Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Search and Ye Shall Find

Microsoft announced today a slew of new search capabilities.
Mobile search has gotten much better - go here to read about it, or type wls.live.com into your Blackberry's browser to download the latest - which I found better in directions and interface than Google Maps. I'll be keeping it around for a while.

They've also, like Google, added voice search. Just call 1-800-call-411 and you'll get automatic search results and directions, either by voice, or sent to your phone/mobile device.

If you want to try the competition, BTW, call 1-800-GOOG-411. Great for locating businesses around you.

A new version of Virtual Earth 3D is also available. But unlike Google, MS also released the Virtual Earth SDK - allowing you to include mapping and location based services into any application you develop.

I'm currently testing both Ask.com (improved interface) and Hakia.com (using a semantic search engine - yielding more accurate results - try this.) as I know that I would rarely find what I really need on the first page of a Google search results.
One of these (or maybe Yahoo's alpha customizable search - currently in beta :)), will replace Google as my default search engine in the Firefox search bar. Stay tuned.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Talking about fancy search engines, try http://www.kartoo.com/ , which I use from time to time.