Bing won the “Best New Startup or Product of 2009” category at the TechCrunch Crunchie awards. Thankfully Harry Shum was able to fly down to be on hand to accept. This is a really great honor for Bing, and an amazing statement that the community voted us in. You can read the coverage and watch Harry Shum’s humorous acceptance speech.
Congrats to the team on building a truly amazing product!
I just receive notification that VS2010 and .NET 4 will be launch on April 12, 2010. There will be a public RC for both technologies in February.
Went though my email this morning and saw an article published by the official Google blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
From the sound of it, it seems that they are seriously considering to either get any censorship lifted on Google’s service in China or they’ll move out for good. Pretty interesting considering the fact that China’s growth and scale has been rising over the past few years and Google seems to be willing to lose out a big piece of pie for the sake of total freedom of speech.
You can read more in the link above. I’ll be seeing how the Chinese government will react to their decision and their request.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Just Got Easy
Today, Microsoft announced a monthly spotlight series, beginning with the SEO Toolkit, an extension for IIS.
Start with the free download, review your website, and make changes fast. The SEO Toolkit with its detailed analysis and search engine friendly suggestions helps improve the relevance of your website in search results right away.
The SEO Toolkit will help you:
· Increase website traffic and revenue
· Influence and update search engines
· Improve customer experience
For more information or to download, please visit the Free SEO Toolkit page.
SEO Just Got Easy: Microsoft highlights the free SEO Toolkit to increase website traffic and revenue http://bit.ly/7haUxX
(Pictures/Content abstracted from: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsphone/archive/2009/09/01/windows-phones-are-coming-on-october-6th.aspx)
Microsoft will be releasing a series of new phones with it’s partners on October 6th.
This week, in our regular FOW story we look at another of our key features that we’d like you to know more about, so you can make the best use of it. Today take in depth look into Deep Links
What are Deep Links?
Deep Links are a list of popular links within a site, that are displayed within the top result, usually our Best Match result, when we are confident that the user intends to navigate to the top site. Customer research says the number one thing people are looking for in a search engine is the quickest way to find what they are looking for. Deep Links do exactly that and help simplify the user’s task by taking them one step closer to their final destination.
How does it work?
Using toolbar and IE data we determine the most popular actions taken on the homepage and provide quick links to those right on the SERP within the best match top link. We’re currently serving Deep Links for 1.4M sites and the Deep Link feature is displayed for 30% of overall queries issued on the SERP.
A great example of Deep Links in action is the below query for Alaskan Airlines – right within the result, below the website summary description, you have quick access to flight status, check in and reservations.
Perhaps you are planning a visit to a national park this Labor Day weekend? Using top Deep Links you can easily and quickly plan your trip, find directions and check up on fees and current conditions.
Looking to find the closest location of a retail store, or a specific department within it? Using Deep Links you can quickly navigate to a retail store’s popular departments or store locator page without having to click through to the site home page. What a time saver!
Popularity
Deep Links are one of the most popular features on the sites. They are the second most clicked feature after algo results. The below pie shows a comparison of clicks each of the different site features received in the month of July (algo results not included). Some examples of our most popular Deep Links include:-
· users click on Directions 18% of the time that we display Deep Links for MapQuest
· users click through to the Mail Deep Link 19% of the time for Yahoo
GIzmodo (http://gizmodo.com/5334331/zune-hd-prices-leaked-16gb-for-220-32gb-for-290) reported a leak in pricing for Zune HD. Apparently someone checked the inventory system and found the price in BestBuy.
Release date is September 8th.
This week, in our regular FOW story we take a deeper look into Bing Travel and a few of its key features that really differentiate Bing Travel. This feature is for US and Canadian departures only.
The Price Predictor
One of the more intelligent tools that makes Bing an effective decision engine is our Price Predictor. The Price Predictor helps users answer the key question of when is the right time to book my airline tickets. Based on more than 175 billion (and counting!) airfare observations, using real pricing and availability information, the Price Predictor helps users decide to buy now or wait.
Let’s see how it works using a sample search (conducted on July 10). From the Bing Travel homepage, enter your cities and dates, and click “search flights.” On the next screen, you’ll see results with specific itineraries, and to the left, an arrow with our buying recommendation.
In this example, the Price Predictor for a flight from Los Angeles to Denver recommends that you buy the listed fare, with a 79% confidence rate that fares would rise $50 or more over the next seven days. (And we were right! The fare jumped $82 during that week.) Click on the “details and fare history link” and you’ll see additional information that makes it easy for you to decide whether to buy now or wait:
· details about the price prediction and confidence rates
· the daily fare history for this itinerary
How do we get all of this data? Every day, Bing Travel gathers millions of potential trip itineraries from a variety of airfare information sources. We track more than 2,500 combinations of origin and destination cities — from U.S. and Canadian departures to destinations worldwide — for trips of up to 21 nights over as long as a 180-day period. We crunch all of this information in order to show you the airfare history and create our price predictions for a given market. It may sound complicated, but it’s all aimed at making your travel search simple — so you can find the best deals and have confidence about when to buy your tickets. And, with the money you save, you will be able to start planning your next trip that much sooner!
The Hotel Rate Indicator
Unlike the Price Predictor, the Hotel Rate Indicator doesn’t project whether the cost of a room will go up or down on the dates you want to stay; instead, it compares the current rates to past rates for that hotel, helping you buy with confidence. Let’s work through another example search for hotels in Las Vegas.
From Bing Travel, search hotels in Las Vegas for your dates. On the search results page, you can filter by the number of stars, amenities, brand or geographical location. Then, click “open map” to see a visual layout of the available hotels for your selections:
In the above example (the search was conducted on July 27), for hotels for Labor Day weekend the pinpoints are colored to indicate value for money:
· the green color indicates a “deal”
· the yellow color shows this hotels has an “average rate”
· the red color indicates the cost per night at this hotel is “not a deal”
Mouse over each property and you can see the specific prices and star ratings. The Hotel Rate Indicator is also great for travelers with flexible dates. Click on the hotel listing to see the average rates for weekends before and after the dates you originally picked:
Here the Rate Indicator shows that you could actually stay at this property for about half the cost, by going the previous weekend. Mouse over the short green bar and you’ll see that the average rate is only $169. Now that’s a deal! Just be sure not to squander all your savings at the blackjack table.
Flexible search tools
Along with Bing Travel’s Price Predictor and Hotel Rate Indicator we also have flexible search tools that can save you money on flights when you haven’t decided exactly when or where you want to go.
First, let’s suppose you’re thinking about a trip to Hawaii in September, but haven’t yet settled on when to go. From the Bing Travel homepage, scroll down to the “plan trips” section, and select your departure and destination cities. On the next screen, you’ll see a graph with the lowest fares over a 30-day range. Under “refine results” in the left column, you can change your dates or your trip length, and compare the fares to those that are available to additional airports:
In this example (the search was done on Aug. 3), we can tell that the lowest possible fares to Hawaii in September are for departures on Sept. 2, 12, 15, 20 or 26. And you can see that the lowest fares are for flights into Honolulu (the blue line), and that fares to Maui (the red line) are generally, but not always, lower than fares to Kona (the green line). If you were to click on one of the circles, you’ll get details for that fare, as well as a link to search for specific flights. It’s that easy to find the lowest possible price to multiple destinations over a range of dates.
Now let’s suppose that you’re truly flexible, not just on when you travel but also on where you go. Say you live in Kansas City, and have a budget of $200 for airfare. Where can you go? From Bing Travel’s flexible search page, go to the left column under “refine results” and select your departure city, a 30-day date range, your desired trip length and even a maximum price. The map displays all of the cities to which there are fares that meet your criteria.
In the above example you could fly from Kansas City, round-trip to Denver for just $129, or all the way to Baltimore for just $168. Check out the arrow next to each fare, which indicates our price prediction over the next seven days, and then click the search link to find and book specific flights.
Until now, you may not have realized just how many places you can go when you don’t have a lot of money to spare. And even better, Bing Travel’s flexible search tools are a foolproof way to make sure you stay within your travel budget — whether you’re searching for sunshine in Hawaii or looking to escape the heartland for the coast.
Now you can IM from your browser directly with Windows Live Web Messenger (http://webim.sg.msn.com/)
No software installation required.. pretty cool. you can now chat with your friend at school, at work, in the library, or overseas!
Windows Azure:
- Compute = $0.12 / hour
- Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month
- Storage Transactions = $0.01 / 10K
- Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB
SQL Azure:
- Web Edition – Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month
- Business Edition – Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month
- Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB
.Net Services:
- Messages = $0.15/100K message operations , including Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens
- Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB
How Comsumption is Measured
Windows Azure
- Compute time, measured in machine hours: Windows Azure compute hours are charged only for when your application is deployed. When developing and testing your application, developers will want to remove the compute instances that are not being used to minimize compute hour billing.
- Storage, measured in GB: Storage is metered in units of average daily amount of data stored (in GB) over a monthly period. E.g. if a user uploaded 30GB of data and stored it on Windows Azure for a day, her monthly billed storage would be 1 GB. If the same user uploaded 30GB of data and stored it on Windows Azure for an entire billing period, her monthly billed storage would be 30GB. Storage is also metered in terms of storage transactions used to add, update, read and delete storage data. These are billed at a rate of $0.01 for 10,000 (10k) transaction requests
- Bandwidth requirements (transmissions to and from the Azure datacenter), measured in GB: Bandwidth is charged based on the total amount of data going in and out of the Azure services via the internet in a given 30-day period. Bandwidth within a datacenter is free.
- Transactions, measured as application requests
SQL Azure
Web Edition Relational Database includes:
- Up to 1 GB of T-SQL based relational database
- Self-managed DB, auto high availability and backup
- Auto Scale with pay-as-you grow
- Best suited for Web application, Departmental custom apps.
Business Edition DB includes:
- Up to 10 GB of T-SQL based relational database
- Self-managed DB, auto high availability and backup
- Auto Scale, Pay-as- you grow
- Additional features in the future like auto-partition, CLR, fanouts etc.
- Best suited for ISVs packaged LOB apps, Department custom apps
.NET Services:
Messages (Includes Access Control, Orchestration, and Reliable Queuing for message): .NET Services allow developers to easily connect their cloud applications and databases with existing software assets and users. This connection between cloud and on-premises assets is facilitated by the exchange of messages. The consumption-based pricing model means that customers will pay only for the number of message operations that their applications use. The definition of a “message operation” includes Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens. Messages are charged to the customer in discrete blocks of 100,000 (“100k”) for each monthly billing period, meaning that
- A customer who consumed 95,000 messages would be billed for 1x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).
- A customer who uses 150,000 messages in a billing period would be charged for 2x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).
- A customer who uses 20 million messages in a billing period would be charged for 200x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).
You can read more about SLA and other information at http://www.microsoft.com/azure/pricing.mspx
The XP2Win7 project features the PhotoView, a WPF application that runs on XP. But the fun starts when you run the same application on Windows 7, which unlocks new technologies such as Taskbar, the Sensors and Location Platform, and Multitouch, as well as “old” Vista friends such as Application Recovery and Windows Search.
Our goal is to show developers how to take advantage of the new Windows 7 features while keeping backward compatibility with older windows versions. We also wanted to show a managed code application that uses a lot of the native API that are not present in the .NET Framework, and by doing so to lower the bar for.NET developers as they target Windows 7.
You can read Jason post about the application
You can download the application from here - http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/XP2Win7
And here are some screen capture of the application running on Win 7 and Windows XP.
Domain selection is one of the most important component of SEO. A good domain name will give you a significant amount of relevancy when people searched on terms related to your site. For example, when people search about “Windows Live”, they will be matched first with the Live domain. Choosing a good URL basically sets out the right foundation to build upon your content and other SEO related work.
Some key points on Domain names:
http://www.mysite.com
http://mysite.com
http://sg.mysite.com
are all different site although they belong to the same parent domain. Search engine view sites based on their absolute URL instead of parent domain. This is important because we will want to avoid having multiple variations of our domain on the web and causing us to dilute the inbound links and pagerank associated with us.
If you:
- Already have a range of domains pointing to the same location (e.g. you have people coming into your site on http://mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com)
Step 0: Identify a list of URL that you think your visitors are using. (e.g. with and without www, with default.aspx or without, with index.html or without, etc). If the site is already active, you can take a look at the referral URL or landing page URL using your site statistic tool.
Step 1: Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ ,enter all the variations of your URL into the search bar:
What you will see here is the number of InLinks (also know as InBound Links).
Step 2: Next, you should run through the different kind of URL that you think your visitors are coming and identify the one with the highest number of inbound links.
Step 3: After you have selected the URL that is most popular among your users, you will need to set 301 Redirect for all the other URLs in the list to point to the one you’ve selected. 301 Redirect is a special code that tells the search engine that you site has been redirected and they will credit the site score to the consolidated site.
Next, if you are running a regional site, for example, http://www.mycompany.com where you want to have local site for SG/MY/TH. Many times, people will use subdomain for this purpose (creating sg.mycompany.com, my.mycompany.com, th.mycompany.com). This is fine if all the site has different content or you want to build each site separate from others.
However, more often than not, it is wiser to simply create subdirectories http://www.mycompany.com/sg or http://www.mycompany.com/my. The reason is simply because you can do SEO once for the mycompany domain and all the localize site will be able to enjoy the benefits. Furthermore, inbound links associated from all the local site will be associated with the parent domain which is a good way to chalk up more points.
Key Points to note:
- URL is extremely important. Make sure you use a domain that is relevant to your topic
- Stick to one URL for your entire site, don’t have a mix of URL pointing to the same content
- Use 301 Redirects to consolidate your site into one central landing page. 301 doesn’t deal any demerit points and is the correct way to redirect page points to the main site.
- Try to use subfolders instead of subdomain if your site is showing the same content
The 2009 Imagine Cup World Finals kick off next week, when Ray Ozzie officially opens the event on July 3rd at the Citadel in Cairo, Egypt.
The Imagine Cup challenges students to use technology to solve the world’s toughest problems – as defined by the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.
This is the seventh Imagine Cup and the largest yet. Over 300,000 students from every corner of the globe registered for this year’s competition (up from 200,000 last year) and through local, regional and online finals, the top 400 students will compete from July 3rd to July 7th with the winners being announced at the foot of the Pyramids.
The students are using technology to create projects that address major problems from HIV/AIDS to education, reducing child mortality and environmental sustainability - using Microsoft technologies. We think there’s a great opportunity to mobilize everyone at Microsoft around this incredible competition.
Here’s some ideas and resources:
Vote for your favorite:
To celebrate the finals we are today launching the People’s Choice awards where you can view videos from all the software design finalists and vote for your favorite. Visit: http://peopleschoice.imaginecup.com/
Follow the action online:
For those who can’t make it to Cairo we have a whole set of online resources to follow the latest news from the finals:
· Follow the competition as it happens on the Imagine Cup Blog: http://www.imaginecupfinals.com
· Follow the latest news and resources on Twitter: imagine_cup (#imaginecup)
· Join the Imagine Cup fan page on Facebook
· We also will be publishing content on the Imagine Cup PressPass site.
I will be onsite to give live blogging updates. Do check out my blog regularly during those period and I will try to make as much post as I can.
I stumbled upon this site recently: http://www.istartedsomething.com/bingimages/?m=5&y=2009 which showcases all the past and present Bing homepage background images. Being a Bing fan, this ought to be a nice site to view some of the images that you’ve missed.
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