Windows Live Search - new kid on the 3D block
Video: Virtual Earth 3D Trailer
Live Search is sneaking up behind Google in terms of relevance all the time and also the Live platform is constantly releasing new and cool stuff. Recently, I posted about Virtual Earth 3D which was introduced to complement our mapping technology but I just realised I've not even mentioned the Image, News, Feeds or academic verticals in Live Search.
Today we had a lunch and demo with David Graham, the UK Product Manager for Microsoft's Search which was very interesting indeed. He highlighted the following things in his talk and I wanted to share them with you:
Getting serious about getting search market share:
- New TV Advertising in the UK
- National Print
- Heavy online presence
Live.com
A Search driven, personisable experience. Personalised includes
- Feeds, Live Gadgets, Mail etc
- Personal Dashboard
Live Search Verticals
- Web
- IMages
- News
- Maps
- Academic (Beta)
- Feeds (Beta)
Images Search
- Innovative UI experience - good feedback from Blogosphere and press
- Live preview and resizing
- Infinite Scrolling
- Work with image easily - scratch pad, email it etc.
- Results from orginal query after clicking an image
News Search
- Localised
- No ads
Web Search
- Automatically answers questions and gives search results
- Answers mathematical forumlas and algebraic expressions
- Weather results
- Advanced query syntax (see the help section)
- filter by site or document type
- Definitions
- e.g. define:switch
- Interesting advanced search stuff
- url:microsoft.com - check if a domain is listed by Live Search
- which other servers are running on the same IP address?
- who else links to my domain?
- which links are on this domain?
Local Search (Maps)
- Rebranded to "Maps"
- Microsoft UK link to local live map
- Campus information and picture highlighted
- Search collection includes
- Shuttle bus info
- Train station
- Taxi rank etc
- Zoom to street level
- Build Collections using the scratch pad
- Good for plannig trips
- Useful for sharing your location so friends/family/customers can find you easily
- Traffic Warnings
- Hotspots painted on the map
- Bird's eye view of map
- Geometric UK cities added in the last few months - so very recent images
- Virtual Earth 3D
- Love Lewisham Project
- A Local London Borough's initative to combat anti-social activities like grafitti and rubbish dumping. Residents are encourage to upload their photos to the Love Lewisham website and the locate their photo using Live Maps - the council then sort out the problem much more quickly. What a great way to bring the community together! Check out a screenshot of the website here:
Finally, a more light-hearted view of the "battle" between Live Search vs Google can be seen here: