LiveSide - News blog : Live Search Mobile

New Live Search Mobile build available

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:20:00 GMT

A new version of Live Search Mobile appeared today, updating the build number from 4.0.12158.1, to 4.1.2029.1. Aside from some slightly larger icons, and perhaps snappier performance, the guys over at WMExperts haven’t noticed much in the way of changes, although commenters seemed to notice some changes to the “Locate Me” feature. No word as of yet from Live Search, but maybe we’ll hear more from either SMX West or the Mobile World Congress. Let us know if you spot anything new.

You can download and install Live Search Mobile to your Windows Mobile or Blackberry at www.wls.live.com, or any get Live Search on any mobile phone at www.m.live.com

Live Search – now on your iPhone!

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:59:00 GMT

Live Search has just released a new version (in the US, UK, and Australia) that includes an iPhone friendly site. This is not an iPhone app, but an iPhone-friendly version of the Live Search site (m.live.com). From an email outlining the new features:

The entire search site is tailored for the iPhone. It’s easier to see the search results and quicker to navigate between result sets like Maps, Local Businesses, Images and Web Results.
Personalization: you can add widgets like a local weather forecast or stock quotes to your Live Search homepage.
To try it, click on “Weather” in the homepage or search for “BP” or “US:MSFT”.
Saved locations: You can now save favourite locations like Home and Work.
To try it, click on “Near->Save My Location” to try it.
NEW IN the UK Walking directions: Live Search now supports walking directions as well driving directions.
To try it, search for “HSBC” or “Tesco”, select “Drive to” to get the directions and then click on “Walk”.
X-Rank: Live Search X-Rank is now available on mobile.
To try it, search for “Madonna” or “U2”.
Mobile web results: Mobile web results now appear on top of results with a quick description. Search for “Hotmail” or “Facebook”.
Encarta answers automatically appear on top of results. We call this pub-quiz mode! To try it, search for “when was bruce springsteen born?”, “what's the capital of kenya?”, “what's the highest mountain?” or “what's the population of uk?”?

We don’t have an iPhone handy to try this out and see if it is actually up and running yet, so leave us a comment if you do.

Windows Live Essentials released, more Windows Live news from CES

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:04:00 GMT

Hopefully you’ve been following the news from CES, as we’ve been stuck at work (or fast asleep in Europe and the UK, hating the 6:30pm keynote time). Anyway let’s take a look at what was announced.

Windows Live

Windows Live Essentials is final, and according to information we have, is ready for download at download.live.com. However I just installed on a couple of machines and it’s the same build number (14.0.8050.1202). So either we’re just calling 1202 good enough to go, or the new build hasn’t quite made it onto download.live.com yet. We’re asking around, and will update as soon as we have more info.

Update: Just got word from a Waggener Edstrom spokesperson that yes, ver 14.0.8050.1202 is indeed the final build, so for those of us with the latest beta, no need to try to re-install.

Anyway, Windows Live MovieMaker will remain in beta, but the rest of Essentials is now (or will be sometime very soon) final.

In addition, Facebook has signed on as a Windows Live feed partner, and “in the coming months” you will be able to get content posted on Facebook, including photos, directly in your Windows Live What’s New feed. Of course this is a major coup for What’s New, as having it tied in to Facebook, who just announced some impressive numbers of their own today, will go a long way toward legitimizing What’s New and Home.Live.com.

And (ahem) One More Thing: Dell will pre-install Windows Live Essentials on all new consumer and small business PCs starting in February. While this is pretty much a no-brainer for Windows 7 machines (considering they won’t have email etc without some sort of add-in), getting Windows Live Essentials on all new machines from now until the time Windows 7 is available (if I was in Vegas at CES, I would be betting heavily on a summer RTM and availability for back-to-school and holiday sales) is a plus for Windows Live.

Live Search

Dell will also ship “a majority” of new PCs (consumer and small business) with Microsoft’s Live Search installed as the default search provider, again beginning in Feb 2009.

As we reported earlier, Verizon Wireless will offer Live Search as well as search and display advertising to all Verizon Wireless subscribers with phones capable of accessing the mobile web, applying to new Verizon feature phones and smartphones in the first half of 2009.

Live Search for Mobile is also being updated (and this update is available now, at least for me,) at wls.live.com , including location detection (for devices without a GPS), predictive query input, and Bird’s Eye mapping in Live Search for Mobile apps.

Note: You can watch a copy of the keynote, or check out some demos, at the Microsoft CES site: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ces/

Verizon to use Live Search, to be announced by Steve Ballmer at CES tonight: Reuters report

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:58:24 GMT

via CNET

Reuters is reporting that Verizon Communications Inc. has agreed to a mobile search deal with Microsoft, details to be announced by Steve Ballmer in his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on Wednesday evening.

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg speaking at a Citigroup conference, let slip the news earlier today, giving no further details.

Check out LiveSide on your new iPhone!

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:01:46 GMT

OK if you to have to go out and buy a new iPhone, that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up with the latest Windows Live news and information, and in style.

A few months ago we wanted to make it easier to get LiveSide on your phone, and we signed up with MoFuse. They do a great job of presenting a quick view of LiveSide on your mobile device (they basically take our RSS feed and style it up a bit). Today they announced that they’ve updated their iPhone experience, just in time for the release of the new iPhones.

You can check out LiveSide on the iPhone (http://m.liveside.net/iphone), or if you have a ~~real~~ Windows Mobile phone (or any mobile device) you can read LiveSide on that (http://m.liveside.net/), too (and type on a keyboard, and get Live Search and Windows Live).

Thanks to David Berube and the people at MoFuse for the updates, even though we feel a little sorry for them for using all those Macs.

(you can also reach LiveSide at www.liveside.net/mobile)

Search, Give, and share with “Live Search”

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:09:03 GMT

Some changes are beginning to pop with Live Search, up to including a possible new name and brand. Yesterday at SMX Advanced, Online Services President Kevin Johnson talked to Danny Sullivan for Search Engine Watch about branding. From the Associated Press:

Now that Microsoft has abandoned its $47.5 billion takeover bid for competitor Yahoo Inc., its marketing team is working on fixing Microsoft's search image to make it more competitive with Google Inc., Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platforms and services division said at a search advertising conference in Seattle hosted by the parent company of news site SearchEngineLand.com.

Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand, asked Johnson if he meant Microsoft wants to "change" its image in search instead of fix it.

"Fix means fix," Johnson replied. "If that means change, we'll change."

In recent weeks, Live Search has redone the Live.com home page, announced the “cashback” program, integrated Farecast.com into Live Search, updated Live Search for Mobile, pulled the plug on Live Search Books and Academic, revamped Live Search Club, completed a major deal with HP to pre-install a Live Search Toolbar on all new HP computers, starting next year, offered new webmaster tools and 404 redirects, and now today has announced two more bits of news.

The first, Search and Give is a program that donates money to charities when users use Live Search through a special web page:

By signing up at www.searchandgive.com, consumers can start donating one-cent to more than 100K schools and 900K non-profit organizations worldwide, every time they use the Internet to find whatever interests them – up to 500 searches permitted per person per month. People can also convert the tickets they’ve earned playing games on Microsoft’s Live Search Club, at www.club.live.com, into donations for those same schools or charities!

Available today at: www.searchandgive.com

and then Microsoft Research has just announced a beta of a pilot program called “SearchTogether”, which allows users to collaborate on searches. This collaboration helps in a number of ways, according to an announcement on the MSR page:

Awareness: The most valuable of the three. This is enabled by sharing group query histories and making them interactive, thereby reducing duplication. This process also can promote search learning, in which someone with rudimentary search skills can learn how to formulate more effective search queries by working with a person with more expertise. The ability to see other group members’ comments and ratings on specific search results also provides awareness about the group’s progress toward accomplishing their shared task.
Division of labor: SearchTogether integrates session-specific instant messaging into the search experience so that those working together on a search project don’t have to switch back and forth between a search client and Live Messenger to negotiate division of labor. Additionally, special collaborative query styles, such as “split searching,” provide automatic division of labor by partitioning a single set of search results among all team members. Sharing of queries and recommendations helps make the search effort productive.
Persistence: The group’s queries, comments, ratings, and chats are stored in a persistent search session, facilitating asynchronous communication and helping collaborators get up to speed.

Watch a video demo of SearchTogether

Download SearchTogether

Farecast, Product search, mobile demos from Satya Nadella at Advance08

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:27:00 GMT

I’ve been getting a little more familiar with the little video camera I picked up a few weeks ago. Today at the Advance08 advertisers summit at Microsoft in Redmond, as part of the keynote with Bill Gates and Satya Nadella, Satya showed off Farecast, a recent acquistion that is now integrated into Live Search, and I pointed the little Sanyo toward the stage:

Farecast DEMO by Satya Nadella at Advance08 - MSN Video

(about 8:44)