TechPost

What year did NASA start using the shuttle? Not sure? Why dont you bing it!

I binged my professor and the results were interesting!

Are you confused or wondering what I am rambling on about? Well, I am just replacing terms we would normally use such as googled or google with binged and bing. Why would I do such a thing?  Bing is a new search engine that Microsoft is working on and it looks very interesting. Yes, MS actually has a product other than Windows 7 that appears to be something to get excited about.

The Bing service is not active yet but this video will give you an idea of what is in store for us.

The following is an email that MS CEO Steve Ballmer sent out to employees yesterday morning.

Today, at the D Conference in Carlsbad, CA, I’m announcing the release of Bing, our new search engine. This is an important milestone for Microsoft as search is a critical business for us and Bing is a significant step forward in redefining search and expanding our share of the online advertising market. But Bing is just the start. We know this is a journey that will require a long-term commitment to hard work and investment in innovation in order to be successful.

We have always believed that search offers huge opportunities for innovation. Currently, only one in four searches succeeds on the first try. And while search is pretty good for navigating the Web, it’s not good at helping people use the Web to accomplish more complicated decision-based tasks.

With Bing, our goal is to do more than just make it easier for people to find information. Today, we’re delivering a powerful set of tools that will enable people to make faster, more informed decisions.

In short, Bing is a decision engine that goes beyond what people have come to think of as search—and what our competitors offer today.

A new search product requires a name that clearly signals the arrival of something unique. We chose Bing because it’s short, memorable, and symbolic of the moment when information and opportunity come together and a simple search becomes an engine for taking action.

Today, we’ll begin launching Bing internally so Microsoft employees can have an exclusive preview. You’ll find improvements that showcase innovative engineering work, including tools that automatically organize, refine, and anticipate searches. We’re also delivering strong innovation in shopping, local search, travel, and health—the areas where people want to use the Web to help them make decisions that are important to their lives.

Next week, Bing will go live outside Microsoft at bing.com. I urge you to let your friends and family know that we have created a powerful new search engine that brings fresh innovation to their Web experience.

When Bing goes live you can find it on the web at http://www.bing.com

Brewing over in the Google labs is a new method for viewing current and dated news. The project is called Google News Timeline and it displays information chronologically in a  zoomable, graphical timeline. You can select sources such as the AP, New York Times, Fox Sports or even magazines. I did a search for Popular Science and magazine covers for every issue popped up in the timline. Another interesting feature is the ability to go back in time and see what the big stories were, I put in my birth year and saw some interesting facts from the day I was born. Go check it out and let me know what you think.

Google News Timline can be found on the web at http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com

In 2007 my wife and I had our first child, a boy. For my parents this was their first grandson and they couldn’t be more thrilled. Not only did our son have grandparents but great-grandparents and a great-great-grandmother – how cool is that? The problem: we lived more than 600 miles away from any of our family and everyone was missing what was happening with the newest edition to the family. We emailed pictures to the family as often as we could but sending large images was a hassle.

To solve this problem I finally convinced my wife to start a blog and I tried to make it as easy as possible for her. My wife was reluctant at first but, after blogging a couple of times and getting tremendous feedback from our family she turned into a blogging machine.

The following guide will get you on the web in no time.

What is it we want to do?
Update the family
Share pictures
Share video (most digital cameras produce fairly good video)

How are we going to do this?
Blogger – this is where our new blog will live
Picasa – storage for pictures and video
Picasa Software – manage images and video on your computer and upload them to your online gallery

Let’s get started.

Go to www.blogger.com and setup an account. The process is very straightforward. Here is what it will ask for.

Blog title – this will be the name of your blog and how people will identify you.

Blog address (url) – If you select sillykittens as the blog name then your web address would be http://sillykittens.blogspot.com

Hit Continue

Choose a template – this will “pretty-up” your blog and you can change it later.

Hit Continue

Your blog is now setup and the screen you are looking at is for posting. A post is a single entry, like a journal entry. Type in a title and then proceed to tell your family about how the little one likes to carry things to the bathroom and throw them in the toilet. Yes, our son does do that and he finds it hilarious.

The next step involves going to http://picasa.google.com/ and downloading the Picasa software.  After install has completed the software will scan your computer and find all of your images and videos. These will then be displayed on the left hand side of Picasa in folders. My wife likes to catorgorize pictures by month taken but you can do it however you like.

After all of your media (pictures and video) have been found you can get them on the web by:

Clicking “Upload” which is located in the bottom toolbar. You will be prompted for login information (use your same Google account that you set your blog up with). After logging in you can upload pictures to an album. Again my wife likes to organize her online albums by month and year. Hit upload and your pictures will now be online.

Okay, great the pictures are now online but how do you share them with the family?

We go back to blogger.com and login. Once you are logged in make sure you are at the dashboard (look at the top right-hand corner of the screen for the link).

In the dashboard you will see “layout”, click that and now you see a layout of your blog.

Click “Add a gadget” and then click “Slideshow” and enter the information for your Picasa Web Album.

Now hit “Save” and then hit “Save’’ on the layout page. That’s it; you now have pictures from your album being displayed on your blog.