Mar 15, 2012 at 4:26am ET by Danny Sullivan

The Wall Street Journal is out with a story saying that Google is about to make one of the biggest changes in its history of offering web search, providing more direct answers and gaining "semantic" smarts to understand more about what words mean. I'm scratching my head, since Google already does this. Methinks Google's PR has exploded in ways it didn't expect. Beyond Blue Links! From the story, we learn things such as: Over the next few months, Google's search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links. It will also present more facts and direct answers to queries at [...]

Microsoft’s Photosynth App Goes Worldwide After 6 Million US Downloads

Mar 12, 2012 at 2:59pm ET by Matt McGee

Microsoft's Photosynth iOS app, which has been available to US users for almost a year, is now available worldwide and includes a couple updates. In its blog post today, Microsoft says the app has passed six million downloads since its US-only launch last April. The app is now in version 1.1.3 and is available to iOS users around the world. It includes performance tweaks specifically for iOS5 users and adds Twitter sharing, too. Previously, photo panoramas could be shared on Bing Maps and Facebook. If you're not familiar with Photosynth, it's an underrated product that makes it almos [...]

Google Maps Vs. Bing Maps: Summer Vacation Planning Showdown

May 20, 2011 at 3:00pm ET by Matt McGee

Wouldn't it be great if there was one mapping service that offers everything you need to plan a trip to somewhere you've never been? Sure, map sites are generally pretty similar. You can see maps, find business listings, get driving directions, see images and stuff like that. But it's actually more complicated than that. At least it was for me. My wife and I recently visited Maui, Hawaii for the first time. We spent a week on the island celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary and, after getting advice from all of our family and friends, we had enough must-sees and must-dos to fill a [...]

Bing’s Read/Write World: An Ambitious Project To Bridge Maps With Movies, Photos, Local Data & More

Apr 22, 2011 at 2:31pm ET by Matt McGee

It's probably not something that you can wrap your head around pretty quickly. It's also not something you can describe in quick, easily digestible terms. "It" is a new Microsoft Bing effort called Read/Write World that has some pretty lofty goals: things like indexing and connecting all of the world's "geo-linked media." And not just indexing and connecting all this media, but also making it easy to use and consume, too, on any platform and type of device. It's stuff like maps, photos, panoramas, movies, business listings -- almost anything that can be tied to a physical location - [...]

Microsoft’s Photosynth Gets Its Own iOS App

Apr 19, 2011 at 7:58am ET by Matt McGee

Photosynth is one of the many cool-but-underpromoted-and-unknown aspects of the Bing Maps experience. That could change soon thanks to the launch this week of a Photosynth app for iOS devices. With the Photosynth app, users can create panoramic images inside the app -- no additional stitching software required -- and upload them directly into Bing Maps. (Or to Facebook if you prefer.) It looks better than I'm describing it, so watch at about the :20 mark of this Microsoft video to see how the app works. Video: Microsoft Photosynth App – April 2011 If users upload panoramas to Bing M [...]

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