As we told you last month when discussing the program's early successes, Cashback works by giving users a certain amount of money back every time they search for an item and then buy it from a participating store. But some users have found the opposite to be true: Retailer cookies trigger jacked-up prices for some items, causing a phenomenon one man calls "negative cashback." How much do Bing users stand to lose? Read on, and brace yourselves.

Essentially, certain products from certain websites appear through a Cashback-enabled browser to be a certain price. Yet, if the same user visits the same site at the same time from a non-Cashback browser or machine (or if he deletes his cookies), the price is sometimes drastically different in a way that benefits the end user not a bit.

As one user very succinctly put it, "If I go directly to butterflyphoto.com, I pay $699 with 0% cashback. If I use Bing Cashback, I pay $758 with 2% cashback, or $742.84. Using Bing cashback has actually cost me $43.84, giving an effective cashback rate of -6.27%."

We did the same search, and we saw the same results. Here's our Bing Cashback screenshot from an Internet Explorer window:

And here's the same product on the same website in a Chrome tab:

As a side note, the blogger that alerted us to this issue had previously received a nastygram from Microsoft about his post on Bing Cashback technical issues.

So, what do we make of this issue? Is it a potentially scammy technical glitch? More importantly, how soon can it be fixed so innocent online shoppers aren't quietly swindled out of cash throughout the holiday season? Let us know what you think should be done in the comments - particularly if you've noticed this bug yourself.

Microsoft's Live Labs has been the source of a few interesting projects: a 3D photo-stitcher called PhotoSynth, a bookmarking service called Thumbtack (which was shuttered just this month). Typically, the UIs have been slick, but user adoption has lagged.

In short, datasets are organized as collections. Results can be as granular or as big-picture as the user desires, and correlations and patterns are easy to see and examine through powerful but simple visualizations. Imagine browsing through thumbnails representing Kiva loans, then sorting the loans by the different types of businesses they helped established. Or, on a nerdier note, think about riffling through decks of Magic: The Gathering cards, zooming in for larger-than-life detail of the card's artwork and then zooming out to see how each was related or linked to others in the set.

This probably reminds you - as it did us - a lot of Wikipedia. But imagine Wikipedia as an infinitely scannable, shuffleable, expandable, retractable, linked, and yet still detachable deck of digital cards; and then you have an inkling of how Pivot looks and feels.

Collections can be created by anyone, including third-party developers. Types of collections include simple, linked, and dynamic, which are each progressively more difficult to create. Developers are also encouraged to create collections from existing online datasets, such as the Internet Archive or data.gov.

It's very exciting, indeed; and it's available for Windows users only at the moment. Mac users, we're sorry. Why don't you go write some complaint letters on your beautifully designed, virus-immune machines? We'd love to rub it in some more by posting a few screenshots with gloating captions, but we're too busy trying to get this machine to stop being so Windows-y and just run the software

Right now, the service is invitation-only. We encourage you to Google around for your invite codes or check in here later to see if the kind folks at Live Labs have passed along any to us.

JavaScript Performance

Today's presentation of IE9 was refreshing, as Sinofsky noted that IE8's JavaScript performance was clearly slower than that of its competitors. The current build of IE9, however, has already closed this gap significantly and the difference in performance compared to the latest builds of Chrome and Firefox were only minor. As Microsoft notes, given how fast modern JavaScript engines have become over the last year, improvements in the JavaScript engine don't influence real-world performance at this point and other browser sub-systems become the bottlenecks that impede improvements.

Hardware Acceleration and Font Smoothing

Microsoft also plans to make use of DirectX-based hardware accelerated graphics and text in IE9. In his demo, Sinofsky showed that Bing maps can render about 14 frames per second in IE8. With hardware acceleration in IE9 turned on, he got 60 frames per second. In addition, this technology will also increase font quality and readability in IE9.

Videos

Microsoft already published a number of videos with the engineers working on IE9 on Channel 9 (sorry, these are Silverlight only).

I've always been a big believer in learning from history as we look to the future. So let's re-visit this interview from five years ago and see how prescient the father of Web 2.0 was.

In 2004 the leading Web 2.0 companies were Google, Yahoo! and Amazon. But what of the dominant software company of the previous generation, Microsoft? I asked Tim O'Reilly back in November 2004 whether Microsoft's core strategy of software lock-in would survive in web 2.0?

O'Reilly argued that Microsoft would have to change: "I think that the business of Microsoft, the company of Microsoft, is going to continue to succeed. But I think the business model of Microsoft is going to have to change."

This has turned out to be the case. Over the past 5 years, Microsoft has slowly rolled out a "software plus services" strategy under the catch-all phrase 'Live.' While the Windows OS and desktop software such as Office continue to be Microsoft's mainstay products, some of the functionality gradually moved into the cloud - e.g. syncing over devices. Vista, the current generation of Windows, began that transition. In 2009, Microsoft is even taking steps to put Office online.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think O'Reilly nailed it in 2004 with this statement: "Microsoft will continue to dominate on the PC, but the PC is going to be a smaller and smaller part of the entire business."

The Mobile Web, for one, has taken attention away from Microsoft. Which is where Apple comes in...

Apple and Web 2.0

At the inaugural 2004 Web 2.0 Conference, Apple was a no-show. In talking about Apple's position in the Web industry back then, O'Reilly said that "Apple is in a position they've been in a lot of times before. They're like Moses showing the way to the promised land, but they don't actually go there."

Although Apple never did open up, as O'Reilly foresaw, nevertheless they went on to create the most successful new gadget of the past decade: the iPhone. Apple also created a thriving iPhone app ecosystem.

So in the case of the Mobile Web, Moses (a.k.a. Steve Jobs) actually did lead us to the promised land!

Facebook and Data Lock-in

In 2004 I noted that "a lot of what Web 2.0 is about is users producing content and not just consuming it." I pointed to O'Reilly's own example at the time: Amazon compared to the Barnes & Noble website. However, I said that "the other side of that coin [...] is the 'data lock-in' of users, where users may not necessarily have control over their content." I asked O'Reilly if that was something for users to be concerned about?

O'Reilly replied, in November 2004, that "there are companies that are trying to use data lock-in as a competitive tool - and there will eventually be a recognition that this is a problem."

This has indeed happened - and data lock-in is nowhere more of a problem than on the world's most popular social network circa 2009, Facebook. Over the past few years we at ReadWriteWeb have written many articles about Facebook's 'walled garden' approach to user data. Users can't take their personal data elsewhere. What's more, there have been bungled attempts to use that data for commercial means.

Remember that Facebook had just launched in February 2004 and was confined to some selected American Universities (Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and Yale). It had yet to reach the 1 million users mark. While O'Reilly couldn't have known that Facebook would turn into the juggernaut it now is, he did accurately predict that data lock-in would become a major issue:

"I believe that data lock-in of various kinds is going to be one of the key tools of business advantage in the internet era. I think that as companies realize this, they will figure out how to be evil - so to speak (to use Google's terminology) - and I predict that we will in fact have some major battles in that area."

Conclusion

It is remarkable how much can change in the Web industry in five years. Back in 2004, Facebook was a baby and Twitter wasn't even a glint in the milkman's eye. Among the big companies of that time, Apple hadn't yet given birth to the revolutionary iPhone and Microsoft was entering its mid-life crisis.

On reflection, Tim O'Reilly did extremely well in his 2004 predictions - considering how fast the Internet evolves. And I'm still grateful to him for giving an interview to an unknown New Zealand blogger. How times change...

Image credits: Niall Kennedy; Shht!; Alex Eckford

The company plans to roll this redesign out slowly over the next few weeks - though all users will be able to switch to the new site through a link on the old homepage.

Fewer Links - Less Clutter

To make the site less busy, Microsoft has reduced the number of links by 50%. In the old design, the categories were organized in dozens of boxes. This gave the page a very busy look. Microsoft now uses tabs that give the site a more modern look and which also reduce clutter.

The new MSN puts a lot of emphasis on search. The new homepage doesn't just feature a Bing search box on the top. The new MSN has another search box at the bottom of the page and Microsoft also integrated Bing shopping and travel search in other sections of the site.

MSN Users Don't Want Customization

When we talked to Lisa Gurry, Microsoft's senior director of MSN, she told us that only a very small number of MSN's users actually wanted to spend a lot of time customizing the site. Because of this, the MSN team decided to automate this customization as much as possible through a reverse IP lookup. Through this, the homepage automatically displays local news and weather reports based on a user's location. Those users who want to customize their MSN experience extensively can continue to use the MyMSN homepage.

Flawed Execution: Facebook and Twitter Integration

Microsoft also added some new social networking functionality to the MSN homepage. Users can now track updates from their friends on Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live. MSN's users can also send status updates right from the MSN homepage. According to Microsoft, 52% of MSN users are on Facebook and 14% are on Twitter.

A few key features are missing from the Twitter integration, though. There is no character count, for example, and no easy way to shrink URLs. There is also no way to see or send direct messages or @replies.

While the Facebook widget at least features a 'comment' link, users are still taken to Facebook's own site to write their comments.

Overall, the social network integration could be a lot more interesting if the MSN team just added a few features. MSN is obviously trying to attract mainstream users who don't follow thousands of Twitter users, but even the most mainstream Twitter user expects to see a reply button in a Twitter client. AOL's homepage allows users to reply right from the Twitter widget.

Local News

The new site now puts a lot of emphasis on local news. The new local edition features extended weather reports, movie times, concerts, restaurant reviews and information about local gas prices. For restaurant reviews, Microsoft takes users to Bing's local search.

Radical Change

The new design is a radical departure from the old MSN and some users who were accustomed to the old site will surely feel disoriented when they wake up to the new design.

Among the large homepages like Yahoo and AOL, the new MSN now sports the most modern look. This is not a highly customizable, Netvibes-style homepage, but MSN's users aren't asking for this.

The Bing team also added a few new features to the generic mobile search. Users can now search for NFL teams and players and get real-time updates about games, stats and scores while a game is on. This feature is only available in the U.S.

In addition, Bing has implemented a flight search feature. You can now type in the airline code and flight number and Bing will return the latest gate information and departure and arrival times.

But Will Anybody Use It?

The new mobile interface for the iPhone and similar devices looks a lot better than the earlier version and is also more usable. Given that users can only switch between Google and Yahoo as their default search providers on the iPhone, however, it's questionable how many iPhone users will actually use Bing's mobile search.

Now I wince every time I see a new one, hoping its smug attitude and condescending tone doesn't go too far.

I also relished how Apple's spots unhinged Microsoft, prompting the Goliath to produce its own, usually inept, TV ads that broke a major rule of marketing: never appear reactive to a smaller competitor. Microsoft's PC ads and the flurry of Ballmer-isms that accompanied them, all on the heels of the Windows Vista catastrophe, actually seemed to reinforce Apple's point.

But what has worked for Apple over the last three years doesn't seem to work as well now. Call it a psychographic observation, but the theme is getting tired, and the emotional impact of the ads has shifted. The superior, mocking tone of the ads sometimes goes too far, especially now as the new Windows 7 is being well received. Don't get me wrong. I'm a born-and-raised New Yorker. I like sarcasm. But for me, edgy has gone over the edge in some of these ads.

Do we Mac users tend to feel superior? Of course. We know we enjoy the world's most elegant operating system. But when a Mac evangelist like me starts feeling mildly apologetic about these spots and empathizing with the PC guy, something is amiss.

Does Apple's research show that prospective Mac customers, their intended audience, still like these ads? I assume so. But perhaps Microsoft's jab at Apple in its TV ads earlier this year (the one in which PC buyer Lauren says, "Maybe I'm not cool enough" to be a Mac person) was accurate, signaling that Apple's approach borders on arrogance, especially as it gains ever greater market share.

While Mac's market share still pales in comparison to Windows, Apple is no longer a David. With its omnipresent retail stores, the iconic iPod and the runaway popularity of the iPhone, Apple is a real and perceived leader. It has a market cap of over $170 billion and more cash than Cisco or Microsoft. Its TV ads, its recent mishandling of App Store developer issues and criticism from prominent tech journalists show that the Apple perception machine is showing cracks. The company is starting to appear arrogant.

To its credit, Apple's iPhone television ads are clean and crisp, relaying useful features and the latest apps. And not all of the Mac-PC ads are disdainful. The recent one with actor Robert Loggia as PC's coach is fun. But the spot portraying a top-of-the-line PC model as a semi-sleazy sales guy? That's when I cringe. The new spots reacting to Windows 7? Not so bad, but they still rely too much on criticizing Microsoft. There's a difference between conveying product superiority and having a superior attitude.

For this Mac fan, these ads are past their peak. They were great fun for a while. But it's time to shift the tone or move on. Certainly Apple's creative teams can come up with a follow-up act that is informative, entertaining and edgy, without sounding smug. Otherwise, Apple runs the risk of (gasp!) emulating Microsoft.

Guest author: Frank Cioffi is editor and publisher of Apple Investor News, the Apple-only news aggregator and part of the Tech Investor News network..

Coming soon to a mall near you: the Microsoft Retail Store.

Yes, that's right: Redmond, Washington's favorite son wants a closer, snugglier relationship with you, the consumer.

Warning: some of these are serious, others not so much. Which is which? You be the judge.

1. Hold star-powered store opening events.
   Announce that Microsoft will celebrate all store openings with live skits featuring goofy bosom buddies Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.
2. Hire the very best people to run the stores.
   You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so make sure your people have the track record to pull this off.
3. Offer diagnostic and repair services.
   If Geniuses can fix or replace any Apple-branded electronics still under warranty, then Microsoft's retail staff can do the same for stuff that sports stickers claiming things like "Windows Vista Capable."
4. Build alliances with computer manufacturers to staff the Guru Bars.
   And why not? The big names have plenty riding on the launch of Windows 7. Besides, they've built up plenty of customer service expertise in places like Texas, California and Hyderabad. (Note: certain fine computer builders, like Bob & Doug's Corner Computer Emporium, might not get a seat at the Bar.)
5. Train all staff to maintain the highest level of professionalism.
   For instance, make sure associates smile politely when a customer walks up, grins, says "Hello, I'm a Mac" and elbows them in the ribs.
6. Display Windows-based hardware for people to try.
   Show how Windows runs on computers, smartphones and whatever else Microsoft wants to convince people to buy.
7. Promote fan clubs to celebrate previous Microsoft consumer successes.
   Start with enthusiasts for Microsoft Surface, Windows Tablet Edition, Passport, Vista and Sidekick.
8. Run workshops for business users.
   Exploit current holes in software available for the Mac. For instance, bring in experts to explain how to set up popular accounting packages and, for lawyers, legal practice management systems.
9. Run workshops for creative users.
   Run workshops showing how Windows computer users can start their artsy projects (photo books, websites, music videos) right out of the box. Have the workshops led by cute little girls who end each seminar by saying "I'm a PC and I'm four and a half."
10. Run safe computing workshops.
    Teach users the basics, like not opening all attachments, not clicking links in spam email and so forth.
11. Run basic Windows repair workshops.
    Teach computer users how to: remove pre-loaded trial software; replace faulty .dlls; make changes in the Windows registry; manually uninstall software when Windows botches the job; effectively scan online forums for answers to other problems; and, when all else fails, reinstall Windows and all other software from the ground up.
12. Create an X-Box gaming area.
    Preview the latest games, hold in-store tournaments and otherwise build excitement around Microsoft's gaming platform. Contain this area in a soundproof room away from workshops, ideally in the mall display window so that everyone can see how rockin' Microsoft is.
13. Guerilla marketing (offense).
    Every day, send people to nearby Apple Stores to pose as shoppers, whine about how expensive Macs are, then proclaim loudly, "Maybe we should go PC."
14. Guerilla marketing (defense).
    Prepare a list of canned answers to anticipated questions from Apple operatives. Of particular importance, be ready to explain how Microsoft's operating system is not a copy of Apple's.
15. Offer kids play area.
    Create a low "play table" where kids can sit down and show their parents how easily they can figure out a Windows computer.
16. Store closing.
    To tell shoppers the store is closing for the day in a way they're sure to understand, have the giant video wall display the Windows Blue Screen of Death.

What do you want from Microsoft Retail Stores? Please tell us in the comments below.

According to tonight's conversations with key players in the space, the day's events and announcements could spell either or both. Every real-time search engine we spoke to has expressed every intention of weathering the storm on their current strategies, all of which center on providing an excellent UX though excellent product development. And all see the day's events as a validation of years of concentrated effort. But who will prevail, and who will profit?

Gut Reactions

Universally, these startups said that hearing today's Google/Microsoft/Twitter news was a welcome validation of their years of perseverance in real-time search.

"It's super exciting," siad Peggs. "There's been one way to search the web for 10 years, and we're looking at a total revolution in the way that people find information. It's a huge change in the industry. To see that feeling validated is awesome."

According to York, "I don't think we could ask for anything better than an endorsement from the major players. This is nothing but good for us. Back when I started, the marketplace was not very receptive to a new strategy." York continued to say that he supported mainstream exploration of the real-time space, with the telltale caveat, "even if it means licensing someone else's information and community."

Campbell said this new information is something Collecta has built into their corporate strategy. "This is something we heard rumors on and had anticipated. It was fully expected. Having been involved with one of the giants [AltaVista] at one time, it's quite obvious. It's something we've anticipated and part of how we structured our company."

Thoughts on Product Development

All the startups in real-time search have taken various approaches to the monumental task of indexing the real-time web. Collecta has employed the XMPP technology that powers IM clients in order to push streams of information. OneRiot has a fascinating algorithm that indexes tweet content, links in tweets, and the content of the linked-to pages to serve relevant results. And Wowd has developed a SETI@Home-like distributed computing model to effectively harness and parse the dataset created by users of real-time technologies.

Each company is proud of its hard-won advances and speculated on how Google and Microsoft will handle the data.

Campbell told us, "I can't say Google will bring to real-time search. But it makes sense that any dataset will be part of their approach. This is the largest corpus of real-time data that has not been accessible. As a search practitioner, I think they're going to keep on with their ranking approach."

York added that nothing unforeseen has yet been announced. "The Twitter thing, that's the kind of thing people have been expecting."

But he also talked about the challenges of parsing real-time user-generated content. "I think the data stream is broader and shorter. There's more and more real time, and you need different architecture to keep up with it. It's important to have real filtering applied to a noisy, low-value data stream. We believe people are the key to finding the good stuff."

"Knowing what goes into the product is quite eye-opening," said Peggs. "There's a tremendous lot of work to do once you've got tweets containing links, to process that information in real time and index the content on the page and render results based on content rather than just tweets. It's relatively easy for someone to spam Twitter with irrelevant links; but you've got to follow the links and index the pages and search against the content of the pages, not just the 140-character tweets. You also have to link to results based on relevancy, not just based on retweets."

Follow the Money

The opportunities for monetizing a new and powerful stream of Google- and Bing-driven traffic are both exciting and confounding for these startups, some of which have not yet put into play their own ideas for generating revenue.

As York noted, Google's and Microsoft's entry into real-time search represents a shift in the marketplace from these startups and their technology being a geek's plaything to being a new way to direct user attention and serve powerfully relevant advertising.

"Google is in the enviable position of having a high profit margin in the search business itself," he said. "It does fit their strategy to have as many eyeballs as possible, to get more people doing more stuff. We're interested more in matching personal interest profiles."

Also, as Peggs noted, "OneRiot has an API that allows anyone to incorporate our results. We also have a real-time ad model."

Collecta also has rolled out two APIs, one for general search results from the real-time web and one for XMPP-powered streaming data. Campbell has also hinted that their monetization plans are innovative, but his team has not yet released specifics.

"Having been involved in this growth of paid search several times over," said Campbell, "the creation of new technology creates new business opportunity. The monetization of search was a redefinition of online business models: You can advertise to users without being slimy. There's now an opportunity to make users even happier without distracting them from the page."

Strategy: Beyond "Get Acquired Or Die"

The startups in the real-time search space also universally expressed a commitment to current business strategies. Some seemed to have clearer exit goals than others, but all believe that their unique focuses on tech and product will allow them to survive the intrusion of Microsoft and Google into their arena.

Campbell, like many of his cohorts at other startups, noted that Twitter is a small segment of the available content sources for real-time web information. He also said, "Engines that are based solely on Twitter are probably more dead-on in terms of competition [with Google]. The less-funded companies are in a position where they have to do something more clever and unique."

Collecta, he said, is still figuring out their role in the story. "We are a push search engine," he told us. 'That is increasingly our defining characteristic. The perception of speed is critical, but it's not our most unique characteristic. Because we're based on XMPP, the chat protocol, we're pushing results as soon as possible."

Said Peggs, "Our strategy doesn't change. We're focused on producing the most relevant web results based on not just Twitter, but also Digg and other services - a much wider pulse of the real-time web on the back end. And we continue to distribute those through our API."

What's to Come for Real-Time Search Startups

Every single startup we spoke to tonight expressed some trepidation about things to come.

"What happens to the bubble of startups in this space?" asked Campbell. "I hope they've had the foresight to see this through."

"It doesn't really change our strategy," said a confident Peggs. "Two years ago, when you explained how this would change search, they looked at you like you were crazy."

York's assessment of Wowd's place as an open-sourced approach to a problem now being tackled by major corporations was also optimistic. "When you're a startup company competing with established players, there are always reasons to be cautious. We believe the approach we're taking is a great way to go. It's different, even than what you've heard today. We think this approach isn't a gimmick; it is a fundamentally different approach."

The bottom line, as in all verticals, is that once the major leagues take interest, some startups will sink and some will swim. Some will be acquired, and some will fail. Some may survive long enough to pose a legitimate challenge to the dominant players, but this circumstance is less likely.

Let us know your prognoses in the comments, and stay tuned for developing coverage of this space and these startups from ReadWriteWeb.

Although still limited to users in the U.S. and Japan, participants in the Technical Preview are able to access the web versions of the Office programs through Windows Live SkyDrive, Microsoft's online cloud storage service and a part of their Windows Live suite of tools and services.

SkyDrive, which provides each user with 25 GB of online storage, is used to host the documents created using the Office Web Applications. For now, the service is entirely free. However, during our earlier interview with Takeshi Numoto, the corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Product Management Group, we questioned him about future monetization plans for the online suite. He wouldn't confirm any details, only saying that Microsoft was "experimenting" with several options. To date, nothing has changed on that front.

At the moment, the Technical Preview is not offering full access to all the Office programs - only Word, Excel and PowerPoint are currently available. There is a placeholder for OneNote, but it displays a message reading "Still to come..." when clicked. We're told that OneNote support is due later this fall. That should be relatively soon, considering that it's already October.

The web version of Microsoft Word is also incomplete at this time, allowing you to view files but not create or edit them. Only Excel and PowerPoint allow for both read and write access at the moment.

According to Microsoft, the Technical Preview program is designed solely for the purpose of collecting user feedback prior to the broader beta release of the service. No date has been given for the beta launch as of yet but the online suite is due to ship next year alongside Office 2010, the next version of the company's desktop software suite.

How to Join

If you're interested in signing up for the Technical Preview, you'll need to establish a Windows Live ID if you have yet to do so. Hotmail and Windows Live Mail users should already have one - it's your @hotmail.com or @live.com email address. You can then sign up for the Technical Preview program via this link. As noted above, you will need to select either the United States or Japan during signup, as those are the only two countries supported at this time. After completing the sign up process and accepting the license agreement, your Windows Live ID will have access to the Web Applications by way of SkyDrive.

Says Microsoft Associate General Counsel Tim Cranton in a recent blog post, "Although we don't yet know the names of the specific individuals behind these acts, we are filing these cases to help uncover the people responsible and prevent them from continuing their exploits."Those involved in the current lawsuit include Soft Solutions, Direct Ad, qiweoqw, ITmeter INC, and ote2008.

In addition to this current civil suit, Microsoft is actively pursuing actions against a number of instant messaging spammers and bot-powered click frauders. It will be interesting to see if the public education campaigns for web security can keep up with the influx of ad delivered trojan horse viruses. The public is directed to the Microsoft Online Safety page for more information.

Photo Credit: Dirk Heuer

Filters

This visualization, while visually quite stunning, wouldn't be very interesting though, if Microsoft hadn't also added the ability to quickly narrow searches by relevant categories. If you search for 'digital cameras,' for example, you get the option to narrow your search by number of megapixels, optical zoom, or brand. Baseball players can be organized by position, team, or salary, and criminals on the FBI's 'Most Wanted' list can be organized by reward, citizenship, or the crime they are wanted for.

Overall, these visual elements can really make some searches a lot easier, especially if you are starting out with a broad category and you are trying to narrow your search down (try 'yoga poses,' for example).

As Stefan Weitz, Microsoft's Director of Bing, told us last month, for some queries, visual results are simply much easier to scan for users than simple lists of texts. At the end of your work with the visual search interface, however, you are still taken back to a regular Bing search.

Silverlight Only

Microsoft decided to use Silverlight as the one and only way to access the visual search feature. At this point, Weitz argued when we asked him about this choice, Silverlight is already widely installed on millions of computers and Microsoft decided that the experience will not degrade gracefully if you don't have Silverlight installed.

Useful or Just a Gimmick?

While Visual Search might look like a gimmick at first (and it definitely is an interesting visual feature), it actually turns out to be a very usual feature for most of the searches that currently support it. The range of searches that allow you to visualize the results is still somewhat limited, though Microsoft will surely add on to this list over time. If anything, this is yet another feature in Bing that Google doesn't offer yet. As Bing tries to position itself as a 'decision engine' and not just as a search engine, this is also another feature that will help Microsoft to make this distinction. Instead of a list of links, Bing can now offer a set of faster and more visually pleasing search results

Topics

Here is a list of current topics that will pop up Visual Search as an option:

• 100 heroes and villains
• Billboard's past albums
• Billboard's past songs
• Film legends
• Greatest movies
• Movies in theaters
• Popular books
• Popular celebrities
• Popular DVDs
• Popular TV shows
• Pulitzer winning fiction
• Top albums
• Top songs
• Famous People
• FBI's most wanted
• Popular celebrities
• US politicians
• US presidents
• US vice presidents
• World leaders

Reference

• Dog breeds
• Periodic table
• Travel destinations
• US politicians
• US presidents
• US states
• US vice presidents
• World leaders
• Yoga poses

Shopping

• Cell phones
• Digital cameras
• Handbags
• HDTVs
• New cars
• Popular books
• Popular DVDs
• Portable GPS
• Pulitzer winning fiction
• Top albums
• Top iPhone apps

Sports

• MLB players
• MLB teams
• NASCAR drivers
• NBA players
• NBA teams
• NFL players
• NFL teams
• NHL players
• NHL teams
• UFC fighters

Microsoft Folder-based Sites:: Education Labs also announced plans to roll out a website creator in mid-October. With this tool, teachers will be able to convert Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents into html files. From here the files can be shared with students as web pages and all the files are hosted at no cost through Microsoft. The group is currently testing different admin rights in order to allow for student uploads.

Flash Cards: This product allows you to create and browse flash card decks and create favorites with your Windows Live ID. Teachers create decks by adding images, text and sound to their cards. From here students flip through the decks in Silverlight 3. One interesting part of this project is that as students answer questions, the software remembers incorrect answers and prompts those problem cards more frequently. This project is due before 2010.

For more information on these projects, visit Educationlabs.com or check out the 30 minute demo video at the bottom of the Math Generator page.

While the in-home kick-off concept is an interesting launch tactic, we have difficulty believing that the people in the campaign's imagery are actually huddled around the computer enthralled by the Windows 7 experience. Are you sure this isn't a YouTube party? Balloons, shrimp cocktail AND models? If it's going to be this kind of a party, let's just hope no one does any keg stands over your keyboard. To register as a party host visit the house party page.

On Competition and Procedural Obstacles

Of course, these questions are only valid to a potential market leader like Microsoft - a company with the manpower, resources and intention to actually develop its ideas.

On Innovation and Employment

Next Steps: WIPO Symposium