He doesn’t carry a badge, tear gas or pepper spray. The closest he’ll ever get to his nemesis — who could be hiding anywhere in the world (and is always in disguise) — is a computer in Lake City, just outside of Seattle. But thanks to the filtering software he developed known as Spam Cop, [...]
A virtual patron saint of career opportunity who manages one of the most popular Internet mailing lists of select job openings throughout the Puget Sound, Curt Rosengren believes that what comes around, goes around. He hasn’t forgotten the good advice and good fortune he benefited from when breaking into Seattle’s ultra-competitive field of high-tech marketing, [...]
Alex St. John, whose company Wild Tangent picked up a cool $34 million in venture capital last week, has been named by Ziff-Davis as one of the “Most Influential People in Multimedia.” He’s also been lampooned as one of the looniest. Whichever may be the case, Microsoft was so impressed by his unique brand of [...]
When Marty Smith graduated the University of Washington Law School in 1981 and went to work for the law firm that would eventually become Preston, Gates & Ellis, a company in Redmond known as Microsoft had around 100 employees. “It was a fairly small client that took very little time,” he recalls. But when the [...]
Khody Golshan is one of a new breed of community-minded Seattle impresario. A natural promoter, he has single-handedly accepted the challenge of coaxing the local Internet set away from their keyboards, out of their cubicles, and into real, live face-space, elbow to elbow, cocktail (or soft drink) in hand. The affable senior account executive from [...]
In theory, the wireless Web shouldn’t be too hard to build. Start with the content that already exists on the Web, link it to a WAP (wireless application protocol) phone and faster than you can say “end-to-end solution,” you’re in business. Right? “Not even close,” says Brad Silverberg, the executive who led Microsoft’s Windows business [...]
On its cover, the recently released book Digital Moviemaking: The Filmmaker’s Guide to the 21st Century is described as “A Butt-Kicking, Pixel Twisting Vision of the Digital Future and How to Make Your Next Movie on Your Credit Card.” Such a bold, brash manifesto requires a stalwart champion. It finds one in the personage of [...]
Who says Canadians are boring? Last week, at Vancouver’s Voda (the newest cool nightclub up there) Linda Richards and her life partner David Middleton sipped BlueCoupe Martinis with 200 or so local media mavens and lookers on. The occasion? The launch of BlueCoupe.com, a music-review site with the same premise as the duo’s thriving Januarymagazine.com [...]
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May 14 2012
Google Blinks! Bing Sings, and Slings the Arrows of Social Interface Discontent! Amazon’s Social “Denny Triangle!”
At last week’s Bing Search Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft took the wraps off a brand new Bing featuring a new, right-hand social column (“The Sidebar”) that will eventually include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Quora and LinkedIn integration, as well as people who may know something about your most recent Bing query. The new Bing search even offers a way to ask questions on your favorite social network, directly through Bing. “The search engine has been reinvented!” wrote Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff.
In total, there are three new Bing columns in all:
* Core Search: minus many of the social annotations that Bing has added over the years (that have been relocated).
* Snapshot: providing additional information about a particular search listing, without having to leave Bing
* Sidebar: serving as the new home for social integration with search
“With this update, the competing search philosophies are clearer than ever,” opined Mashable. “Google sees the world as a deep blend of data, people and activities, all of which can be mined simultaneously for a rich and useful experience. Bing sees a more structured world, where social interactions, while extremely helpful, are kept a safe distance from the core results you desire.”
How does Bing build these “Friends Who Might Know” lists? Microsoft execs explained they’re leveraging as much publicly available data as possible from Facebook (for now) and soon Twitter and other networks. Inclusion in the list is not necessarily based on something you posted about the topic.
The sidebar includes people you know through your social networks that have, say, posted a photo about the topic, liked a certain relevant topic or searched for a similar topic in Bing, and people you don’t know, who are, for example, known Topic Experts and Enthusiasts (identified by Bing). All of them could be considered helpful in your quest for knowledge. Conversations revolving around a query topic are viewable through the social pane — you just hover over the activity and a small box will slide out to the left with the original post. You can add comments in any conversation in the activity pane or see the conversation in the slideout.
For example, a search for “Seattle restaurants” might pull up Facebook friends who have “liked” dining establishments in the metro area under a header that reads “Friends Who Might Know.” Bing users can also post comments or queries in the sidebar interface that will automatically be published to their Facebook page (provided they’re signed into Facebook) and could hypothetically flag their Seattle-based friends in posts seeking advice on where to go for dinner.
To see the new pane at work, you have to sign into Facebook and install the Bing App in Facebook. With that done, your social pane will be filled with recent Bing activity that’s also been shared on Facebook. When you enter a search query in the Bing interface on the left, the pane will also display a list of Facebook friends, and topic experts who might be able to assist with your query. Note: The Bing App defaults to sharing your posts with Everyone. If you do a lot of searching, you may want to dial that down a bit.
This deep integration with Facebook isn’t the first time the two have collaborated, and Bing has been adding social recommendations powered by Facebook to its search results for the past year. But it’s a sure sign that Microsoft — which bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million in 2007 — will lean on a company it’s heavily invested in to improve on the social-search product Google introduced in January. “Search Plus Your World” pulls up Google+ content deemed relevant to signed-in Google users and has gotten a tepid reception, said Adage. [24x7]
Amazon Advances Its Vision for a Social Campus Compass, Not an “Apple Circle,” but a “Denny Triangle.”
The City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development has posted the latest renderings of Amazon’s proposed Denny Triangle campus.
At a public design review board meeting, attendees liked proposed amenities that include outdoor artwork, a playing field, a dog park and space for food trucks.
The venue also incorporates a healthy measure of social engineering into the design. To ensure public open spaces between buildings are both lively and safe, buildings are designed so that people who park their cars in the underground garages will have to walk outside to get from the garage elevators to the elevators in the building lobbies. “That will help ensure a steady flow of people moving through the plazas.”
The project will also be a haven for bicyclists. Each of the three blocks will have a dedicated bike entrance and storage for as many as 400 bikes. That could allow as many as 1,200 Amazon employees to bike to work. [24x7]