The Seattle-Search.com Blog

How does Microsoft challenge Google’s hegemony in Web search as an unaccustomed challenger brand? One frequent flier credit at a time. The mighty Redmondites are offering large enterprise customers free service and product credits if those customers promote Live search inside their enterprises.

Called “Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search,” a Powerpoint overview of the program sent to me states: “Employees search the web daily with tools from Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo. OEMs and web sites are already earning credits based on searches that their users bring. Now, your organization can earn credits for Microsoft web searches and redeem them for Microsoft or preferred partner deployment and training services. More searches earns more credits towards the services you value.”

Acccording to the story which broke on John Batelle’s Weblog, the value is non-trivial - the Powerpoint deck estimates companies can get from $2 to $10 per computer annually, plus a $25K “enrollment credit”. For sites that have tens of thousands of computers, that can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in free stuff from Microsoft. Most large enterprises spend millions on Microsoft services and software each year. It’s not hard to imagine a CFO getting jazzed over savings like these.

America can vote for its favorite finalist at http://www.ideawins.com March 5-10 and the winner will be chosen on network television; prize package includes $100,000, a rent-free storefront for a year, and a comprehensive suite of Microsoft software and services.

Microsoft has announced the four finalists in the Ultimate Challenge contest, the nationwide search for the best small-businessThe Ultimate Challenge kicked off in New York City last fall and nearly 5,000 entrepreneurs from across the country entered with a wide array of innovative ideas. The contest, along with the launch of Microsoft(R) Office Accounting Express 2007, spurred the imagination of aspiring small-business owners. Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 is Microsoft’s free financial management software for home-based and newly formed small businesses.

With over 1 million downloads to date, Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 is available as a free download at http://www.ideawins.com/. Microsoft created this campaign and contest to show its commitment to helping small businesses and demonstrate its belief that everyone has a great business idea inside waiting to happen; all that’s needed are the right tools. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent blog entry from Microsoft’s Live Search announces, Use Live Search and We’ll Donate to Team Seattle and Ninemillion.org.

If you search at http://teamseattle.live.com/, Microsoft will donate $1 to Team Seattle’s Seattle’s Children’s Hospital fund. Each time you search at http://teamseattle.live.com/, Microsoft will donate $1, but it has to be at teamseattle.live.com.

In addition, if you search at http://click4thecause.live.com/, Microsoft will “contribute to ninemillion.org, a UN agency-led campaign providing education and sports programs for the nine million refugee youth around the world.” The specific amount of that contribution was not disclosed or immediately found.

To celebrate the upcoming consumer release of the Windows Vista(TM) operating system, Microsoft Corp. and AMD have launched “Vanishing Point,” billed as the largest puzzle game in the world and featuring a grand prize that is simply out of this world.

Each week, twelve puzzles are posted online. “Vanishing Point” requires contestants to gather clues in order to complete parts of a puzzle. The clues are being revealed at real-world events including a takeover of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino fountains and cryptic skywriting messages. Such sights are driving people to find out more, with hopes of winning the grand prize: a trip to space, courtesy of Rocketplane Limited.

This week, more clues will be unveiled at some of the most well-known structures in the world. Projections appearing on the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the National Gallery in London, the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto and the Victoria Theater in Singapore will advance the intrigue in this mysterious game.

The action hinges on the true identity of the mysterious Microsoft Puzzle Master. While the Puzzle Master is keeping many details highly confidential, Microsoft has hinted that more offline events could happen later this month.

Online conversations about “Vanishing Point” can be found at http://www.technorati.com/search/vanishing+point+game. More information, official rules and coverage of the offline events are available at http://vanishingpointgame.com/.

Rumors are floating that Microsoft is about to come out with a free Web analytics service which will rival Google Analytics.

The project is currently called Gatineau and a Welcome page is now live, but you can’t login just yet. Little is known about Gatineau at this point.  It is noted that the project is code named Gatineau after the city in Canada where DeepMetrix was based.

Microsoft has announced it will begin to update the Virtual Earth(TM) online mapping platform with new, more detailed U.S. imagery under an agreement with GlobeXplorer LLC, a leading global provider of aerial and satellite images.

The deal is part of Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to bring consumers the most up-to-date content and help them easily explore broader geographic areas through the Live Search Maps service (http://maps.live.com/ ), which is powered by Virtual Earth.

As part of the deal, more than 400,000 square miles of U.S. aerial imagery will be enhanced with high-resolution coverage. Microsoft and GlobeXplorer plan to integrate the new imagery into Virtual Earth over the next several months.

More information about the Virtual Earth platform is available at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth .

Microsoft has a built-in incentive program that some pundits — including former MS super-blogger Robert Scoble — believe could be a secret weapon in the battle for search market share against Google, Yahoo and ASK.

The concept of Achievement Points and a Gamerscore has become more popular than Microsoft ever imagined. Building on the time-honored, incentive marketing redemption power of cumulative awatd poin programs like the classic S&H Green Stamps (circa 1896) and frequent-flier miles, the Microsoft Xbox 360 thought it had a brainstorm when it borrowed a page from the past.

The “Achievement Points” were so successful that Microsoft decided to productize the idea. MS mandated that every developer of Xbox 360 games “hide” 1,000 achievement points in every retail game and 200 in every casual game. Players would earn points for certain successes in the game. The more challenging the task, the more points are added to the player’s profile — or Gamerscore — which is visible to anyone who cares to look.

Now imagine if you could earn an achievement for “doing 100 Windows Live searches, or doing a search that has no results for it, or doing a search that’ll return a Microsoft.com page in the #1 spot,” posits Scoble.

Frequent surfer programs have yet to catch any kind of wave.  Will a Frequent searcher program make a bigger splash?

Microsoft has unfurled a Wi-Fi HotSpot Locator using MSN Virtual Earth maps and imagery. Find 114,008 free and paid WiFi hotspots in 100 countries. The Windows Live Hotspot Locator await here.