I’m sure many of you reading this will be aware that Microsoft today announced a new search engine called Bing (not live at the time of writing).
I’ve been checking out the videos at http://www.discoverbing.com/behindbing/videos.aspx and was excited to see a very cool new feature that integrates with Windows Live. You can now save the results of your searches into your Windows Live Skydrive so that you can access those results at a later date or, if you think those results might interest other people, you can share the results with your Windows Live network via Windows Live Favorites. Here’s a shot from the video that shows that happening:
And here’s the whole video:
(If the video doesn’t appear here then go and check it out at http://www.discoverbing.com/behindbing/videos.aspx and find a video called “Kumo Session history”)
Cool stuff. Paul Dawson who heads up the User Experience team at EMC Conchango (my place of work) often talks about using search engines as “scrapbooks” and this new feature in Bing is a great example of that.
I’ve talked at length in the past about how Skydrive could be used by 3rd parties for online storage and here is the first really great example of that although unfortunately it won’t be available to anyone outside of Microsoft until an API appears which, as I’ve said before, I am pretty sure will happen when Live Mesh fully arrives.
In the meantime its fun to consider the capabilities that online storage of search results could deliver. The aforementioned Mr Dawson often gives the analogy of teenagers tearing cuttings out of clothing brochures and taking them with them on shopping sprees; what if they didn’t have to take those cuttings with them, instead they just stored them from Bing and were later able to access them on a mobile phone? That’s the sort of compelling experience that should be available in the not too distant future and I’ll bet that mobile access to stored search results is high on the agenda of the Bing team (think app stores and mobile marketplaces, people).
Interesting stuff. I’m really looking forward to playing with Bing when it becomes available in 6 days time!
-Jamie
