Smaaz’s Blog

Microsoft Releases New Search Services for Internet and Mobile Customers

Microsoft today announced the final updates to the fall release of its Live Search service, introducing a broad array of new services and features to its local and mobile search offerings. The new features and enhancements are designed to make it easier for people to find what they need at home or on the go through significant innovations in mapping, imagery and driving directions as well as new services to make the mobile search experience easy and powerful.

Microsoft also announced the availability of the Live Search 411 service. Customers can gain toll-free* access by dialing (800) CALL-411 (800-225-5411) from any phone to find and connect to local businesses and other local information, such as weather updates, movie show times and airline information. People using a cell phone with Internet access can also receive links to traffic maps from Live Search 411.

“Microsoft is building on several years of innovation in imagery and 3-D visualization, adding some of the most significant innovations to driving directions technology in the last several years and expanding how our current 185 million customers can experience the improvements to the core of Live Search to include access from a wider variety of clients, platforms and devices,” said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of the Search & Advertising Platform Group at Microsoft. “Collectively, these improvements build on the work we did in core relevance and differentiated vertical experiences, and are an important milestone in our efforts in delivering a comprehensive, innovative search offering that includes mobile, mapping, Web and local services for customers to find what they need, when they need it, on any device.”

Today’s announcement comes on the heels of the release on Sept. 26 of several new capabilities for Live Search, which included significant improvements in relevance and coverage in the core Web search service and expanded the range and depth of information available in areas where most customers were doing most of their queries — entertainment, shopping, health and local searches.

Today’s release offers these key features:

Maps and Directions

Mobile Enhancements

More information on the mobile offerings will be available at http://www.LiveSearchMobile.com and http://www.LiveSearch411.com.

Add comment October 19th, 2007

Microsoft Acquires Jellyfish.com

Microsoft recently purchased a company called Jellyfish.com, based in Madison, Wisconsin.  Jellyfish has done some really innovative work in comparative shopping engines. Microsoft also said, that they want to include the technology of Jellyfish’s shopping software as a key component of Live Search.

Add comment October 2nd, 2007

ONLINE PRIVACY- An Update from Microsoft and Ask.com

In July 2007, Microsoft Corp. and Ask.com called on the online services industry to develop global privacy principles for data collection, use and protection related to search and online advertising. The two companies committed to engage in a dialogue with other technology leaders, consumer advocacy organizations and academics to help encourage development of global privacy principles for data collection, use and protection related to search and online advertising.

Discussions have ensued over the past three months with stakeholders, including policymakers and data protection agencies worldwide. In Montreal on Sept. 27, industry leaders and consumer advocates convened to discuss privacy issues surrounding search and online advertising at an event sponsored by Privacy International.

“The Montreal meeting brought together many key participants in the online advertising and search markets, who increasingly recognize the importance of privacy in online advertising and search,” said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. “The participants brought different perspectives, which underscores the need for continuing dialogue. This meeting was a good start.”

More such events are planned in the next few months. The Federal Trade Commission will host a Town Hall Nov. 1–2 to address consumer protection issues. On Nov. 8, Microsoft, Ask.com and others will participate in a roundtable hosted by New York University School of Law on the privacy issues surrounding online search. Also since July, many informal discussions have been held with industry leaders, privacy advocates and other stakeholders.

Already, dialogue has helped identify a need to start with a common understanding of key concepts. Some privacy concepts mean different things to different people. For example, some companies regard data as anonymous if only part of a computer user’s Internet Protocol (IP) address is associated with it. Others have discussed removing the entire IP address and all cross-session identifiers when they anonymize the data.

“When it comes to many privacy issues, working together makes sense,” said Doug Leeds, vice president of product management at Ask.com. “Industry communication is critical to helping support and amplify a sense of trust and integrity in the online domain. By laying some basic foundations around privacy, we can act positively on issues of online integrity for our users and for customers worldwide. We believe, more than ever, that the privacy and trust dialogue is moving forward, with the needs and expectations of our users in mind each step of the way.”

“It is important that industry come together around a common understanding of a set of best practices,” emphasized Peter Cullen, Microsoft’s chief privacy strategist. “We need to do the right thing for consumers on privacy. The goal is to provide consumers with greater transparency and control.”

In addition to Microsoft and Ask.com, others in the search and online advertising industry, such as AOL, Yahoo! and Google, have addressed related privacy issues in the past few months. The good news is that privacy in online advertising and search is on the agenda. Microsoft and Ask.com are cautiously optimistic that we will continue to progress toward industry principles.

Add comment September 29th, 2007

Microsoft Releases Updated Live Search Engine

Microsoft is releasing an update to Live Search centered on improvements to core search technology and deeper advancements in the vertical search areas of entertainment, shopping, local and health. Collectively, these improvements mark a quality milestone based on the company’s focus on delivering a better search experience for consumers and advertisers.

“With this update to Live Search, our engineering focus is on the areas that matter most to our 185 million consumers who use our service every month. We have made dramatic progress in delivering a better search experience to our customers,” said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of the Search and Advertising Platform Group at Microsoft. “We know what kinds of things consumers are searching for, and we have invested in those key high-interest verticals, including entertainment, shopping, health and local search. With the core platform in place we intend to win customers and earn their loyalty one query at a time.”

The majority of Live Search customer feedback has focused on improving overall search relevance to deliver richer and deeper results and investing in differentiated experiences in high-interest consumer areas such as entertainment, shopping, health and local search.

Richer and Deeper Results

Microsoft’s efforts toward satisfying its Live Search customers can be grouped into a few key areas:

Additional improvements to the service include a new, cleaner user interface that makes the results pages easier to read and use; a more robust Answers platform that provides instant access to information from trusted sources while increasing relevancy; and organization of results pages based on the high-interest search verticals of entertainment, shopping, local and health on one page.

High-Interest Verticals

With up to 40 percent of searches falling into the categories of entertainment, shopping, health and local search, the new Live Search has made deep investments to deliver specialized content presented in a compelling way across these key vertical search areas:

With improvements across the core search experience and infrastructure as well as new experiences and specialized content in key, high-interest vertical areas, the new Live Search puts in place a platform that enables Microsoft to keep pace with customer demand and continue to deliver new and innovative search experiences across a range of scenarios and devices. An early example of these new experiences is the mobile search client, a Software plus Services implementation for the mobile phone that puts the power of the Live Search service in the palm of the hand. Speech-based search combines powerful speech-recognition software on the mobile phone with the Live Search service over the Internet. There is still plenty of room for innovation, and Live Search is well poised to lead in this arena.

More information on these updates is available from the Live Search fact sheet and the Live Search team blog, located respectively at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/factsheet/LiveSearchFS.mspx and http://livesearch.spaces.live.com.

Add comment September 27th, 2007

Microsoft to Acquire Enterprise Group Chat Provider

Today Microsoft announced it has agreed to acquire Chicago-based Parlano, maker of MindAlign, a leading application for enterprise group chat. Microsoft expects to add Parlano’s group chat functionality as a new feature of Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator, Microsoft’s server and client software for presence, instant messaging, conferencing and VoIP.

“Parlano has been successful in meeting the rigorous communications needs of companies in financial services and other vertical markets,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft. “Parlano’s expertise and technology, added to Microsoft’s unified communications offering, will deliver customers the most complete presence, instant messaging and group chat solution on the market.”

Founded in 2000, Parlano offers group chat technology that enables people to carry on topic-specific, multiparty instant messaging discussions that persist over time. Parlano’s software is used by companies in a variety of industries, including financial services, call centers and technology, to conduct ongoing business-critical conversations.

“Parlano has helped many organizations enhance operations, improve service delivery and increase sales through more effective ongoing group communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing,” said Nick Fera, chairman and chief executive officer of Parlano. “The resulting competitive advantage will be further enhanced as we bring Parlano technology together with Microsoft Office Communications Server and Office Communicator.”

Because Microsoft’s unified communications technologies are based on standards and open protocols, Parlano has been able to create its technology architecture from the ground up to integrate with Microsoft’s unified communications offerings. Currently, Parlano’s MindAlign application integrates with Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Office Communications Server 2007.

After the deal closes, Microsoft will add the group chat functionality to Office Communications Server and Office Communicator, and plans to offer group chat as part of the standard client access license for Office Communications Server 2007 Software Assurance customers. Current Parlano customers, many of whom already use Microsoft unified communications software, will have increased access to the breadth of Microsoft unified communications software.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not announced. The deal is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2007. Following the closing of the acquisition, members of the Parlano team are expected to join the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus. Parlano is a privately held company and was represented by Revolution Partners and Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLP.

Add comment August 30th, 2007

Microsoft Starts Beta For New Webmaster Portal

Microsoft today posted an announcement for their new Webmaster Portal on the Live Search Blog:

“Shortly after that day in March when we had to take the “link:” operator offline, a small team was formed in Redmond. Its singular focus: to build the next-generation set of tools, content and resources for SEO professionals and webmasters (and get “link:” back in your hands). Creatively named Webmaster Portal (we’re really good at marketing), it will be a single, friendly place to find all tools and information relating to Live Search SEO. Initially we’ll support these scenarios:

• Troubleshooting tools to ensure MSNBot is effectively crawling and indexing your site
• Sitemap creation, submission and ping tools
• Statistics about your website
• Consolidation of content submission resources
• New content and community resources

While we expect the tools to be available publicly in late Fall, we still have some polishing to do. In the meantime we’ve created a private beta program to let adventuresome folks get their hands on the tools sooner – and help polish things by providing feedback. If you’re interested in participating in the beta program over the next few months, please send a mail to lswmp@microsoft.com to apply!”

Add comment August 23rd, 2007

Three new Features in Live Search Images

The Live Search Blog today announced three new features for Live’s Image Search, that help you find faces, portraits and black and white images. Try these links to see them in action:

1. without the new features – jimi hendrix
2. with new face filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:face
3. with new portrait filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:portrait
4. with new black and white filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:bw

For now, the way you access these new features is by typing. You’ll need to add filter:face, filter:portrait, or filter:bw to your query.

Add comment July 28th, 2007

Microsoft to Acquire Ad Network AdECN

Microsoft today announced it has agreed to acquire AdECN, Inc., an advertising exchange platform company based near Santa Barbara, Calif. AdECN’s technology serves as a hub where advertising networks can come together in a neutral, real-time auction marketplace for buying and selling display advertising. The deal is a key component of Microsoft’s strategy to develop a comprehensive search and display advertising platform helping advertisers and publishers to maximize return on investment (ROI) on their digital advertising investments. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Both Microsoft and AdECN have a deep commitment to creating the technologies and platforms that enable advertisers and publishers to maximize their ROI in the digital marketplace,” said Kevin Johnson, president, Platforms and Services Division at Microsoft. “We believe the addition of AdECN to the Microsoft portfolio is a perfect fit and will create more efficiency for the industry by forming a more robust marketplace between advertisers and publishers, aggregating more supply and demand. This is good for the whole advertising industry.”

Founded in 2003, AdECN brings both key technologies and significant domain expertise to the Microsoft team. Advertisers and publishers will benefit from this deal in the following ways:

• Advertisers will get access to more inventory, enabling more efficient matching of their requirements which can help increase ROI.
• Publishers will be able to increase yield — earn more money per page view — due to the higher volume of available inventory.
• Both groups will benefit from the exchange’s neutrality and transparency, enabling them to make more informed decisions about their bid and ask decisions.

“Joining forces with Microsoft will provide the capital and resources to enable AdECN to scale the exchange at a much faster pace, making it more attractive to the advertising networks and other traffic aggregators looking to better serve their advertisers and publishers,” said William Urschel, founder and chief executive officer, AdECN. “All of us here are thrilled to join a team that shares our commitment to neutrality for the exchange and also believes that creating liquidity and intelligently matching supply and demand will be two of the most important roles for a technology provider to play in this rapidly growing and evolving market.”

The exchange concept is similar to the NASDAQ which serves as the hub for financial brokerages, enabling all parties to come together and have access through a neutral party to a larger pool of supply and demand for their clients. Exchanges are a means by which liquidity is created for advertising networks by bringing together a maximum number of both buyers and sellers. Rather than an ad network, a true ad exchange is the neutral, transparent, automated connection between multiple ad networks. AdECN market advertising networks trade on behalf of their advertisers and publishers. This means that AdECN supports, rather than competes with, the various players in the online advertising industry.

The acquisition is expected to be completed in the first half of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2008. The acquisition is not expected to have a significant impact on the financial guidance previously issued by the Company. AdECN, which has approximately 30 employees, will continue to operate from its headquarters near Santa Barbara, Calif. as part of Microsoft’s Online Services Business.

Add comment July 26th, 2007