We're already well into Black Friday. In many US stores the frenzy began last night at 10 pm or midnight (as opposed to the normal 4 am door-busting start time). People barely had time to overcome the sleep-inducing effects of L-tryptophan before getting out into the melee. And the word "melee" aptly describes the scene in a Southern California Wal-Mart store as one woman unleashed pepper spray on her fellow shoppers to prevent them from getting in her way. Today and for the next few days people will be using a wide range of tools and resources -- hopefully not pepper spray -- to help them [...]

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When Bing launched deals several months ago its partner was deal aggregator The Dealmap, which was subsequently acquired by Google. That forced Microsoft to turn elsewhere for deals and today, as a result, we're seeing the launch of a new deals experience on mobile and the PC that pulls in content from a wide range of sources. The mobile deals experience hasn't really changed; you can see daily deals in  your selected area, as well as deals "nearby" and also browse deals by category. It's available via the m.bing.com HTML5 site and Bing apps. There's a new more comprehensive online [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Maps & Local | Microsoft: Bing Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Shopping & Cashback | Search Engines: Deals & Coupon Search Engines | Top News

Bing announced new features for their Shopping Search features. The features inluce: Refine Your Searches Faster Find Sale Prices Share Your Shopping Lists on Facebook Bing Shopping has added a form of Google Instant results for shopping refinements. Here is an example: You can also just filter by sales, see the screen shot below showing sales prices in red: Finally, you can build your shopping lists and share them on Facebook. Here is a video demo of how it works: Video: Bing Shopping: More Selection, Fewer Steps [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing Shopping & Cashback

Bing is taking the next step in its self-conscious evolution from “search engine” to “decision engine." Perhaps we could equally use the term "conversation engine," as Bing begins to emphasize social content and even tries to enable connections between people through the deeper integration of Facebook and "Likes" data. It isn't news that Bing is integrating the Facebook data; that was originally announced in October last year. Rather the news today is that Bing is entering a kind of "phase II" of the process, doing some more interesting and potentially useful things with Likes. Acc [...]

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If you search for "cashmere sweaters under $100" on Bing or Bing Shopping, the search engine now understands what you mean, returning results for products in the category under the price point specified. Microsoft announced the ability to recognize price constraints today, describing the innovation as "a small step in our journey to make search friendlier to natural language queries." Similar searches on Google Product Search don't return appropriate results. So far, the change will only apply to prices, and only to U.S.-based searches. However, it does work for mobile searches. Mobile s [...]

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing Shopping & Cashback