prize. The music troupe became popular as Jackson Five.
Jackson’s personal life was not that smooth, as he married twice and divorced, first in 1994 with Elvis Presley’s only daughter Lisa Marie, and again in 1999 with Debbie Rowe. Jackson had 3 children – Prince Michael I, Paris Michael, and Prince Michael II.
Jackson was involved in many infamous sex scandals and bizarre lifestyle, which overshadowed his musical genius. After he was charged on a child molestation case, he was acquitted but went on to avoid the lime light.
Ironically Michael Jackson had planned a thrilling come back by his dance shows in London, scheduled to be held starting from July 13 till March 2010. Tickets for his shows were sold out in minutes they were released.
His fans all over the world and in America will be stunned by the sudden demise of the “Pop King”.
Barack Obama – The Anti-Christ?
I have a friend by name John (not the original name for reasons obvious), who is also a colleague at work. We used to meet every morning of five days in a week, when he visits my house, when I will be watching news on TV. We don’t talk politics at work because it is barred there. During the campaign for presidential election, I found him uncomfortable with the way campaigns were going and some times he revealed himself. Often times he expressed his distrust about Barack Obama and for fear of embarrassing me, not sure of my views on politics, he would say quickly that entire politicians are not trustworthy.
Here a brief introduction of John – he is white, middle aged, no college degree, belongs to Italian origin and put up in a suburb of Long Island. From his talks, I assumed that he is a Christian fundamentalist or rather a fundamentalist on the border line and always talks about Missionaries in Africa and Latin America. We used to chitchat on anything and everything beyond politics and religion and sometimes about Jehovah Witness members, when he would laugh away their 1975 wait for Armageddon.
While I was catching up the news analysis on the day after the Cairo speech of the President Barack Obama, he came by the side of me as usual. Pointing at Obama talking on TV, he said “That guy is the anti-Christ”. It jolted me the way he mentioned – either Obama President or even Obama or the way many slur lovers call him, Hussain.
He continued his accusation that “He is the anti-Christ” and that people like him all over the world. I was baffled as to how I should respond, because I have no knowledge about Christ or anti-Christ. I smiled vaguely, not to embarrass him of my disagreement, but that smile was meaningful to have known him where he belonged.
I started my search online to know what it is to be “anti-Christ” and was surprised to find that there are innumerable websites dedicated to prove Barack Obama is anti-Christ. Even before Obama became president, these websites should have been started and so I guessed these people’s vision.
After reading many of them – which were quite interesting – I came to the conclusion that many have seen Obama’s signs and were sure hundred percent, that Obama would bring to the end the whole journey to be anti-Christ. What they did was finding words that would support their view from here and there and mix them up to prove their pre-judged conclusion. They had rather a wonderful proof of number 666 winning the Illinois lottery, on the day of Obama’s winning the presidential election, and concluded that the “beast” has arrived.
I found it is the way of nut cases to find new conspiracies, losing the conventional wisdom, as conspiracy theorists to prove their point. But the fact is simple – a black man born to a foreign father; having a strange name; and with ears big has become the President of America in the White House. So he ought to have been the anti-Christ and it must be the end of the World.
It makes me more to confirm as ironic that John, who laughed away the Jehovah Witness members waiting for Armageddon in 1975, has this belief.
Of late it is not uncommon to hear that Obama is a great teacher; like a God; a false prophet etc. But what Obama has to say about all these is simply he was not born in a manger, contrary to the rumors. This is what proves Obama as the anti-Christ, because if he is not an anti-Christ he would have born like all of us in a manger.
After end of the War, Sri Lanka May Become to India What Hong Kong is to China
HSBC Private Bank is of the opinion that after the end of the civil war fought over 3 decades, the economy of Sri Lanka could bounce back from the growth, which was the weakest in the last six years and while doing so, it could become the busy market for India, as what Hong Kong to China.
Sri Lanka, an island in the Indian Ocean had its economy shattered by the fighting going on for decades. The Sri Lankan economy worth $32 billion grew 1.5 percent in the last quarter, from what it was a year earlier, although the worldwide recession intensified its slowdown. After the defeat of Tamil Eelam Tiger rebels last month, a recovery is made possible for apparel and tea exporters, retailers and Ports.
Arjuna Mahendran, chief investment strategist for Asia at HSBC Private Bank, overseeing $494 billion assets, based at Singapore, said basically the location of Sri Lanka provides a natural advantage to its port and so the rebound from ruin of the economy will be spectacular. Owing to its proximity to India, as in the case of Hong Kong profited as a trade hub for China, Sri Lanka could also benefit. India is the world’s fastest growing economy, ranked second, and Sri Lank is located just 19 miles (31 kilometers) on the southeast end of India.
Mahendran said Sri Lanka’s Colombo port is handling seventy percent of the goods volume, only as trans-shipment cargo imported by India. Because Indian ports are lacking adequate depth, this volume could be increased in future. In this context, Mahendran pointed out the present plan of Sri Lanka, to quadruple the capacity of the Colombo port, within the next three years.
Ending a 26 years’ struggle for having a separate homeland for them within Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eealam (LTTE) were finally defeated on 16th of May. The Sri Lankan military fiercely launched a never-before offensive since January, with a view to wipe out the Tigers, controlling one third of the country once and so the Tigers fell swiftly.
Great Potential:
Otara Gunewardene, owner of Sri Lanka’s biggest department store Odel, commented that the end of war with LTTE is unbelievable as something no one ever expected to happen, particularly when people have lived their life, mostly under the specter of a dreadful war. So he sees things in a different perspective and foresees a lot of growth potential existing.
In the changed circumstances, Odel departmental store is planning to sell a portion of the stakes in the Company to foreign investors. They have plans of spending $20 million towards adding another 70,000 square feet to their primary store in Colombo, as also opening fresh outlets in more other cities of the country.
Malik Fernando, whose family owns the best-known brands of Ceylon tea in the world – Dilmah Tea Company – is of the view, now that the war with terrorism is over another new economic war is to be fought. Because of the war, infrastructure facilities such as roads and power were neglected and so the cost of doing business has been high for manufacturers.
Sri Lanka’s small economy:
Fernando added that their Tea Company Dilmah had to operate a separate bus service in Colombo for picking up the workforce from their homes, as they were aware that if the workers used the public transport, they would be late in attendance, stressed and fagged out.
Fernando said that in view of the small size of Sri Lankan economy the turn around can be quick and Dilmah has been exploring plans of expansion of its business in hotels and tourism sectors. Sri Lanka’s another biggest diversified Company, John Keells Holdings Ltd. said they foresee wider opportunities of growing its business from property development to banking as also insurance.
HSBC’s Mahendran commented that the demand in respect of high-end lingerie and apparels that Sri Lanka sells oversees, has not been sapped by the worldwide recession and exporters of Tea also could benefit, by the 30 percent upward surge in prices of Tea this year.
Dileep Mudadeniya, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau’s managing director is optimistic of their global campaign named “Small Miracle”, aimed at increasing the number of about 500,000 tourists visiting Sri Lanka annually, by atleast 20 percent.
More number of Tourists for Sri Lanka:
For years the U.S. and European tourists were discouraged by the ongoing civil war, from visiting this beautiful tropical island of Sri Lanka.
The General Manager of Hilton Colombo, Jerome Auvity, informed that for the past two years, the occupancy rates in five star hotels of Colombo, having a total capacity of 2,000 rooms, have been only 40 percent. He said because of this, they could achieve only $62 as the average room tariff per night.
He is of the opinion that there is no immediate reaction to suggest rising trend in business and another six months period is required to instill confidence, in the minds of visitors of leisure market in Sri Lanka. He apprehended that there is still the “dark cloud, debate and issue” about the displaced people.
Nearly 300,000 people have been displaced and left stranded by the final battles and are put up in over 40 rehabilitation camps, all over the northern part of the Sri Lankan country. President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa asserted last month of his intention to resettle these people in that region within 180 days.
However the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka anticipates foreign direct investments would quadruple to $4 billon, before the end of 2012 – led by investments in tourism, ports, textiles and telecommunication.
Investment from foreign countries:
The Chairman of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka, Dhammika Perea, said enthusiastically that they are getting “encouraging responses” from investors in foreign countries and that they anticipate three leading hotel chain businesses, signing an investment agreement with them in the next three months.
An economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. in Singapore, Prakriti Sofat, estimates the economic growth of Sri Lanka to accelerate nearly four times of the current pace to 6 percent before the end of 2010. Another economist of Citygroup Inc., Anushka Shah anticipates the growth to be at 5.7 percent by next year.
The Colombo All-Share Index, which is the benchmark stock index of Sri Lanka, surged upwards by 3.1 percent to reach 2416.02 at the close of trade on 18th June. This is the most ever since the week when the civil war ended, due to local investors snapping up shares.
Top fund managers like George Soros, Mark Mobius and similar others are looked forward upon keenly by the Securities and Exchange Commission, so as to invest in the nation and thereby help the Colombo Stock Exchange to double its market capitalization to $14 billion within a year.
The Director General of the Commission, Channa de Silva, expressed the view that it will take a while for people to realize the end of 30-year civil war in Sri Lanka and what dividends it can bring towards them. He was confident of the vast international interest in Sri Lanka, a country waiting