Bing Experiment Rules:

• Use Bing exclusively for all of your searches for the next seven days
• Write down what went well and what did not
• Let us know your overall experience and rating of the search engine after the week
• You may perform the exact same search in another search engine to compare results
• You may also perform the exact same search in another search engine if Bing does not provide the results that you expect
• You may use other search engines to look at search engine rankings

Now that we have established the rules of the experiment we would like to offer participants an incentive to take part. We are going to give away five Ghacks t-shirts to five random participants providing that we get that many users participating.

We would like to hear about your thoughts and experience with Bing. If you have anything to say let us hear about it. Check out Install Bing Search In Selected Web Browsers and our initial short review of Microsoft Bing.

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This functionality is available to all users. Registered users on the other hand can add the social bookmarking component to the mix. A Facebook or Worio account is needed for this. Once the account has been created it is possible to start saving bookmarks which will shape the profile over time meaning that Worio will use that data to display recommendations. If a user tags a lot of operating system, backup software or networking topics then that is what will be recommended primarily to him.

The account creation is a breeze for Facebook users as most data will be imported from there. Another interesting feature is the ability to import bookmarks from Delicious which also works incredibly well. Every page can be added to the bookmarks. If a user chooses to do so a new overlay image appears that displays tag recommendations and options to add or remove tags before saving the site.

A bookmarklet is provided that can be used to tag and add active websites to the Worio profile. The site can also be added to the list of available search engines.

The verdict:

The developers have created an easily accessible bookmarking site that adds to the search experience with its recommendation engine. It does well as a bookmarking site alone but excels when the search is used as well.

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The installer lets you choose the programs that you want to download and install. The available porgrams are Messenger Beta, Mail Beta, Toolbar Beta, Photo Gallery Beta, Family Safety Beta, Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Beta and Writer Beta.

All downloads (discovered by the Liveside website)are available in English, German, Italian, French and Spanish with more to come later this day. Each setup displays the list of programs. By default all are selected but the user can select those that he does not want to install. Once the selection has been made they can be downloaded and installed by pressing the Install button.

Joshua has posted an article about Windows Live Wave 3 previously which contains a good overview of the changes in the new version.

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Windows Live Mail

Windows Live Mail is a great little program, a desktop mail application which provides a simplified Outlook kind of experience, Wave 3 will continue to develop this and complete the process of turning it into a Personal Information Manager (PIM) with Windows Live Calendar synchronisation (Finally!).

Windows Live MovieMaker

No MovieMaker isn’t great, but it’s good enough for say… people like my Dad. Although it’s been known to be coming for a long time now Live Movie Maker will be released for the first time with Wave 3. Emphasis will be on creating simple, easy to make movies which can then be published to sharing websites online, similar to what Live Photo Gallery offers for Flickr publishing.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Google stole Live Labs’ thunder by introducing people tagging in Picasa first, but it’s still good news Live users are getting it as well. If you’ve used Facebook photo tagging you’ll know how it works, the big feature however is that ones you’ve tagged someone, Live Photo Gallery will be able to recognise people and tag them in all your other photographs.

It will also connect up the people tagged in your photographs with their Windows Live contact details, if they have one. Now I think that is pretty darn cool.

Windows Live Messenger

An old Live Messenger 9 leaked ages ago, however I won’t get too excited about it until it includes multi-client support, and I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen =( More unknown features are coming in the Wave 3 final build.

Windows Live Writer

A lot of the new Writer features are already available in the Technical Preview, however the final Wave 3 release will also include support for Windows Live Events (and I know we all use that), uploading videos to YouTube, Soapbox and possible other video services and also has a slightly redesigned UI. Thankfully that includes this:

  … which for me is going to go right down with ‘word count’ as the most useful features in Live Writer =P

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Things have been fairly quiet for the last few months, but recently we’ve been hearing a lot more about upcoming releases and what to expect from the Wave 3 Live suite.

Gradually we are seeing the increasing integration of Windows and Live products, all working towards the 2009 release of Windows 7 and hopefully finally realising the vision of the Windows OS + software + services.

Internet Explorer 8 is also a important part of this vision and this has become more apparent with the release of beta 2 on Monday.

A year ago the following statements where made in an internal planning memo by the Live development team:

Many customers will use Internet Explorer to connect to our services.  We have a unique opportunity to extend the browsing experience for customers using Internet Explorer with our toolbar and additional services that enhance the browsing experience.  What scenarios and features will we enable that are unique for customers using Internet Explorer?  How should our web-based experience change if the toolbar is installed?  How do our services make the browser experience better?

Our experiences will be designed so when they are connected to Windows 7 they seamlessly extend the Windows experience, and we will work to follow the Windows 7 style guidelines for applications.  We will work with the Internet Explorer 8 team to make sure we deliver an experience that seamlessly extends the browser with our toolbar and other offerings.Search and MSN

The plans to extend the Windows Live experiences into Internet Explorer is interesting because I noticed the beta 2 release of IE8 introduced a slightly modified theme which is beginning to look similar to the new theme coming with Windows Live Wave 3. Take a look at these screenshots:

If you don’t agree, then take a look at what IE7 looks like compared to the current Wave 2 Live theme:

The next few weeks should see the launch of some Wave 3 products including a new Live Mail application, Live Messenger and hopefully Live Photo Gallery as well.

Live Mail will include instant messaging, better calendar management between Live Mail and Live Calendar and better contact managment features.

Live Photo Gallery will include people tagging and face recognition and hopefully, but unlikely at this point, the option to publish to photosynth.

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What I find most interesting is that both developments have a very similar aim or goal, but at the same time are very different. G.ho.st is not so ambitious as to try and become the next major web platform like Mesh, but it is trying to become the focal point of all our web interactions.

G.ho.st began as an online desktop with some uploading and synchronising capabilities while Live Mesh is a synchronisation service with some form of online desktop.

You can access the new release of G.ho.st at test.g.ho.st although be warned that it is currently even more alpha then the existing release. I actually didn’t notice any increases in instability but maybe that’s just me.

So far the changes I have noticed seem to be largely cosmetic. I requested the desktop context menu be simplified a few months ago and that seems to have happened, the start menu has also been streamlined slightly and I have noticed a few new icons scattered around the place. It could possibly be a little faster as well, but I really am not sure on that one.

I had a look around for some release notes, or a blog post from the G.ho.st developers but couldn’t seem to find one anywhere, so beyond what I’ve noticed so far I couldn’t tell you any additional changes although I’m sure there are many. I’ll keep fiddling around and see what I find.

Have any of you been using G.ho.st lately?

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We are doubling the upper limit of our technology preview program. Our technology preview is still limited to ensure great performance and experience for our customers. You can now use Live Mesh just by signing in to www.mesh.com with a valid Windows Live ID. No waiting list at this time!

If, like me, you are a non-US citizen then you can still register by changing system language localisation settings to US, just find the ‘Regional and Language Options’ in the start menu.

What’s so great about Mesh?

I hear this a lot, and all I can think of is the Internet sceptics of the early 90’s. Constant synchronisation of our data across devices is just the next natural extension of what the Internet has done for our productivity and communication.

More then that, Mesh is very very simple to understand and use. I even managed to get my girlfriend using it, she knows nothing about computers but she can install a program and then add folders to a ‘mesh’ and that’s all it takes, from then on background synchronisation takes care of it all and she doesn’t have to worry about backing up her folders.

How can I use it?

There are hundreds of ways you can use Mesh, the current technical preview is only scratching the surface of what this technology is capable of. Already Live Mesh tutorials and scenarios are popping up around the place.

Redmond Pie has just started a Live Mesh Scenarios Directory which compiles all the tutorials from around the web, its a useful resource. Liveside.net also has some good resources.

I use it mainly for backing up documents and photos as well as keeping my documents accessible from multiple places.

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Windows Live Mesh

If you managed to get into the Mesh Technical Preview a few months ago then you would have seen the possibilities of Live Mesh, a very impressive release from Microsoft.

Since then there have been 3 updates including the latest. Bugs have been fixed, its no longer necessary to have UAC activated to use Mesh, File sharing across networks was added and now Mesh is open for any US user, and any one else if they change their localisation language settings to English (US). Very basic support for mobile devices has also been incorporated and although isn’t too functional at the moment it looks very promising.

You can see all your directories, files and even upload photos you’ve taken from your mobile into your mesh. This is actually a great feature, because if you can have photos stored in the cloud then space on your phone is saved, although it all depends on the cost of data transfer from your phone.

You no longer have to go though Microsoft Connect to get a mesh account either, a welcome change.

Windows Live Calendar

A minor update to Windows Live Calendar has introduced some ‘catch up’ features and enhancements but nothing too useful like synchronisation between Windows Calendar and Live Calendar. According to Liveside.net the update includes:

• Firefox 3 support
• Subscribing to public calendars
• Automatic birthday calendar for contacts
• Working link between Hotmail and Live Calendar
• Printing in day/week/month view
• More language support

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In fact I think once you have a bit of a poke around you’ll discover quite a few changes which really improve the program.

Changes to the UI:

• The addition of tabs along the bottom of the screen which switch views between normal, preview and HTML. It doesn’t look quite as attractive but it’s certainly more usable
• Toolbar revised and Weblogs menu moved to the top right
• Search through your categories

New Features:

• Video Publishing was possible through a plug-in, but now it has been incorporated into the program.
• Image editing, now you can add 5 more borders to your images and rotate, adjust contrast, tilt and crop. The addition of crop is particularly useful.
• Word Count! Boy I’m sure glad this was included… I would say that out of all these changes it’s the feature I most wanted, even though you could get it through a plugin.
• Support for.gif, Lightbox and other image previewing effects
• Addition of ‘check for updates’ in the help context menu
• Images can now be centred from the properties panel
• Automatic linking to specified terms. (example: I could specify a frequently used word such as gHacks to be auto-linked)

SDK changes

These are quite significant changes, but I think I can foresee some issues coming in the future. The SDK now allows for two new plugin types:

Code can now be executed before or after a blog post is published. Two example have been included with the preview for Twitter and Digg. This means blog posts can now be automatically submitted to Digg or your Twitter stream or a myriad other services. While this is handy it does mean some people will abuse the system.

Digg isn’t about submitting every blog posts you write, it’s about submitting a page that is actually good. That was the whole purpose, filter out the crap. Otherwise how does Digg become different then simply having your blog indexed by Google?

Plugins can also now be created to insert content into your headers or footers plugins can insert content as you publish your blog post.

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