Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine Seems To Be Working… Not For The Public Though…

I found something interesting when I checked my blog stats today. When I looked at where my traffic comes from, I noticed this:

Note the third item on this list. It looks like Bing has been searching for the term “let me bing that for you.” It must have found those words from my original post about Bing. So it seems that Microsoft is using Bing internally, likely testing things out at this point. It’s still not available to the general public though. Perhpas that means that it’s not far away from being released?

Panties For The Apple Fanboi/Fangirl…. Too Bad They Don’t Ship To Canada [UPDATED x2]

I tripped over this online today:

I thought they were perfect for my wife, so I tried to order them from the company website. That’s when I was greeted with the news that the don’t ship to Canada. Too bad as my wife would really like them. But I’m still going to pimp their product mention them on my blog as if you’re an Apple Fanboi/Fangirl, you might find them a great gift.

Oh, if the makers of these panties read this, please reconsider your decision not to ship to Canada.

UPDATE: A reader e-mailed me to say that he had a long e-mail conversation with the owner of the company. They came to an agreement about shipments to Canada in his case and he managed to order the product. If he gets his order, I’ll let you know and likely place an order of my own.

UPDATE #2: He got them today. So as a result of that news I’m placing my order today. It would be really nice if iPanties could fix Google Checkout so that Canadians can order them without having to go through all sorts of effort to do it.

Microsoft Drops At Least $80 Million To Market Bing….. Wow!

Advertising Age is running a story that pegs the total value of Microsoft’s Bing marketing efforts to be at least $80 Million:

The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That’s a big campaign — big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.

JWT has been tapped for the push, which will include online, TV, print and radio. Another sign of the campaign’s size: At a time when most agencies are laying people off, JWT added creatives on the Microsoft business last week.

That kind of cash will get Bing lots of attention. Will it be enough to convince people to switch from Google? I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.

Microsoft Overhauls Search Site…. Will It Be Enough To Stop People From Using Google?

In its ongoing but futile attempt to fight Google, Microsoft has announced Bing which is its new search engine. But it’s no ordinary search engine according to Microsoft:

Based on the customer insight that 66 percent of people are using Internet search more frequently to make complex decisions,* Microsoft identified three design goals to guide the development of Bing: deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions. The new service, built to go beyond today’s search experience, includes deep innovation on core search areas including entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarization technology as well as a new user experience model that dynamically adapts to the type of query to provide relevant and intuitive decision-making tools.

Hmmm…. Sounds interesting. But will it stop me from using Google? I don’t know. First, there’s the name. Saying “let me Bing that for you” doesn’t sound as sexy as “let me Google that for you.” And what if this search engine bombs the way Live Search bomed? Are they going to call the next search engine they come up with “Bong?”

Seriously though, I don’t know how this search engine is going to do in an already crowded marketplace. Google pretty much owns search and I can’t see this making any sort of meaningful dent. Second, if you take a visit to Bing.com and watch the video (Which oddly enough is done in Adobe Flash and not Microsoft Silverlight. WTF? Don’t they use their own products?), a lot of the things that they mentioned seem kind of Google-ish to me. Perhaps when the search engine actually appears and I get to play with it, I may feel differently.

Palm Pre Syncs With iTunes…. I Wonder How Long That Will Last?

Fortune Magazine tripped over something interesting. The Palm Pre syncs “flawlessly” with iTunes:

In fact, the iTunes Store treats the Pre just as it would an iPod or an iPhone with one exception: it can’t handle old copy-protected songs.

One wonders if Palm is about to have the iLawyers unleashed upon them, or a new version of iTunes will ship around the time that the Pre hits the streets that “breaks” this feature. My bet is all of the above seeing as acting Apple God CEO Tim Cook has already told the world that legal action will be unleashed upon Palm if they infringe upon any Apple IP. Plus Apple has in the past come out with fixes that stop some third party software/hardware from working.

I think we should get the popcorn ready, this is about to get interesting.

Time Warner To Spin Off AOL To Stop The Bleeding Of Cash

It was announced this morning that media giant Time Warner will buy the 5% of AOL that it doesn’t already own so that it can spin it off as a separate company:

After the proposed separation is complete, AOL will compete as a standalone company – focused on growing its Web brands and services, which currently reach more than 107 million domestic unique visitors a month, as well as its advertising business, which operates the leading online display network that reaches more than 91% of the domestic online audience. AOL will also continue to operate one of the largest Internet access subscription services in the U.S.

This basically ends a marriage made in hell from the perspective of both companies. At the height of the dot.com boom, they merged in January of 2000 and was the world’s largest ISP at the time with plans on ruling the world. Since the merger, the value of AOL has dropped significantly from its $240 billion high. Its subscriber base has not grown since 2002 as high speed Internet became popular, and they have since become a content provider similar to companies such as Yahoo as opposed to an ISP. Now it’s a major cash drag on Time Warner, which is why they want to spin it off.

Seeing as their revenues dropped by 23% last quarter, I expect the bleeding to continue for AOL. But at least Time Warner won’t be affected.

Microsoft Announces Zune HD To Go After iPod Touch…..Good Luck With That

I guess that Microsoft is sick of having the iPod own the digital music player market. So in response, they’ve announced the Zune HD. News.com has the details:

The Zune HD, which will be available in the U.S. only starting this fall, features an HD Radio tuner as well as an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) touch screen, Microsoft said. It is based on Windows CE and will use a version of Internet Explorer customized for its touch screen, Microsoft said.

You can also look at the Microsoft press release which mentions integration with Xbox Live as well as easy hook up to a TV using a HDMI cable.

Microsoft really thinks that this can give the iPod touch a run for it’s money. But I disagree. I’ll give Microsoft points for using an OLED screen, but my praise ends there. Most of the other details are kind of sketchy (capacity being the most glaring), so you have to wonder how Microsoft will fill in those blanks. And what’s the deal with the radio? I don’t need it, and I doubt that anybody else does either.

In any case, welcome to the party MS. Nice to see you are late as usual.

HP Adds 15000 Batteries To The List Of Those Being Recalled

As if recalling 70000 batteries that had a tendency to get hot and catch fire isn’t enough, HP has recalled another 15ooo in China because they might do the same thing. Nobody’s reported any fires or explosions yet, and there’s no word on specific models being recalled, but I’m sure those details are coming.

In the meantime, if you’re reading this from China and you’ve got an HP, you might want to give your local HP reseller a call.

Psystar Goes Titsup…. Sends Apple’s Case Straight To Limbo Land

According to the MacObserver, God Steve Jobs least favorite company Psystar has filed for Chapter 11 protection:

The bankruptcy documents were filed with the Federal Courts in Florida on Thursday, and Apple’s legal team was most likely made aware of the situation over the Memorial Day weekend.

But if you’re one of the  iLawyers, here’s a reason to get excited:

The Florida court will hold a hearing on June 5 where Psystar’s equity creditors will be revealed — which means if there have been deep pockets behind the company’s fight against Apple, those names will finally come out of the shadows.

The only downside to this is that this basically brings Apple’s case against them to a standstill as all legal action against the company is put on hold while the bankruptcy proceedings go forward. From what I can tell, their website is still up and there is no sign that it’s anything other than business as usual. So we will see where this rather bizarre epsiode goes to next.

Has Nvidia Been Punted From Dell? [UPDATED]

The Inquirer is reporting that Dell has kicked Nvidia to the curb because of their ongoing nightmare with their graphics processor chipsets:

This is nothing less than a sea change at Dell. Nvidia has basically been shown the door by Dell in a most unceremonious fashion. Nvidia either decided to stop buying market share, or Dell just got fed up with it, but don’t preclude both.

From reading the article, it appears that The Inquirer  bases this on the fact that with the exception of a few XPS models, desktops are no longer coming with Nvidia hardware. They also cite that laptops are not far behind. Of course there are no sources to back this info up. But they did break the story on Nvidia’s problems and have been right about all the details to this point. So this report should be taken as plausible until there is definitive proof either way. And if this is true, then the downfall of Nvidia has begun.

Not that I’m suprised given the way they’ve handled this circus.

UPDATE: For some bizarre reason, I quoted The Register as the source of this story. It should be the Inquirer. Thanks to the “AngryTechnician” for pointing that out.