Thinking about your summer travel plans? Debating between the beach, the city, or a combination of both? Live Search and Virtual Earth are here to help make the decision a bit easier. Yesterday, Virtual Earth released new imagery for more than 1 million square kilometers around the globe. Here’s a look at a few of our favorite places to visit from a whole different angle. We even have some deals on airfare through our travel site...
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As a VP candidate once famously said, “Who am I? Why am I here?” I’m Rick DeJarnette, and I’ve been with the Live Search Webmaster Center team since fall, 2008, learning the ropes, helping with writing and editing work on both the tools Help system and the blog. I have a long and advanced technical writing background, focused on both IT Pro and end user topics. I’ve been involved with web technologies since the mid...
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Another massive release of imagery coming online for my fellow Virtual Earthlings to peruse. This release is a mere 9+ TB of data; however, it covers over 1 million square kilometers of Earth. 
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April showers bring May flowers, and May 2nd brings the Run for the Roses, also known as the annual Kentucky Derby. For those not heading to Churchill Downs for “the most exciting two minutes in sports,” we’re bringing the results to you in the form of our Kentucky Derby Instant Answer. Simply type in “Kentucky Derby” and you’ll see preliminary information about the event such as the date, TV coverage, the 2008...
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We launched Live Search 411 (1-800-CALL-411 or 1-800-225-5411) in October 2007, and since then have been rolling out new features that have helped our users in all kinds of ways. There’s Business Search to find that restaurant where your friends are waiting for you. There’s Driving Directions for turn-by-turn directions to guide you there. There are Sports and Stock Quotes so you’re always prepared with a quip about the latest...
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The Live Search development team is busy making significant improvement to the quality and depth of our search index, and these changes often affect how our crawler, MSNBot, collects data. As we test new algorithms, we invite webmasters to contact us to give us feedback on these changes, especially if you have any concerns. Live Search always encourages webmasters to use our product support escalation paths to help identify and resolve issues as...
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This article has been superceeded by Get Bird's Eye Views in Your Next Great Maps App or Web Experience | Maps Blog (bing.com)
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  The cherry blossoms are blooming, the birds are chirping, the sun is out, and searches for Derek Jeter have tripled since last week. That’s right sports fans. Baseball season is in full swing and fans are taking to the Internet to get their fantasy baseball fix and to find their favorite players’ stats and team standings. Mid-April for our team means it’s time to fine-tune our Instant Answer for baseball to ensure baseball...
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Today, countries all around the globe unite to observe Earth Day, a day designated nearly 40 years ago to inspire awareness of and appreciation for our environment. Despite this long tradition, according to a study from MSN, being green still isn’t all that easy. In fact, the MSN survey found that almost 70% of Americans said that they would never start composting kitchen scraps nor limit their toilet flushes to conserve water. One...
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Stefan here, sitting in the Sheraton in Munich for a few days Europe-side to talk about Live Search. First up tomorrow I’ll be meeting with our Search Technology Center team here in Munich (they focus on relevance), and then we’re hosting a meet-up for some Search-minded folks in the German office.   Wednesday I’ll be keynoting SMX Munich and talking to the crowd about the differences between what we have traditionally...
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