Posts Tagged evoke-the-sound
Surprise! Bing Can Outdo Google
Posted by Hassan Alsheikh in Articles on July 10th, 2009
For the past 15 years, Microsoft’s master business plan seems to have been, “Wait until somebody else has a hit. Then copy it.”
I know that sounds mean, but come on — the list of commercial hits/Microsoft wannabes is as long as your arm. You would think Microsoft would feel a little sheepish after awhile.
And now we have yet another me-too effort. It’s something called Bing, and it’s the latest iteration of Microsoft’s multiyear attempt to imitate Google.
The name, presumably, is supposed to evoke the sound of a winning game-show bell. The cynics online, however, joke that Bing is an acronym for, “But it’s not Google.”
Here’s the shocker, though: In many ways, Bing is better.
That’s quite a statement, of course — almost heresy. But check it out yourself. It’s easy to compare the two, thanks to sites like bing-vs-google.com. Here, you are shown search results from both Bing and Google, side-by-side, on a split screen.
At first, Bing is pretty much Google: a Search box; a menu that offers to complete what you are typing; and inconspicuous links to Images, Videos, News, Shopping and Maps.
Once you hit Enter, however, you can’t help noticing Bing’s more concerted effort to get you answers faster.
For starters, how’s this for a dream feature? Point to any search result without clicking; a pop-up balloon shows you the first few paragraphs of text on it. Without leaving the results list, you know whether it’s going to be helpful. Here’s another example. On Google, search results usually appear as a long list of blue text links. Occasionally, a photo appears, too. Or, if your search clearly has only one informational answer — weather, stock price, sports scores, street address — you get that answer right at the top: a five-day weather forecast, a stock chart, current game scores, a…
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Surprise! Bing Can Outdo Google
Google Calendar Gadgets Appearing
Posted by Hassan Alsheikh in Articles on June 14th, 2009
Andrew Pariser emails in a surprise finding in Google Calendar (if by any chance you’re able to reproduce this – I’m not – please comment):
Opened up gcal today, to find an interesting new “Gadgets” link under the google logo. Clicking it opens a right side pane that introduces a gadgets menu and a selection of gadgets to choose from:
- Add Tasks
- Add Googler Search
- Add Jump to Date
- Add Next Meetings
- Add Time Zones
- Add Where Are My Friends?
I also have a nice “INTERNAL ONLY” tag at the top of this menu, even though I’m not and have never been a google employee. (…)
Most of the gadgets (tasks, jump to date, time zone) are pretty obvious. Next meetings shows the next event scheduled in your calendar. Googler search presumably allows me to search the employee database, although I think it’s disabled for me. Where are my friends allows you to add friends and it displays their availability information as decided by their google calendar (provided they keep this information publicly viewable).
[Thanks Andrew and Tony!]
Update: As noted in the comments, you can try disable all CSS on the page (e.g. in Firefox, hit View → Page Style → No Style), then click “Gadgets” to the right, and scroll to the bottom of the page. Now you may see the text “INTERNAL ONLY”. Clicking in these parts of the page will lead to (supposedly internal but accessible) feedback forms, or (inaccessible from the outside) Google intranet pages.
The source of the Google employee search widget, “Googler Search” (facewall.xml), is also available, albeit it probably only runs from within Google. For instance, thumbnails for the search are stored at https://moma-api.corp.google.com/[prefix]/thumb (where prefix is an employees name as appearing in their email). The server search returns a JSON profile of an employee, and the codename “Woodstock” appears (perhaps denoting the Google intranet info API, I’m not sure).
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Google Calendar Gadgets Appearing