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 [...]
The Seattle 2.0 Awards, sponsored by GeekWire, lit up the night and the video wall of the EMP Sky Church with the names of movers, shakers and Seattle startup company makers. And the Winners are… Investor of the Year: Chris DeVore The co-creator of Founder’s Co-op is reinventing angel investing with a portfolio that includes more than two dozen [...]
Seattle’s “Two Days of Klout,” A “Kuestionable” Social Expenditure Does it seem counter-intuitive to you that a social media spawning ground like Seattle would attempt to raise its level of social media mind-share by schmoozing the digerati of Klout in Portland, Vamncouver and SFO? It does to us. Yet, that is precisely what [...]
It has all the makings of the EMP Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Tomorrow’s science fact meets today’s science (non-) fiction. Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page and Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt, have teamed up with explorer and film director, James Cameron, to rock their celestial worlds, and their tax returns. By investing in what? [...]
The Seattle Times has won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for its series on pain control in Washington state. The Pulitzer citation says: “Awarded to Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong of The Seattle Times for their investigation of how a little known governmental body in Washington State moved vulnerable patients from safer pain-control medication to methadone, [...]
The Seattle-Redmond-Bellevue “Triangle” is proving to offer all the right angles for those seeking employment in the Tech and Internet sectors, and top paying jobs at that! According to the payroll index at PayScale.com, Seattle has experienced the largest increase in overall salaries in the U.S. this past year. “Super-caffeinated Seattle has done it,” reported PayScale. [...]
What’s the difference between a Seattle Geek, a Seattle Nerd, and their real-world counterparts in Silicon Valley? It didn’t take last week’s Emerald City Comicon to put the answer into sharper focus — but it probably helped! According to an infographic produced by our friends at Killer Infographics (no, they are not “Gangsta”), based on data [...]
Heard the one about the two orange robots who roll into a Belltown bar? “Rough day at work?” says the first bot, named Kiva II, after his parent, to his stock-picking colleague. “I’ve transported more Amazon Prime product off of warehouse shelves today than a Foxconn iPad assembler working overtime!” “Easy for you to say” remotes [...]
The Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) has announced the winners of its 17th Annual Industry Achievement Awards. “The selection process was incredibly difficult, as the finalists represented a deep field of talented technologists, entrepreneurs and great companies. We congratulate them all,” said Susan Sigl, CEO of the WTIA. “Our great state continues to be a hotbed of [...]
Adam Brotman has been appointed chief digital officer at Starbucks Coffee Company and Curt Garner has been named chief information officer. “Over the past several years, there has been a seismic shift in consumer behavior in large part because of the rapid adoption of social and digital media as a primary means of connection and [...]
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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]