November 2, 2009
Looking ahead to SES, Chicago.
I've been working on a lot of stuff for SES shows next year. And in between, adding a little this-and-that to SES, Chicago. These shows are planned months and months ahead, so a lot of stuff was already in place. But there are a few new sessions I was keen to squeeze in.
In fact, I had an idea to ask a lot of the session moderators if they would like to contribute to a new channel I set up over at ClickZ called "Conference Call." Basically it's an opportunity for them to give a little more insight to their sessions. And of course, it helps attendees to mark up specific sessions before they get there.
I kicked the thing off myself with a column about some real-time and social search elements I've introduced. This really is taking a look at the future of search and talks a lot about the move toward real time ranking and a shift from searching to "suggested discovery."
There's a link to a very interesting news report from the BBC on YouTube which I highly recommend you take a peek at. It really does help to explain some of the very cool things that are happening in social search right now.
Keep an eye open for some guest blog posts and guest columns at ClickZ running up to the show.
www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago
Posted by Mike Grehan on November 2, 2009, 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Bing Maps Gets Starring Role in Weather.com Futures; National Geographic Digital Archives
Bing Maps is often used by third-party websites who need mapping functions for their various features. Many of these sites started using Bing Maps when it was known as Microsoft Virtual Earth.
Weather.com was one such site. Now, they're innovating with Bing Maps. They've added a new feature called "Futures." This helps visitors to the site see where Weather.com predicts various weather elements may be heading.
Another third-party entity to incorporate Bing Maps is National Geographic. The famed magazine has digitized every issue in 120 years worth of archives and placing it in a 6 DVD set and external hard drive. Bing Maps will let you GeoBrowse the world to find articles relevant to a specific location.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on November 2, 2009, 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Google Search by Voice Expands to Nokia S60s, Mandarin Chinese
Google has expanded its Search by Voice to its mobile search app for Nokia S60 series. The series includes devices such as the N95 and the E71. The update is available for Nokia S60 series device users worldwide.
But users of such devices who speak Mandarin Chinese are getting an extra update. Google has added the language to Search by Voice for the Nokia S60 series phones. Google is working on extending Mandarin Chinese to Search by Voice for additional devices as well as additional accents.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on November 2, 2009, 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Bing for Mobile Adds NFL and Flight Instant Answers, Optimized Touchscreen Experience
Bing has updated their mobile search offering, which can be found at m.bing.com. Included in the update are Instant Answers for NFL players as well as Flight Status.
Also included in the update is an optimized experience for certain touchscreen devices used in the United States. Devices include iPhone, Zune HD, T-Mobile G1, Verizon Imagio, and Samsung Omnia. Additional devices will be added in the future.
The navigation is improved and visual search for movies has been implemented. This might be a rolling update because my iPhone didn't show the updated results shown in the blog. The movie search is still very nice on my iPhone, just not what I saw on the Bing blog. Here's two screenshots. The first one is from the Bing blog, the second one from my iPhone.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on November 2, 2009, 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Google Extends Local News to France
Google is now offering Local News in its Google News service for France. This allows the French to access local news when they visit Google News instead of just the standard Google News fare. Local News has already been rolled out in the U.S., U.K., Canada, India and Germany.
To see Local News in any of these countries, look for the local section where you can enter your postal code. If you don't see the section, head to the "Personalize this page" link on the top right corner of the page.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on November 2, 2009, 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
