Windows Live Local is here!

When we launched the initial beta of Virtual Earth in the summer, we talked about how we are set to create an immersive experience in local search and mapping. During the last couple of months, we got great deal of feedback from you suggesting new features and sending us bugs – so thank you for your support! Now, we are back with new and exciting features (and don’t just take our word for it, both Michael Arrington and Charlene Li have...
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MSN Search at Chicago SES

Danny is holding the last Search Engine Strategies conference of the year in Chicago this week. We’ll be there to answer questions and discuss our products. You can see some of my teammates at the following talks: Tuesday, December 6th (today!)4:30 PM: the Search Ad Vendors – Doug Stotland, Group Product Manager Wednesday, December 7th2:00pm – 3:30pm: Search Engine Q&A on Links – Ramez Naam, Group Program Manager,...
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Two Weeks of MSN on MSDN

Over the next two weeks MSN will be offering developer webcasts on MSDN. These will be hands-on classes taught by the developers and PMs who built our APIs. Here’s the schedule: MSDN Webcast: The MSN Search Toolbar: Building Windows Desktop Search into Your Applications (Level 200)Monday, December 5, 20051:00 P.M.–2:00 P.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: Extending Start.com Using Startlets (Level 200)Wednesday, December 7, 20051:00 P.M...
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Shop anytime – we’re open late

Around this time of year, we see a big jump in the number of shopping related searches.  More and more people are using a web search engine to kick off the shopping process, and we are always trying to improve the experience.  To help you find what you’re looking for faster, we recently introduced v1 of our Shopping Instant Answer.  This is perfect for those of you that shop in your undies (you know who you are).  We...
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Come Visit the MSN Search Team

A little over a year ago we began inviting groups of academics, bloggers, siteowners, and technologists out to Redmond to talk about search. We call them Search Champs. We usually select this group based on who we are reading and we think would provide us great insight. We spend a couple of days with the group showing them our future plans, getting their input and making connections. Every time we hold these sessions we inevitably hear from...
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Windows Desktop Search for the Enterprise

Today at the IT Forum in Barcelona, the latest version of Windows Desktop Search (WDS) and MSN Search Toolbar, both enabled for easy enterprise deployment, will say “Hola!” to the world! With this new release, enterprise IT departments can easily and securely deploy, customize and manage Windows Desktop Search across their entire PC network (both Windows XP and Widnows 2000 SP4+). Not only is WDS free to deploy with your Windows...
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MSN Book Search and the British Library

Last week, we announced MSN Book Search and our joining the OCA. Yesterday, we announced a partnership with the British Library to digitize and make available via MSN Book Search, 25 million pages (roughly 100,000 books) from the British Library’s collection over the next year. This partnership with the British Library represents another step in MSN Search’s goal to provide the most relevant answers to users’ queries. Through...
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Frank *talk* from MSN Search

Finally, MSN Search was visited by Channel 9 – the amazing MSDN Web site that brings the people of Microsoft to you in video.  Erik Selberg and I joined Robert Scoble for a lively, hour-long discussion.  Check out the video here.   We talk about: the neural network (see June 21 post), 01:30 static versus dynamic rank (see our May 03 post), 04:00 search engine optimization, 08:20 the nature of relevance, 12:00...
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MSN AdCenter Pilot

Oilman beat me to the punch posting this one. Yesterday, Yusuf Medhi, MSN SVP, asked us to invite people to join the US MSN adCenter Pilot. I am going to extend the invitation to apply to all of our loyal blog readers. We want all of you to have a shot. See below for the invite and information on how to apply.       Brady Forrest, MSN Search PM —-From: Yusuf Mehdi As you know, we launched MSN adCenter –our...
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Where’s my instant answer?

As we release more instant answers, we get a lot of great feedback on them.  One common question, also brought up by Scoble recently (with follow up), goes something like this: “I like it when you show the stock answer for queries like msft and intc, but why doesn’t it appear for other valid tickers like play?” We could simply show the answer for all known financial symbols.  The problem is when someone searches for...
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